Is the economy slowing down?

There's a growing suspicion that the economy has begun to slow down since the end of 2010, perhaps as a result of rising oil prices, turbulence in the Middle East, renewed stresses in European financial markets, and budget cutting at the state, local and federal levels. I don't want to dismiss that possibility - all of those factors could very well have the effect of slowing the economy down - but my favorite economic indicator tells a different story. The Baa-Aaa credit spread, a measure of the risk-taking proclivity of corporate borrowers, has fallen since January and remains at quite low levels. We are not seeing the kind of upward bump that we saw last summer when the economy really did slow down and everyone was worried about a "double dip." So I shall remain cautiously optimistic for now.