Show the whole picture

WSJ blog posting: The Crisis Recedes. So Does the Economy
In the article, David Gaffen cites figures from the Federal Reserve’s Empire Manufacturing Index, claiming it fell to a “record low”, but the data presented only shows 12 months of history.
Here is the entire history of the General Business Conditions index back to 2001 when they [...]

Commercial Paper statistics

Excellent program on This American Life last week about the credit crisis: Another Frightening Show About the Economy.
The program includes a discussion of the importance of the commercial paper market in the routine operation of the U.S. economy.
The Federal Reserve collects weekly and monthly figures on the commercial paper market:

Commercial Paper statistics

See the overnight commercial [...]

Debt in the U.S.

The Federal Reserve collects a lot of data related to consumer and institutional debt. I’ve collected a bunch of these figures on this topic page.
Some interesting data series:

Residential mortgage delinquency rate

Nonborrowed reserves of depository institutions (I don’t know what this means, but it sure looks bad.)

New employment data

Latest employment figures are out from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The corresponding Numbrary tables have been updated.
At 6.1%, we’re almost at the peak unemployment rate from the last cycle.

Manufacturing Orders

The New York Times reports on the latest government figures on manufacturing orders, one of the main economic indicators that receives heavy press coverage every month.
Orders “plunged by the largest amount in nearly two years”, “a much worse performance than…economists had expected”.
Here’s the full historic trend bad to 1992, and the monthly percentage changes. [...]

Key Economic Indicators

Here’s a topic page with a whole range of indicators on the US economy:

http://numbrary.com/topics/economy