The Starbucks Index

» The desire of food is limited in every man by the narrow capacity of the human stomach; but the desire of the conveniences and ornaments of building, dress, equipage and household furniture seems to have no limit or certain boundary. « Adam Smith, philosopher (1723-1790)

You can study common economic indicators like the GDP, CPI, inflation, deflation, housing markets, unemployment or bull and bear markets to determine if our economy is heading in the right direction, but I prefer to take a different tack. Perhaps you could call it the “Main Street” approach as opposed to the “Wall Street” approach to analyzing the hopeful economic rebound.