More Evidence of Slowdown Underway

July auto sales, announced today, were positively awful. GM and Ford are in big trouble. According to Bloomberg:

GM's July sales fell 22 percent, as none of the automaker's eight brands managed a gain for July. Hummer suffered the biggest losses, dropping 30 percent to 4,895.
Sales of GM's cars were off 26 percent, and truck sales declined 20 percent, including a 29 percent slide for the Silverado large pickup. That vehicle accounts for about 15 percent of GM's total sales.
``The industry has been underperforming in the past couple of months. We have housing prices and gas prices around $3 a gallon,'' Paul Ballew, GM's chief sales analyst, said in an interview. ``Overall, it's tough in the U.S.''
Ford's 19 percent July decline included an 18 percent drop in sales of F-Series pickups, the top-selling line of vehicles in the U.S.