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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Mar 22, 2007 17:59:01 GMT -6
Leading Indicators declined -0.5% for February. This followed a downwardly revised -0.3% for January (which was initially reported as +0.1%). The major contributors to January's downward revisions were the revisions in Consumer Goods Orders (reduced from -0.01 down to -0.13%) and in Nondefense Capital Goods Orders (reduced from -0.07% down to -0.42%). The change over the last 2 months has been -0.8%. Below is a graph of the long-term change in Leading Indicators from Briefing.com. As can be seen from the red line in the graph above, the long-term trend has been consistently downward since 2003. Note the downward trend leading up to the 2001 recession and the valley during the recession. It appears the trend is going in the same downward direction at present.
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Post by rjfliberal07 on Mar 22, 2007 19:43:02 GMT -6
It seems that the Leading Indicators predict fairly well with regards to increases or decreases in economic activity. It dipped in the early nineties and 2001. Both of those were during recession periods. It looks likes this drop is no different.
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Mar 23, 2007 2:53:50 GMT -6
Peter Schiff states in his latest article, Don't Uncork the Champaign Just Yet, not only that the economy is headed for recession, but that the Fed chairman's statements " have become a political farce used primarily to placate markets....
If the Fed were to admit that the economy was in trouble, the stock market would sell off....With its parsed language, the Fed preserves the pretense that all is well while simultaneously allowing for the possibility of future easing...." Schiff notes that Wall Street has a mistaken idea of what the role of the Fed is. Though Wall Street thinks the mission is to keep the expansion going. However, Schiff maintains that part of the Fed's mission is also to take the punch bowl before the economy is completely out of control.
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Mar 24, 2007 15:38:23 GMT -6
It seems that the Leading Indicators predict fairly well with regards to increases or decreases in economic activity. It dipped in the early nineties and 2001. Both of those were during recession periods. It looks likes this drop is no different. I should also point out that the Conference Board, who determines Leading Indicators, is constantly revising the way they are calculated. And every "revision" results in the total reading being higher (and more "optimistic") than the previously used method. So the current downward slope would be a lot sharper and more pronounced were it not for the constant upward revisions.
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Post by rjfliberal07 on Mar 24, 2007 20:41:19 GMT -6
If thats the case, then we could be down to -2% by now based on the chart above. I wish the government would just report the statistics as is, and not fudge them or make them look better.
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