As the financial media obsess over data like this morning’s payroll numbers, it’s interesting to observe trends in the direction and degree of “surprises” about the data.
Here is the Citigroup Economic Surprise Index for the US:
Mish offers some graphical evidence that the recovery is simply not.
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See his whole post here, as a well as some interesting comments on trends in concert ticket sales.
Here’s one more chart I pulled from Fred:
Civilian Employment – Population Ratio
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If these were stock charts, I’d say that they had broken their positive trends, but are oversold. There certainly is no evidence of a recovery in the economy. GDP is just a BS number that includes government spending, and the way the government measures unemployment is a joke.
