Economics is messy, rarely offering up a clear view of the economy. The chart below shows that Americans have taken on more revolving debt (credit cards basically) since March than they did the previous three years combined.

As Alhambra’s Joe Calhoun notes, this could be a positive or a negative and we won’t know until some time in the future.

That’s what happened in 2000 and 2007 but pointing that out these days gets you labeled a perma-bear. That might be a clue as to how one ought to interpret the data… but maybe not.

The Fed has many problems with its attempt to convince the world that it has itself fulfilled its recovery mission. That self-reflected “mandate” is meant to include a masterful revisit to prior American infatuation with debt and credit. There was no more visible and visceral demonstration of those terms than the middle 2000’s, and it is the intent of monetary policy to get Americans back there. However, as Jeffrey Snider explains, in 2015, however, in the few areas where that has been found it does not identify monetary success but rather demonstrates even more how the theory never came close.

Revolving credit has just surged this year, particularly starting in March. The numbers are staggering, as revolving credit balances, estimated and reported by the Federal Reserve itself, have jumped by more than $39 billion in the seven months ending with the update for September. By comparison, from the start of 2012 until February 2015, revolving credit balances expanded by about $44 billion; in just seven months this year consumers have indebted themselves by almost as much as they had in the more than three years before March.