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The collective result of global monetary tightening over the past year has been a marked deceleration in global growth, and now it appears their actions have gone too far as leading economic indicators have not only decelerated but have dropped into negative territory. Shown below is the composite leading economic indicator (LEI) for the 34 countries of the OECD. The growth rate for the LEI has now turned negative after being positive for the first time since October 2007. Looking back over the last decade, the only false signal in the OECD LEI that didn’t lead to a recession here in the U.S. was in 2003, though that signal came after a prolonged bear market and sluggish economy. However, the current reading is coming after a strong bull market in equities and thus carries far more significance. I do not expect we are seeing a false signal.
The fact that the 34-member OECD LEI is now negative tells us risks are as high as they were in the last recession and that another global recession may be upon us. Within the OECD, the G7 block of countries shows most of the weakness with their own LEIs turning negative in April. Countries that now have negative LEI readings as of June are listed below:
Canada
Mexico
UK
Germany
France
Italy
Spain
Switzerland
Brazil
The collective OECD LEI is being pulled lower by the developed countries while the emerging countries LEIs, while decelerating, are still positive. Here in the U.S., economic breadth is also deteriorating and pointing towards a possible recession occurring later in the year. While individual countries can bring down the collective OECD growth rate, individual states within the U.S. can bring down the national growth rate. Thus, it is never a good sign to see more and more states slip into contractionary mode as when enough states' economic growth rates finally roll over, eventually will the entire country also.