Secret Economic Indicators The Fed Uses To Set Interest Rates

Donuts: Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash; $100: Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=33993; collage by author.

Forget Gross Domestic Product, it’s really your greed, gluttony, and envy that move the economy.

• Foresight Capacity: The number of pairs of clean underwear in your underwear drawer divided by the number of days remaining in the week.
• Let’s-Be-Real Gas Price Index: The cost of a gallon of gas plus the cost of the Red Bull, Starbursts, and Funions that you purchase every time you fill up—even though they always give you, well, the wrong kind of gas.
• Raw Stress Ratio: How long it takes you to fall asleep (unmedicated versus medicated).
• Debt Pulse: Your average heart rate over a five-minute period immediately after you look at your credit card bill.
• Animal Spirits Index: The number of times you step on a used condom on your walk to work in the morning.
• Rent Stickiness: The number of days you will tolerate your roommate picking his nose and wiping it on the futon you bought and then saying “What?” when he sees you watching before you start searching for your own place.
• Instruction Drag: Total cost of teachers’ salaries required to instruct Americans in the higher math necessary because of inflation.
• Green-Eyed Ratio: Work hours. lost because you were on social media staring at people who got worse grades than you in school who now have yachts.
• People’s Sexiest Man Alive: It’s a predictor of, like, leisure spending. Really. It’s not just an excuse to look up who it is. (It’s Chris Evans!)
• Desperation Wages: Hourly wage you would have to be paid to take a job picking the crumbs out of the folds in Tucker Carlson’s trousers at mealtimes (lunch and dinner only).
• Replacement Probability: Projected likelihood that rats will displace us as the dominant species within the next six months. Currently stands at 72%.
• Buzzword Endurance: How many times you can hear the word “Bitcoin” repeated without tearing off your own ears.
• Gratification Delay Factor: Days remaining until the release of the next movie starring the Rock.
• Grateful Peon Ratio: Number of newspaper headlines in the last week referencing how influential and wise the Fed is and how much we all need them to save us.
• Empty Stomach Overhang: Whether Fed Chair Jerome Powell found the Cheez Whiz in his pantry this morning.

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