Monday, January 26, 2009

Leading Economic Indicator Up

From Big Picture: Fed Activity Boosts Leading Economic Indicators:

Leading economic indicators (LEI) index rose 0.3% month over month in December. However:

Stock Prices, Jobless Claims, Pace of Deliveries, Average Work Week, and Building Permits were all negative. Consumer Goods Orders, Non-defense Cap Goods Orders, and Consumer Expectations were all essentially flat.

Coincident-to-lagging index fell; The coincident to lagging index, which tends to have a stronger correlation with GDP growth, conversely fell 0.1% over the month to stand 4.7% lower year-over year.

The surge in real money supply growth added a full percentage point to the headline number. From September till today, this has added between 0.4ppts and 1.0ppts to each month’s gain. The artificial boost to the LEIs has not translated into increased lending from the banks.

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