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.

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.

As I mentioned yesterday, I don’t believe that we’re in the middle of currency wars, but I do see countries taking action to boost their economic and job growth. The side effects include what may, from a certain perspective, look like a currency war.

After writing Friday’s piece on currency wars, it occurred to me that some of the assumptions baked into my argument warranted a closer look. Essentially, instead of a war, I believe we’re seeing an economic readjustment, which is a significantly different way of looking at the situation.

Rereading yesterday’s post, I’m reminded of our tendency to look for things to worry about. To me, fretting about the systemic problems of low energy prices and high savings rates is a stretch, a sign that we’ve run out of real concerns.

Eeyore to the rescue! Although I’ve been saying for the past couple of years that the recovery is real and strengthening, I’ve also made a point to keep an eye out for risks.

This will be a short-ish post, as I find myself battling a cold that’s getting worse. The weather, fortunately, seems to be getting better, so hopefully I will too at some point.

Like my health, the economy took a hit this winter. There’s a reasonable chance we’ll see some sort of “snowdown” in the data; indeed, we already have for many data points. The question is whether this represents a meaningful slowdown or, like last year, is simply the result of terrible winter weather.

To finish up the discussion of the economic context of net neutrality that I started in Monday’s post, let’s take a look at the second half of the issue. Monopoly power, which I discussed in yesterday’s post, is a problem—but maybe a short-lived one. If you take away the monopoly part of it, is charging more for some users really all that bad? Not really.