by Wolf Richter
Wolf Street
And there’s Still No Recession!
Every month, the Conference Board publishes its “Leading Economic Index” (LEI), which is a leading indicator for turning points in the business cycle and is designed to predict business-cycle recessions. It predicted the 2001 recession and the Great Recession. It didn’t predict the pandemic recession because that wasn’t a business-cycle recession but a pandemic with a lockdown that suddenly shut parts of the economy down; instead of predicting it, it reacted simultaneously with it, which is how it should have reacted. So its track record is good.