I visited a customer yesterday and they have way too much inventory. They blamed the Debt Ceiling crisis and the GOP in Congress. (The owners are Republicans so that was interesting.) They claimed that consumers saw that political discussion ans stopped spending for 3 weeks.
My thought was that since the entire 1st. half GDP was horrible, that the reason was more likely a general lack of spending by the consumer, not some political event, but I could be wrong.
They also railed at Obama, too.
Funniest thing was their business is good and they could expand but they are holding off to see what happens…and then complaining about the consumers do that too.