Smarty_Pants

A Dark Morning

My point being that government 'adjusted' numbers aren't worth the time it takes to manipulate them.

Based on personal experience in the local restaurant my partners and I run I can tell you that times are hard. Our sales are down 20% this month from the same month a year ago. Given that margins range from 10% to 15% for a typical restaurant you can imagine what impact that will have on the bottom line for the month.

Now that's a number you can use for getting an idea what's going on out there and you don't have to manipulate it to see that it's pretty bad. In the six years I've been involved in this business we've never seen that big a drop y-o-y.