Purchasing Managers' Limerick

There's a purchasing index quite candid,
That tells what supply and demand did.
On the first business day
Of the month, it will say:
Manufacturing shrank or expanded.

If PMI's 50 or less,
Manufacturing's bound to regress;
If 50 or more,
Expansion's in store,
A predictor of wealth and success.

Each month, in the opening hours,
The surveyor patiently scours
The thoughts of those guys
Who manage supplies
In the global industrial powers.

They learn, from each guy they contact,
If supplies will expand or contract,
In sum, they depict
The trends that predict
How growth on the whole will have tracked.

Then, around the world (first in the East),
The PMI stats are released
To financial brigades,
Who position their trades
Whether growth has reduced or increased.

Yes, it's the first business day of December, which means that the November Purchasing Managers Index in each of the world's economically important countries is being released. At this writing, the PMIs from Asia and Europe show positive trends, although the former continues to outshine the latter. Nobody is more enthralled by purchasing managers' predictions than Joe Weisenthal and the folks over at Business Insider, who have been live-blogging the results all night. With only the US and Brazil left to report on November's supply chain activity, indications are that the world is turning back from the recessionary cliff, if not the fiscal one.