The title, of course, refers to a movie in which Meryl Streep plays the Editor of Vogue Magazine. She may have been the woman who coined the phrase, "60 is the new 40" meaning that women of 60 now have the sex appeal, bodies and minds of 40 year olds. In any case, whether she said it or not about age, she certainly is part and parcel of the clothing size changes we've seen over the years.
Marilyn Monroe is purported to have purchased size 12 dresses, which would be equivalent to a size 6 or 10 today. In some circles, 12 is considered Large or Large Medium, whereas 6 or 10 is a perfect size for "real" women and size 0, which never existed 40 years ago are what most runway models wear and teenage oriental girls wear today. (Back then they were wearing petites and there were no zero, twos or fours available. You bought children's clothing.) Oh well! Now that we know the historical reference, here's the nutshell. Xi -- what do you think about this? The Chinese Devil Wears Prada: Why 0% Growth is the New Size 6.8% PrintShare Delicious Digg Facebook reddit Technorati Nouriel Roubini | Jan 22, 2009 The Chinese came out today with their 6.8% estimate of Q4 2008 growth. China publishes its quarterly GDP figure on a year over year basis, differently from the U.S. and most other countries that publish their GDP growth figure on a quarter on quarter annualized seasonally adjusted (SAAR) basis. When growth is slowing down sharply the Chinese way to measure GDP is highly misleading as quarter on quarter growth may be negative while the year over year figure is positive and high because of the momentum of the previous quarters’ positive growth. Indeed if one were to convert the 6.8% y-o-y figure in the more standard quarter over quarter annualized figure Chinese growth in Q4 would be close to zero if not negative. Other data confirm that China was in a borderline recession in Q4 and that it may be in an outright recession in Q1: production of electricity plunged 7.9% in y-o-y basis; the Chinese PMI has been below 50 and close to 40 for five months now. And with manufacturing being about 40% of GDP , manufacturing is certainly in a sharp recession (negative growth) and the overall economy may be close to a recession So the 6.8% growth was actually a 0% growth – or possibly negative growth – in Q4; and the Q1 figures look even worse. So China is in a recession regardless of what the highly massaged official numbers claim. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "World-thread" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/world-thread?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
