Early Recovery for Finland?

Leading Economic Indicators

The above is a chart of the changes in the OECD’s leading economic indicators for Finland, the Euro Area and the United States from March 2007 to January 2009. Interestingly, the leading indicators moved closely in tandem until about last September. Since then the US has continued on a downward path, the Euro Area has slowed in its decrease and Finland has almost stopped falling.

The changes for the last five months (September 2008 - January 2009):

Finland:

• -.75%
• -.67%
• -.50%
• -.26%
• -.03%

The decreases are getting noticably less. Now compare that with the Euro Area:

• -1.02%
• -1.07%
• -1.01%
• -.87%
• -.68%

and the United States:

• -1.45%
• -1.72%
• -1.79%
• -1.73%
• -1.51%

The Euro Area’s leading indicators are slowing in their fall as well, but the drops are still much higher than Finland’s. The US has barely slowed at all, and the drops are still horrendous.

Does this mean that Finland will come out of the recession early? Perhaps, but I’m a bit doubtful. Finland’s domestic economy isn’t able to pull out the whole nation; we are too dependant upon international trade. But the numbers do look encouraging, for Finland at least.