Auto sales update -- sky not falling

Yesterday the headlines were downright chilling: "November Auto Sales Plunge 37%." I never saw the clarification for the period in question, however. When I checked the data this morning, I found that sales in November were 10.2 million (saar), versus 10.6 million in October. That's a decline of 3.8%. Compared to November 2007, sales are down 37%, but the bulk of that decline happened in the January-October period, and the steepest decline occurred in October, when sales dropped 15%. A classic case of biased reporting. It's looking more and more like we have seen the worst of this economic slowdown.