Everyone knows it’s coming, but when? Everyone recognizes that at some point it’s essential, but the associated benefits and risks are debatable.
One thing we can be reasonable sure of, as we discussed on Monday, is that central bankers are prone to misjudge the future. Indeed, there’s plenty of that to go around. In any case, it comes with the territory when wielding supernatural decisions over money with the conventional processing power of wetware.

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There are no major economic reports scheduled today and so a day of the data vacuum awaits. That offers an opportunity to review the latest numbers in the dismal science in search of clues about where we’ve been in recent history and where we might be going.
First up is the Philly Fed’s Aruoba-Diebold-Scotti business conditions index. Its steady climb for much of this year through late-August suggested that the economy was rebounding, albeit off of severely low levels of commercial activity. More recently, the index slumped, although the latest albeit incomplete data hints at the possibility of an uptick in the weeks (months?) ahead, as the chart below shows.

Source: Philadelphia Federal Reserve
That mildly positive view jibes with the overall outlook of 41 economic forecasters surveyed by the Philly Fed. The economy will expand in each of the next five quarters, this survey advises. For the current quarter, the economists surveyed predicted that real growth in GDP will rise 2.7% in Q4. If so, that’s down from the 3.5% rise reported in the initial estimate of GDP for Q3. All of which implies a slowing in the rebound but well short of sinking.

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