In another sign the worst of the US recession is over, a gauge of current conditions showed the economy steadied last month. The Conference Board's coincident index was unchanged in July after falling in 17 of the 19 months since the contraction started in December 2007, figures from the New York-based private research group showed Thursday. The more closely watched gauge of leading indicators, which shows the outlook for the next three to six months, climbed for a fourth month. “Not only is there light at the end of the tunnel, but we can see the end of the tunnel from here,” Ken Goldstein, a Conference Board economist, said in a telephone interview. “It's entirely possible that July was the trough month,” marking the end of the recession. The coincident index tracks payrolls, incomes, sales and production, which – combined with gross domestic product – are the same measures used by the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based National Bureau of Economic Research to determine when contractions begin and end. The NBER announced the current recession, the deepest since the 1930s, had started one year after the fact. Goldstein said he wouldn't definitively declare the recession over because the data is often revised. He said the four consecutive gains in the leading index indicated the stabilization in the economy would continue. Economic data such as industrial production, housing starts and car sales in recent weeks have indicated the economy is at a turning point and may be emerging from the recession. The coincident index reinforces the Federal Reserve's statement on Aug. 12 that economic activity was “leveling out,” said Zach Pandl, an economist at Nomura Securities International Inc. in New York. The four consecutive gains in the leading index, the longest such string since 2004, signaled that the coincident index “is going to turn positive, and probably soon,” Goldstein said in a Bloomberg Television interview Thursday. Ford Motor Co. last week said it's boosting factory production by 26 percent in the second half to meet rising orders for new, more fuel-efficient models in response to the government's car trade-in program. “Cash for clunkers released that demand,” Ford sales analyst George Pipas said in an interview Aug. 12.
