Looks fishy to me

I have to stop messing with The Components of Household Debt for a while. Every time I try to get into it, I get stuck. It's to the point where I get a headache just thinking about it.

It's not that complicated, I know. It's a mental block. I'll come back to it again later. Time for some fun.

It's now called the noncyclical rate of unemployment. So they took the cycles out:

Detail View, from ALFRED: Blue shows the current data. Red, before the change

They changed the series title from "natural" to "noncyclical" rate of unemployment. They must have changed the theory, too, or (as they might say) "refined" it. There can't be cycles in the natural rate! That's not natural!

I dunno what they were thinking. But clearly we are supposed to think that the cycles are separate from the underlying trend. Yeah right -- because the trend exists on its own, independent of and apart from the data. Yeah, right. You know they're too deep in the muck of their own theory when.

You wouldn't know by the Detail View above, that the name has been changed. But you can click the graph to bring up the Full View image, which here includes the text above the graph and shows the "Noncyclical" series title, bold as can be. Or click the link in the caption below the graph to open the ALFRED page.

At FRED, the series title has already been changed. I must have caught them in the act!

From the Notes at ALFRED:

The CBO is doing econ theory now? That's a scary thought. It you've got that much control over policy you ought to leave theory to others and avoid conflict of interest.

Me? There's nothing in it for me except to understand the economy. I don't get paid for this.