The managing director of the Economic Cycle Research Institute — whose leading indicators have a very solid track record of predicting economic trends — says we’re in the early stages of a “V”-shaped recovery that will be “virtually unstoppable” through the first half of 2010.

“We are in the early stages of the recovery and it looks to be a lot stronger” than the consensus, Lakshman Achuthan told Yahoo! TechTicker. The ECRI’s index of Weekly Economic Indicators recently hit a new record high, and Achuthan says jobs growth and consumption will start to recover by early 2010, at the latest.