Gross Domestic Income - Mr. Nalewaik of the Fed

Looking for a date for the Q1 GDP release date I stumbled on this amazing paper titled, "Estimating Probabilities Of Recession In Real Time Using GDP and GDI." It was written by Jeremy Nalewaik in December 2006. Mr Nalewaik works at the Fed and this paper was part of the staff working papers in the Finance and Economics Discussion series. One always hears about these brilliant people in the background at the Fed. Well this looks like one of these really bright economists that that no one really hears about. Let me check that. After reading Mr. Nalewaik's bio, which says PHD University of Chicago. Well that pretty much says it all. Also here is a link to the paper:

http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/feds/2007/200707/200707pap.pdf

I just skimmed it a little. I found it interesting because from the anecdotal data I have been getting in the NYC tri-state area I have come to the guess / conclusion that the depth of the current recession may be much steeper than most think. My data may well be skewed because the tri-state area around New York City is heavily influenced by what happens in finance. And it is pretty easy to say that currently the world of finance has experienced some massive pain. Regardless it is still my gut opinion that Q1 GDP may be really ugly.

Now back to the paper by Mr Nalewaik. The main idea of the paper is that GDI may be a leading indicator for the strength or weakness of the economy. Now again I have not gone through the entire paper but it does seem intriguing. The next question someone may ask is well when does the GDI stat come out and where is it at the moment? It looks like it is released with the GDP number so we will have to wait. Since we already have Q4 2007 a GDI number must have been released from that. I will try to dig some more on this.