China has become the fail-safe excuse for every bad economic indicator in the world. Among industries, autos are playing a similar role.
So it should be little surprise that both have been fingered as fall guys for a slump in Germany manufacturing activity that spurred gloom over global growth and doom in financial markets (including an inverted U.S. yield curve). The purchasing managers’ index fell to the lowest in six-and-a-half years. Economists at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said it was the biggest reaction to German data that they could recall.
