Lakshman Achuthan, co-founder of ECRI, has been getting a lot of heat lately for his
July 2012 U.S. recession call. He addressed his haters in a
news release on December 7, 2012 (see below). His overall view is that the U.S. is now in a recession because industrial production, personal income, and sales all peaked in July (3 of the 4 "U.S. Coincident Indicators"). Employment kept rising, but he mentioned that sometimes there is employment growth at the beginning of recessions.
Part of the reason why I started this blog was to keep track of guru calls in the media. When looking back at previous posts, Lakshman Achuthan started to make economic slowdown calls in
June 2011. But on September 30, 2011, ECRI officially announced that the U.S. was "
tipping into recession." When he was
interviewed by Aaron Task on Daily Ticker, he said:
"We may be in a recession today already, or it may start in the next month or two. That answer we can have in about a year when the dust settles. When all the GDP revisions are in, and the jobs revisions are in, and sales... All those big numbers get revised so many times. Once they get revised, we'll see, did it start in the 3rd quarter, did it start in the 4th quarter." (Lakshman Achuthan interviewed on Daily Ticker on 9/30/2011)
That never panned out, but Achuthan did "clarify the timing of his call" two months later on
Bloomberg TV. He extended his recession call to mid-2012.
