Once upon a time, Caterpillar was the world's industrial bellwether and a Dow Jones Industrial staple. Lately, in addition to suddenly developing a very close relationship with Federal authorities who "are investigating the movement of cash among Caterpillar Inc. ’s U.S. and overseas subsidiaries", CAT has become a completely ignored and forgotten poster name of the "old-economy" (the on in which cash flow still mattered). However, there are those who still believe that the second coming "eyeballs" as the only valuation term category is destined to end in tears, and as such care about how companies like CAT do. Sadly, we have some more bad news: Caterpillar just reported that in January, it suffered its worst retail sales month since Lehman, with global sales plunging 14% from last January (when sales in turn had dropped 8% from a year before, while the year before had slid 3% from the year before that and so on). In fact, January was so bad, it was the first month since 2013 when CAT reported declining sales across all regions in which it does business, now that the dead CAT bounce in North America is over. Finally, those who disagree that the S&P500 is really only and just AAPL, will be even less pleased to learn that as of January CAT was now recorded a record 26 months of consecutive declining retail sales, which is now 7 months more than during the Great Recession period. This alone should make some wonder just how bad the unspoken depression the world is currently in, truly is? d