Conference Board LEI says no recession

 

The latest Conference Board LEI was announced today with the index continuing to decline, but because 6 of 10 of their indicators were positive over the last six months, the Board announced that there is no longer a recession signal. Good news, but that just means there is less pressure on the Fed to lower rates. 

I accept the CB's diffusion indicator, but the positive numbers were barely above zero and there are strong indicators that we are still slowing down. We can easily see the recession diffusion index again move below 50. Perhaps I am being negative, but I still view that higher rates will cut into growth and without government spending the private economy may not be as strong as the overall numbers would suggest.