Kyle Rizdahl

Well, here's where we are.

A check on the nuts and bolts of this economy.

Oil and gas because the news.

And bicycles in Los Angeles.

From American Public Media, this is Marketplace.

In Los Angeles, I'm Kyle Rizdahl.

It is Tuesday today, the 26th of May.

Good as it always is to have you along, everybody.

The big economic data of the week comes Thursday.

The Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index, courtesy of the Commerce Department.

The Federal Reserve's preferred measure of inflation, as you know, unless and until Chair Walsh decides otherwise.

The 12 regional Federal Reserve banks put out reports, too, you know, which today comes from the Chicago Fed with its National Activity Index.

National activity, it seems, is mixed.

Manufacturing looks not bad.

Personal consumption, though, not great.

Marketplace's Justin Ho gets us going with what the heck the Chicago Fed's National Activity Index is and how the heck to read it.

The Chicago Fed's National Activity Index sums up a bunch of indicators covering different slices of the economy, including manufacturing activity, which picked up in April.

Nancy Vandenhouten is lead economist at Oxford Economics.

She says there are a number of factors that are boosting manufacturing right now.

One of them is last year's big tax and spending law.