I just saw an excellent presentation by James Turk, founder of GoldMoney.com. He had just returned from Europe and was commenting on the severe economic downturn there. He presented this interesting statistic as a leading indicator on the health of the European economy.
Volvo truck sales in the third quarter of 2008 were 115 new lorries. That compares to orders totalling 41,970 in the third quarter of 2007, or a drop of 99.7%.