> The Conference Board’s venerable leading index is down five months
> running and its yearly rate of change is in the neighbhorhood it was
> in several months before the onset of the recessions of 1990 and 2001.
> It’s nowhere near as bad as it was, however, in the run-up to the
> nasty recessions of 1974–75 and 1981–82.
Bloomberg yesterday:
> U.S. Economy: Consumer Sentiment Drops to 26-Year Low
>
> By Courtney Schlisserman
>
> April 11 (Bloomberg) -- Confidence among U.S. consumers fell to a
> 26-year low after employers fired workers and gasoline prices surged,
> threatening the spending that accounts for more than two thirds of the
> economy.
>
> The Reuters/University of Michigan preliminary index of consumer
> sentiment decreased to 63.2 this month, the weakest level since 1982,
> when the jobless rate approached 11 percent, the worst since the Great
> Depression.