Where we stand

The FRED Blog has a post dated 11 January which shows this graph:

The Green Line (quarterly data) ends at Q3 2017. The others appear to show Q4 preliminary

It's a mess. The lines are all over the place. However, since the start of 2017, the lines converge toward a 3% growth rate, then move upward together. It's a little early to draw conclusions of vigor from this graph, sure. But remember, in March it will be two years that I have been predicting vigor to begin in 2018.

"We are at the bottom now, ready to go up", I said in March of 2016. "The first quarter of 2016, where we are right now [is the bottom]".

The next month I said: "I predict a boom of 'golden age' vigor, beginning in 2016 and lasting eight to ten years. It has already begun. In two years everyone will be predicting it."

And in August of that year I wrote: "what I'm looking at amounts to vigor starting about a year into the first term of the next U.S. President."

Why? Because Debt-per-Dollar -- private debt, per dollar of M1 money -- was at bottom in 2016 Q1 and ready to rise. Debt-per-Dollar is an indicator of financial cost for the economy as a whole.

And because, with Debt Service reaching a low, financial cost was low, creating favorable conditions for wages and profit in the non-financial sector.

I don't bring this up to brag that my prediction is right. (I don't even know yet if my prediction is right.) I bring it up because if we do soon experience the economic vigor that I expect, it means the data I'm looking at may be more important than most people realize.

Or maybe it was just dumb luck on my part, and Donald Trump deserves all the credit for improving the economy.

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See also Where we stand dated 26 August 2017. And my Vigor Page.

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Edward Harrison, 15 Jan 2018:

For the first time in several years, we are seeing economic growth everywhere in the global economy. No one is talking about recession. It’s just the opposite; people are raising economic forecasts and worried about overheating.

"In two years," I said two years ago, "everyone will be predicting it."