I wrote yesterday about the economy and how I believe that, while we are seeing some weak data, we are likely experiencing a temporary “snowdown” (much as we saw the past two winters) rather than a true slowdown. Still, we have to ask ourselves, Is the market pullback similarly temporary, or is it the first stage of a deeper correction?

There has been a lot of talk in the financial media about an economic slowdown, with a sense—explicit in some cases—that a recession is a real possibility. Some of that talk, I will admit, has come from me. Given some of the recent bad reports, particularly the jobs report, I do feel that there is a possibility that the trend has changed. After giving it a lot of thought, though, I do not think this is what’s actually happening.

There’s an undeniable focus on the U.S. in my research and writing. In part, of course, this is sheer parochialism—you write what you know and what your readers seem to be most interested in. But my focus is also driven by a conviction that the U.S. is still the most influential economic and political actor in the world. I have stood by this belief for the past couple of decades and see no reason to change now.

The reason I bring this up is that we are starting to see the beginnings of a new cycle.

When markets drop, I always get calls from advisors and the media asking what the heck is going on. Volatility (at least when combined with a market decline) is often considered evidence that it’s time to worry—that something is broken. It makes sense; after all, if you’re losing money on your investments, something isn’t right. But, somehow, I don’t see the same reaction when there’s a market melt-up. No one called me yesterday to ask what was going on, anyway.

Maybe they should have.

The great financial crisis of 2008 was, of course, ultimately a financial crisis, but the proximate cause was housing. As of the mid-2000s, you may remember, the general consensus was that housing prices couldn’t go down nationally because, well, it had never happened before. 

I got an e-mail from a reader the other day that really bothered me. A former investigative journalist worried about where the world was heading, she sent me a list of concerns, backed up with citations from more or less reputable sources.

The concerns themselves were nothing unusual—the U.S. debt and deficit, America’s position in the world, the status of the dollar. What struck me was the writer’s absolute conviction that the entire financial/economic system is broken.

In my post on Friday, I noted that employment is, in many ways, approaching boom times. Although it’s not there yet—the proportion of part-time jobs and the level of high-paying jobs continue to be concerns—employment is moving in the right direction and doing so at an increasing rate.

The missing piece here has been wage inflation. If things are so good, why aren’t we all making more money?

For some reason, when things are good—and they are—I start thinking about the next set of problems. Call it the Eeyore mindset, or just a deep need to try and see around the corner. This gets me into trouble sometimes, as I usually identify five out of every three problems that show up. But to the extent that it lets me think through issues before they become urgent, it’s usually a helpful tendency.

Based on the retail sales data that came out yesterday, it’s time to take a serious look at the prospect that U.S. economic growth is slowing down.

I’m not suggesting that we’re moving back into a recession—just that growth is quite possibly slowing below expectations, and an acceleration may not be coming any time soon. We need to consider why that might be.

Every year or so, I do a postmortem of my analyses and predictions in order to figure out where I was wrong, and how to avoid making those mistakes in the future—a useful, albeit uncomfortable, exercise. One of the biggest mistakes I’ve made in the past decade has been to underestimate the power of governments to influence markets.