Monday, September 22, 2014

Clawing Our Way Back to Mediocre (Musical Tribute)

The following chart shows the 4 year moving average of the Chicago Fed National Activity Index.


Click to enlarge.

A zero value for the index indicates that the national economy is expanding at its historical trend rate of growth; negative values indicate below-average growth; and positive values indicate above-average growth.

Let's zoom in.


Click to enlarge.

Can we work our way back to 0.0? So close and yet so far!

Why do I have this uneasy feeling that the next leg will be down? Put another way, our upward momentum seems to have tapered. Fed pun intended.



Source Data:
St. Louis Fed: Chicago Fed National Activity Index

5 comments:

Stagflationary Mark said...

The stars aligned for this post.

1. It's raining so I can't catch up on the yard work.

2. I'm up early and I got relatively good sleep! I'm normally not a morning person but I seem to be lately.

3. I was browsing the FRED database and these charts screamed, "The future is so bright I gotta wear..." Okay, maybe not. But you get the idea, lol. Sigh.

4. Shingles pain continues to fall thank goodness. It is probably down to using just 10% of my brain to dwell on it now (which is a vast improvement). Nerve pain. Gotta (not) love it.

5. My first colonoscopy is "behind" me (turned 50 this year) and for the most part those fears are too. I had a few polyps removed but there was no cancer. The downside is that since they did find polyps, I get to repeat the process in 3 years. Yay, me. Oh, well. The process was not nearly as bad as I thought it would be though. Whew! :)

Anonymous said...

Keep getting up early and keep the charts coming! Glad to hear you're feeling better.

Fred

Stagflationary Mark said...

Fred,

You helped properly motivate me to post some more today!

Sustainable Gains said...

Welcome back!

Stagflationary Mark said...

Sustainable Gains,

Thanks! Don't expect me to keep up the pace though. I'm not sure it's sustainable. ;)