>I detect some significant droppage in capital utilisation in the US from
>1974, too. Is this not an indicator of excess capacity?
CU averaged 83.4% in 1974, but it dropped sharply in 1975, a recession year, to 72.9%. The latest CU figs for the U.S. are around 79-80%, down a bit from 1997, but up a bit from last year. For a good bit of the mid-90s, capacity was growing very strongly, much more strongly than production, keeping the CU rate down, but now cap'y growth has slowed down a lot while production has picked up.
Doug