Academic

Mixed Signals

By Gordon Smith, Christine, Hurt, Vic Fleischer, Fred Tung, Lisa Fairfax, David Zaring

(Thanks again to Gordon and the Conglomerate for allowing me to join your community for a few weeks.)

It has been very difficult in the past few weeks to decipher the meaning and relevance of conflicting indicators about the state of economic "recovery." Is rising unemployment a sign that things are bad and will be for a while or is that a lagging indicator?  Should we, instead, be looking at certain positive profit reports or rising retail sales?

It's no wonder Wall Street has not reacted to any of this news in the last few days. Just today, I read two very different viewpoints about the economy. One declaring that the recession is over, and the other, that it's actually worse than we thought it was. 

I wonder if it's just partisanship that explains the difference or if we are all trying to see what we want to see in the data. 

Full post as published by Conglomerate on July 14, 2009 (boomark / email).