Archive - Jun 29, 2010

The debate of China's double dip may have just been sealed after the "Conference Board corrected its
April gauge for the outlook of China’s economy, saying its
leading index for the country rose the least since November,
rather than registering the biggest gain in 14 months. The gauge compiled by the New York-based research group
rose 0.3 percent, less than the 1.7 percent gain reported on
June 15." Ignoring for a second the fact that such massive swings in amplitude imply either a malicious data misrepresentation intent or weapons grade stupidity, the second derivative in Chinese growth has now peaked, just at the time when the country for whatever optically political reason decided to unpeg its currency. We are now looking forward to the official rescinding of that decision, and a resumption of the peg. Of course, the fine gentlemen at the Conference Board, have come up with some trivial excuse, namely that the previous release contained a “calculation
error” for total floor space on which construction began, but it is now too late - the discrediting is beyond terminal. And anyone who believes this same agency for its monthly "consumer confidence" reading should ask themselves repeatedly if the CB did not, by mistake or just by following guidelines from above, drop the minus sign.