Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Leading Indicators... Growing Strength

Trying to catch up news from earlier this week. It has been a quiet economic week thus far (not many economic releases), but the latest leading economic indicators shows more signs of strength. The LA Times details:

The index of U.S. leading indicators rose in March by the most in 10 months, a sign the economy will keep growing into the second half of the year.

The 1.4 percent increase in the New York-based Conference Board's measure of the outlook for three to six months was more than anticipated and followed a revised 0.4 percent gain in February.

Manufacturers are ratcheting up production and factory workers are putting in longer hours as companies rebuild inventories and ship more goods overseas. Further improvement in the job market will help sustain the economy's recovery from the worst recession since the 1930s.

"The economy really seems to be gaining momentum, with better-than-expected data coming from a wider variety of sources," said Russell Price, a senior economist at Ameriprise Financial Inc. in Detroit. "The sectors that were doing well appear to be doing even better and those that were struggling appear to be seeing signs of renewed activity."



And the strength excluding money supply, interest rate spread, and stock prices (i.e. eliminating the pure liquidity mechanisms and/or financial assets driven by the liquidity - though an argument can be made to include all of the leading indicators as being affected).



Source: Conference Board

3 comments:

  1. SPECTRE of DeflationApril 21, 2010 at 9:57 AM

    This is all an illusion fueled by govt.'s debt/spending because of the death of the American Consumer having reached debt saturation. No improvement in unemployment, and in fact, records being set for extended unemployment benefits.
    We have 0 pricing power in wages in this new global environment for the folks that do have jobs.

    In 1995, total debt to income for the American consumer stood at 65% while at the worst it stood at 135%although it's now sub 130s. Think we still have a long way to go in deleveraging?

    Or how about the fact that our annual deficit to GDP is approaching 12%?

    Or we might mention that total debt to GDP in the USA is well north of 300% and closer to 400%?

    I'm all for riding what the market will give, but it doesn't mean I have to drink the kool-aid or take the blue pill.

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  2. great post on just that here:

    http://tinyurl.com/y2atmcj

    ReplyDelete
  3. SPECTRE of DeflationApril 21, 2010 at 6:16 PM

    We got a whole lotta mismatchin' going on, and much much more to follow. LOL! Talking about not being able to handle the truth and this came to mind:

    "It's hard to get a man to understand something when his job depends on him not understanding it"

    This country is being strip mined of all it's financial wealth just as surely as was done to western Kentucky during the bad old coal mining days. We are replacing private loss with public loss while money flees this country in the form of bonuses and offshoring. This money/capital will/is flee(ing) to Asia to pillage the next flock of sheeple. The American citizen hasn't a clue about how screwed we really are.

    ReplyDelete