The Year Ahead: What’s the Economic Indicator to Watch?

Paul Solman: More in our look this week at The Economic Year Ahead. Today: What’s the economic indicator to watch in 2010? Again, as you’ve come to expect from the NewsHour, a divergence of views. Not that Robert Shiller is his usual Gloomy Gus, but he certainly doesn’t have the rosy outlook of Mark Zandi. Are we headed up or down again? Reasonable persons may differ. And so often do.

Tyler Cowen, meanwhile, reiterates a theme that has already come up this week: a China downturn and the impossibility of knowing what’s going on there, due to data of indeterminate reliability. Let’s face it: In a one-party system, it’s hard for a bureaucrat not to give those in power the numbers s/he might think they want.

Those who see a China downturn that’s being kept hidden (or is about to happen) are called, as I’ve pointed out here, the China Bears. I herewith repeat my name for them — The Pandas — and my proprietary interest in the term Panda-monium, if the Chinese economy should in fact collapse. Not predicting, mind you; just staking out the intellectual property, public as it may be.

Read the full feature here.