I read a transcript this week of a talk given by legendary investor Stan Druckenmiller, which has a tremendous amount of good stuff in it. (You can find it here.)

I was particularly struck by Druckenmiller’s comment, on page 31, that the current economic and market situation feels bad, much as it did for him in 2004. When you hear this kind of statement from someone with his record, it’s worth considering what might happen if he’s right.

Lately, I've been reading that the housing market, having largely recovered from the financial crisis, is now set to stay dormant. Much of this argument seems to be based on the last couple of months, when housing has indeed been hibernating.

But I suspect we haven’t seen the end of the housing boom.

After yesterday’s discussion of the Greek crisis, I thought we should take a look at the other major international risk: China. I haven’t written a lot about China recently, as there hasn’t been much news, but some recent developments warrant an update.

Not that long ago, the U.S. was facing a fiscal cliff, with the government at risk of running out of money and the world expected to end shortly thereafter. It was a big deal at the time—mitigated by the fact that the only real problem was the inability of the U.S. Congress to agree.

Whenever the market drops, I get calls asking me to explain why. There’s no short answer, of course, but today is an interesting time to look at short-term market behavior and try to understand what makes it tick.

Yesterday’s post on jobs made some interesting points about the relative performance of the economy today and in previous decades, highlighting both strengths and weaknesses of the current recovery.

A look at financial figures over the same time periods offers a different but equally interesting set of observations.

Given some of the comparisons I’ve made lately between the 1990s, 2000s, and today, I thought it would be enlightening to look at various data points from different time periods to see how they stack up. After starting to compile the information, though, I realized that there are a lot of interesting comparisons to be drawn, enough to make this a series.

The question about the economy lately has been whether or not we’re looking at a sustained slowdown.

A decline in expected corporate earnings has often heralded recessions, and with disappointing retail sales and employment numbers, many believe that the U.S. is looking at a significant slowdown at best, another recession at worst.

Reading the papers this morning, I realized we’d hit a milestone: there were no articles about the economy on the front pages of either the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal.

I can’t remember the last time that happened since the financial crisis. Nothing about weak numbers, or expected doom, or anything on the economy at all. We’re back to politics, foreign affairs, the Masters, and a business deal or two.

As I mentioned yesterday, it’s worth comparing the current recovery with the past two, to get some sense of perspective, and that extends well beyond comparing the employment numbers.

In fact, by looking at the fundamental sources of growth in each era, we can get a much better idea of how healthy—or not—the current recovery is.