Economic Indicators

News reports flood us daily with information on the overall state of the economy.  From currency fluctuations, jobs reports, and stock market speculations, making sense of it all is an ambitious goal.  But the one economic indicator that I truly understand is at the neighborhood level: the market value of one pound of honey is two dozen eggs.  A colleague of my wife's keeps bees.  We have chickens.  With extremely low volatility, trading eggs for honey benefits both families.  On one hand I can imagine how much simpler life may have been when all "purchases" were made in this manner.  The value of an egg is not going to plummet, and if it does, I can still eat an egg.  On the other hand, however, how may eggs will it take to pay for those needed home repairs...