That Sinking Feeling

If you have been following what I have been saying about the performance of the Rhode Island economy over the last year, you know that things here have been deteriorating. Rhode Island has been in a recovery since February of 2010. Throughout 2010, the pace of economic activity here was substantial (relative, of course, to where we had been in "The Great Recession."). But since March of this year, my Current Conditions Index (CCI) has failed to match or exceed its year-earlier value. This, of course, indicates that the pace of economic activity here has slowed. In fact, based on this recent inability to match or exceed year-earlier values and that the CCI averaged its neutral value of 50 over the third quarter of this year, I characterized Rhode Island's economy as being "dead in the water."

Another way to see visualize this is with a graph of the CCI's values by month over the last three years (click to enlarge). I don't think I need to add much discussion to this chart, a picture like this is worth a thousand words, as the old saying goes.

So, at the present time, 2010 appears to be "the good old days." As we contrast last year with what is occurring now, it seems inevitable to get a sinking feeling.