All we hear about is how “hot” our economy is and how it’s OK that it is “running hot“. Ummm, are their screens upside-down? Because I’m not the brightest bulb in the hardware store, but to me this doesn’t conjure up the word “hot” to me but more like ‘hospice“.
I think a couple of charts from David Stockman, whom I read daily, tell the story well. First is the index of the aggregate number of hours worked. The big success story here is that the entire nation is ALMOST working the same number of hours before Covid hit. So not so much “hot” as “almost back to where we were”.
![](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=LG7l)
And in case anyone actually buys Powell’s pledge to provide “price stability“, I hereby present to you the value of the US dollar in purchasing terms since he started his important work at the Fed.
![](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=Mzf9)
If this is hot, I’d hate to see cold.