Christopher Hughes & Constantine Courcoulas / Jun 02, 2009, 00:59 IST
GSS: Some economic slowdowns feel like bad recessions. But we seem to be in a bad recession that to many feels like just an economic slowdown.
Breakingviews.com’s Green Shoots Spotter, an index of economic newsflow, fell back last week to 1.9 out of 5 – a score indicating that the economic situation is still in real trouble and at best getting just little less bad. The index was at 2 the week before.
The core indicators were stubbonly negative – record foreclosures in the US housing market, a further fall in UK net mortgage lending and sharp slowdowns in emerging-market economies such as Thailand and Malaysia. Yet amid it all , consumer confidence surveys seem to be surprisingly resilient. And growth is reappearing from unexpected quarters, such as Poland.
The GSS attempts to gauge the direction of the economy by classifying economic, corporate and financial news from 1 ("still in real trouble") to 5 ("rapid recovery"). This week, 36 news items made it into the basket. In its fifth week the only discernable direction of travel is bouncing along the bottom.
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