What the heck is going on. This is on a news site saying future economic activity is slowing.
The Index of Leading Economic Indicators, a widely watched gauge of future economic activity, fell in October for the fifth straight month, suggesting that the economy may be slowing, a private research group reported Thursday.
The Conference Board said that its main indicator of future economic growth fell 0.3 percent in October, following declines of the same size in September and August. The October decline was steeper than the fall of 0.1 percent that economists had been expecting.
Ken Goldstein, an economist at the New York-based research group, called the latest decline in the index "a clear signal that the economy is losing steam." He also said that "worries about where the economy is headed may cause some strategic plans to be put on hold."
You asked:
What the heck is going on? ... economic activity is slowing According to a reporter I know at the Times, there are seven layers of editors that check or "improve" important stories, so there can be major delays in reporting the news. In fact, the news-story cycle at the Times is rumored to be just slightly shorter than the economic cycle, so sometimes they get out of sync -- and that's before considering the implications for political campaigns.