Inventory Reduction and Restocking During the first quarter of 2009 US economic production resembled something along the lines of deer in headlights. The silence of consumption was deafening and companies continued to work off their existing inventories in order to become leaner and meaner to compensate for further weak economic conditions. When plotted almost every economic graph looked akin to the trajectory of a cliff diver you see on a Caribbean commercial who's doing a swan dive into the pristine ocean below. It should come as no surprise that certain inventories do have to be replenished at some point (albeit ...