OECD LEADING INDICATORS POINT TO SLOWING GLOBAL ECONOMY
By Data Diary:
The OECD released its CLI for March last night (you can find it here). In the OECD’s words, “the OECD CLI for March 2010 point to a slowdown in the pace of economic activity”. The slowdown is being lead by China that has been contracting since January.
China is creating a drag on Asia and emerging markets generally, in particular, it looks like Brazil’s recovery has stalled. The developed world continued to expand but at a slowing pace. This meant that the broadest measure of the OECD’s indicators – the CLI for the OECD nations plus six (China, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Russia and South Africa) remained on the positive side of the ledger but with the momentum fade gaining pace:
Finally, Australia’s expansion also continued for March but again at a slower pace. With another couple of interest rate rises to be captured in the April and May data, in addition to the China retrenchment, be interesting to see where this takes us.
It’s OK. Less time in the boardroom means more time in the bedroom. Pretty soon got lots more mouths to feed. More economic activity down the road.
Seriously; with world population growth we are virtually assured of increased economic growth. That would be until we start reaching peak everything.
It certainly looks like Brazil is an area of concern. Turning lower from under 100 means they are having trouble getting back on their feet.
The China data is of interest, but since the 100 level is the trend of expansion vs. contraction we might look at this data a lot like the ECRI WLI – expanding, but at a slower rate. If they are using quarterly year over year numbers the slower rate could be the result of more difficult comparisons.