Nate Silver of Five-Thirty-Eight, the guy who picked the winners of the election better than any other analyst, occasionally looks at data other than political.
Beer sales, for instance. After posting a nice chart, he says:
As you can see, there has generally not been much of a relationship between alcohol purchases and changes in GDP -- the correlation is essentially zero. Nor have alcohol purchases historically been any kind of lagging or leading indicator.But something was very, very different in the fourth quarter of 2008. Sales of alcohol for off-premises consumption were down by 9.3 percent from the previous quarter, according to the Commerce Department. This is absolutely unprecedented: the largest previous drop had been just 3.7 percent, between the third and fourth quarters of 1991.
Beer sales fell 14%, which allows him to use this wonderful line:
Perhaps people are substituting Michelob and Coors for more expensive microbrews like Alpha King and Dogfish Head. (This is unpatriotic, by the way, since all the macrobrews are now owned by foreign-based multinational conglomerates. Stimulate your country -- and your tastebuds!).
Damn. If I were still a beer drinker, I'd feel obligated to do something after reading that.
Posted by Linkmeister at February 20, 2009 12:01 AM | TrackBack