Merry Rehab.

• Author: Rundles, Jeff
• Position: RUNDLES [wrap-up]

Although I didn't know it at the time, when I was a kid I got a great education in economics from my best friend's father. This man - a great guy - was, among other things, a beer distributor, selling some of the most iconic brands of the day to bars and liquor stores throughout southern Michigan.

My friend and I began working at his warehouse for spending-money at quite a young age - 10 or 11 - by washing trucks, sweeping up and the like. I was too young then to know about recessions, but my hometown being a factory town, I learned a lot about economic hardship during the frequent labor disputes that shut the factories down and kept a ton of people out of work.

During these periods the stores would be hurting, the service sector dried up, doctor visits plummeted, and on and on; everybody was crying the economic blues. Except my friend's father. Beer sales went up as high as, well, as high as all of those out-of-work factory workers hanging out in the bars without anything else to do. Beer, it dawned on me, is a counter-cyclical commodity.

As I got older I thought a lot about going into the beer business - Lord knows I invested a ton in it - because it seemed so solid: great sales in normal economic times and even a boost when the chips are down. It has long been noted that the beer business is recession-proof, but not this time. The giants in the business, Molson Coors, Anheuser-Busch and many others, are reporting unprecedented drops in beer volume sold - down something like 2.9 percent worldwide. Industry insiders have changed their perspective to "recession-resistant."

I was looking at beer-sales numbers as part of my research into consumer confidence and current economic conditions, looking for a bright side. This being the Christmas season, my intent was to get a handle on whether it would be a merry Christmas in the retail world. I'm afraid my research would indicate that, alas, it won't be.

Every consumer confidence survey I could find - University of Michigan, Investor's Business Daily and others - show the confidence level low, in the "pessimistic" category. However, signs of a rebound in consumer spending - which, they point out, don't always track...