Stephen Dubner's unusual economic indicator:
To me, one of the best indicators of economic mood is simply what people are talking about, especially what they’re willing to talk about in public — as in, say, what people are willing to put on the cover of a magazine. Check out the cover lines of this week’s Economist and Time. They read, respectively:
Print Me a Stradivarius: The manufacturing technology that will change the world*
2045: The year man becomes immortal
When people are willing en masse to start talking about the future in non-apocalyptic terms, I take that as a good sign that the panic of the near-term past has officially begun to subside.
The Dish 