ECRI Weekly Leading Index: Recession Ho!

The latest release of the Economic Cycle Research Institute’s (ECRI) Weekly Leading Index has weekend yet again bringing the all important “growth” component to a value of -8.1 and triggering a firm recession call on the part of the ECRI’s Chief Operations Officer Lakshman Achuthan.

The chart above shows the ECRI’s Weekly Leading Index growth component since 1968. Notice that this index has turned notable negative which, along with an erosion in many other key macro-economic series, appears to be signaling recession is nigh.

The following video of Achuthan with Bloomberg’s Tom Keene is well worth the watch as Achuthan details his reasoning for his recession call depicting it as “inescapable” as “contagion in the forward looking indicators” look like “wildfire”.