Looking At the Recovery - The Gormogons

We’ve seen a number of charts and graphs that describe the recovery – how slow it is growing, its impacts, etc. I’m a big fan of interesting visualizations of data (insert gratuitous plug for Edward Tufte’s books and seminars here – which I have read & attended and think he’s on point but the seminars lack a bit of punch) so I was impressed when I saw the graph below from the Atlanta Fed:

(click to enlarge)

It is interesting to read the entire description on this blog. The chart snapshots the recovery progress between what they defined as the bottom of the recession (4Q2007) to the measurement levels pre-recession (4Q2007). Let me simplify it for our readers who don’t click through. The outer red circle is the 100% mark for each measurement and the inner yellow circle marks zero percent for these indicators and measurements. Each of the irregular “stars” represent the status of all the measurements annually (2010, 2011, and 2012) in the fourth quarter. You can roughly segregate the chart into quarters. The upper right quarter are employer behavior indicators. The lower right quarter shows employer confidence indicators. The lower left quarter is the labor utilization metrics and the upper left quarter holds the market’s leading indicators. If one were to look just at the leading indicators, it seems like our future is shaping up – all three metrics are recently at or above 60% “recovered” back to the baseline level. The remaining metric categories haven’t even recovered halfway back to the baseline level. Even after all the summers of recovery, quantitative easing, and stimuli efforts. There are caveats to reading this chart – several of the indicators won’t just recover incrementally from 0 to 100%. But it doesn’t paint a pretty picture. I truly hope the Atlanta Fed will continue to update this chart as we go forward.

GorT

GorT is an eight-foot-tall robot from the 51ˢᵗ Century who routinely time-travels to steal expensive technology from the future and return it to the past for retroinvention. The profits from this pay all the Gormogons’ bills, including subsidizing this website. Some of the products he has introduced from the future include oven mitts, the Guinness widget, Oxy-Clean, and Dr. Pepper. Due to his immense cybernetic brain, GorT is able to produce a post in 0.023 seconds and research it in even less time. Only ’Puter spends less time on research. GorT speaks entirely in zeros and ones, but occasionally throws in a ڭ to annoy the Volgi. He is a massive proponent of science, technology, and energy development, and enjoys nothing more than taking the Czar’s more interesting scientific theories, going into the past, publishing them as his own, and then returning to take credit for them. He is the only Gormogon who is capable of doing math. Possessed of incredible strength, he understands the awesome responsibility that follows and only uses it to hurt people.