We should be ready to learn from experience and adapt our institutional framework if and when the need arises. This applies, of course, in a more general sense. EMU has been well prepared, but actually playing the game is always different from preparing the game plan, important as this may be. A good game plan is necessary, but not sufficient to win the game.
And the Institute for Supply Management's (ISM) forward-looking indicators of orders and customers' inventory suggested that further weakening is in train. Meanwhile, the ISM survey for nonmanufacturing businesses, which had reported expansion since April of last year, indicated a slight contraction in December.