State index suggests the R Word may be looming
New York’s conservative Empire Center think tank is urging fiscal caution as Albany gears up for its annual budget negotiations amid signs that the current economic expansion has run its course. Most troubling is the Labor Department’s Index of Coincident Economic Indicators, which weighs such key economic indicators as private sector employment, the unemployment rate, average weekly hours of manufacturing workers and sales tax collections. The index dropped at a 2.6 percent annual rate in…