Remember that claim ECRI is always right on economic cycle predictions?

Remember that claim a while back on this site that ECRI has always been right in predicting recoveries and that's why everybody else is so wrong?

Well, it looks like Mish wrote up quite a detailed reality check on ECRI's claim:

The [WLI] is an index that’s been around for over a quarter of a century, and over that time (shown here) it has correctly predicted every recession and recovery in real-time.

Along with many other examples, Mike Shedlock found this tasty tidbit from November 2007, the month before the official start of this recession:

ECRI: "The difference this time is that, even though the shocks have arrived, good leading indicators like the USLLI are not showing recessionary weakness ... This is a key reason why the economy is not yet in a recession. .... weakness is not pronounced, pervasive and persistent enough to be recessionary. .... leading indexes are still holding up sufficiently for a recession to be averted.

The post is quite long but assuredly blows up the myth of ECRI's magic crystal ball as was proclaimed and used as proof all other analysis pointing to a much less rosy picture is simply doom & gloom.

(h/t Paul Krugman)

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Sour Grapes Alert!

Not so fast, why don't you read ECRI's reply?

http://www.businesscycle.com/news/press/1591/

Also interesting is the fact that Krugman now says economy recovering quicker than he expected, http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/16/a-smidgen-of-optimism/

So it seems ECRI was right after all.