Friend of @MarquetteAIM and noted economist, Jim Bianco, reported on the weakening global economic outlook

Jim Bianco of Bianco Research uses the Citi Surprise Index to confirm the weakening global economic outlook

GLOBAL ECONOMY - "Slowing Global Growth Continues" - by Jim Bianco, Bianco Research

Jim Bianco follows the US and global economy and  markets closely – and as his regular readers know, he is a fan of Citi’s Economic Data indices especially the Surprise Index). This can be broken down into the following components:

Data Change – Consensus Estimates = Surprise Index

Jim Bianco in the AIM Room at Marquette
earlier in the semester

He writes that the Data Change indices take incoming economic series and compare them to their previous one-year average.  Zero denotes the one-year average, so anything below zero indicates growth is lower than the one-year average.

Consensus Estimates compare median economic forecasts to their one-year average.

Therefore, Bianco notes that the Surprise Index is simply the difference between the Data Change index and Consensus Estimates.

What does the latest data reveal?  According to Bianco Research, they prefer to look at the Data Change indices themselves - as they give the best indication of where various economies stand in relation to growth over the past year. As the chart above shows, the global growth trend is becoming a bigger concern.

Jim does extensive analysis of the market economies - his conclusion is that growth continues to show signs of a slowing global economy.