Quote from Cutten:
I disagree. The reason "tallest buildings" are a leading indicator of a downturn is because they are a lagging indicator of credit/speculative bubbles. The motives for building most of them are that the country (or corporation) in question had been swimming in so much money that it thought it a jolly good idea to "celebrate" (i.e. show off) it's new found riches, and the hubris had reached such a stage that they decided to do so by building a tallest building.
In this case of the "Freedom Tower", the relationship breaks down because the motives had nothing whatsoever to do with a prior period of massive economic prosperity climaxing in an orgy of speculation and absurdly overconfident provision of credit. In fact, the tower was proposed only shortly after the first US recession in a decade, and its worst stockmarket crash since the 1970s, if not the Depression. Rather, the motives for building the tower were in reaction to a major terrorist attack. Therefore, the size/downturn correlation is in this case entirely specious. The size of the tower has no predictive value whatsoever for the US economy or stockmarket.
