We are bombarded with economic numbers: unemployment, retail sales, inflation, GDP but how can we put these economic numbers into perspective so as to understand underlying trends and policymaking? This book explains the overall logic of the data: how each piece of the puzzle contributes to our understanding of the overall economy, this is how the Fed looks at the numbers. Other books go through the economic numbers, but in a "bottom-up" fashion: describing a series in some detail and adding something about how financial markets may respond to it. This book has considerable discussion of the series but views them as part of the overall mosaic, not items of fundamental interest in themselves.