Two weeks ago, Sari and I took a vacation - an extended road trip down the East Coast as far as Charleston and then inland back to New York through the Appalachians. On a long driving stretch on the way back, we stopped at a Jersey Mike’s just off the highway for some much needed nourishment. As we were waiting to pay, a talkative man, in the height of good humor, was ordering behind us. I don’t know if he knew anyone working at the store, but he acted as if he did. He said he’d just got a job after five months searching and he was going to celebrate - by buying two big subs - one for that evening and another to put in the fridge for the next night.

The Financial Accounts of the United States is a quarterly Federal Reserve publication containing a great many large numbers but very little commentary, presumably because the authors feel the numbers speak for themselves. And the numbers do speak rather loudly.

In 19th century English novels, so-called “quarter days” often provided a chronological backdrop to the plot. A relic of medieval times, the quarter days were Lady Day (March 25th), Midsummer Day (June 24th), Michaelmas (September 29th) and Christmas Day (December 25th). These were the dates upon which rents were paid, leases expired and employment contracts took effect. Quarter days were often when the landlords of Austen expected their income, the impoverished families of Dickens had to cough up their rents and the farmworkers of Hardy would move on to their next place of employment. In short, they were days of accounting and reckoning.