Whatever happened to the leading indicator? Remember the days when leading economic indicators were the hot news topic? These days the news tells us things we already know. Things that have been developing and going on for months now.

Didn't we already know the economy was headed south? Who thought, for instance, that higher gas and grocery prices and record mortgage foreclosures probably would not take a bite out of spending somewhere? How many people have that much left over after gas, groceries and mortgage that they can shift over?

Well I guess there is always the old standby, the credit card. Ah, but wait, we can't go further into debt because we're already maxed out on our credit cards. Gotta make those minimum payments.

What happened to the leading indicator? Somewhere along the line we decided it was better that we not know. Or rather we decided that we did not want to be told.