INDUSTRIAL production rose 0.4% in September, a better-than-expected figure after a weak August report. That followed a 1.1% rise in retail sales in September that was announced yesterday; a rise in consumer confidence; the fastest rate of car sales since 2008; and the strongest level of existing home sales since 2010.

So just how big is this conspiracy to fiddle the numbers that Jack Welch referred to when the non-farm payrolls came out? It must involve all the nation's realtors, car salesmen, most consumers etc etc. In his splendid book, Voodoo Histories: How Conspiracy Theory Has Shaped Modern History, journalist David Aaronovitch neatly describes such theories as “the unnecessary assumption of conspiracy when other explanations are more probable.”

The most likely explanation is that the US economy is doing OK, but not brilliantly. When the economy is chugging along, there will be months when the data are disappointing, and months when they are more positive. Only when the economy is in boom or bust will all the data point consistently in one direction.

As Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff have pointed out many times (and do so in a Bloomberg piece today), recoveries from financial crises have traditionally been sluggish. they write that


In short, the US economy is performing in line with, or just better than, average given the excesses of the debt cycle that peaked in 2007.