Contemporaneous data seems to tell another (especially if you strip out the backward looking data, that is embedded in the contemporaneous data).

Virtually everything that I see as a leading indicator, points to economic issues down the road – I have been in the 'recession this year' camp and continue to be.

The FedEx CEO's warning should be taken seriously.

Their critical role in today's economy gives them insights that many do not have, and their CEO just warned about global economic problems!

I have no idea what the models really are (I only play an economist on TV), but I do think the public works on very simple models or thoughts. The policy makers have complex models, but as complex as they are, they do not capture the complexity of the real world. Just like Newtonian physics could explain a lot, but further advances, like relativity are required to explain more phenomena, we may find that the economic models we've been using cover a lot of situations, but not all, and this may be one of those situations (for those of you who have been reading the T-Report for the past decade, you know I like comparing pendulums to double pendulums, where starting conditions are extremely important, and I think that is relevant now).