Garbage Tightly Correlated To US Economy

"U.S. GDP growth has long been tightly correlated with the change in carloads of trash that are being shipped off by rail to landfills across the country... In fact, the trash index has had an 82.4 percent statistical correlation with U.S. economic growth since 2001."

"And that’s worrisome because... the garbage indicator... appears to have plummeted for the third quarter of 2012. That could be a sign that the U.S. economy is heading for a rough patch, dragged down by the recent slumps in both Europe and China."

"Then again, as a wild alternative hypothesis, this might just be a sign that U.S. economic activity has somehow become decoupled from garbage of late."

You can read more at The Washington Post HERE.