For Caterpillar, This Is What The "Second Great Depression" Looks Like

Having repurchased billions of its own stock near the all-time high price (or, to avoid cause-and-effect confusion, leading to all time high prices), Caterpillar recently hit its debt issuance ceiling and as a result is no longer able to sell debt and use the proceeds to buyback stock. The result: CAT stock has recently tumbled to levels last seen in 2011. And judging by its monthly retail sales data it is going much, much lower.

The reason: the second great depression which for industrial bellwether CAT started in December 2012 and has since resulted in 32 consecutive months of declining global retail sales and over a year longer than the decline observed during the great financial crisis, refuses to go away.

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