US recession data shows it's a very short road to capital controls

My team and I were recently studying US manufacturing indices, something that has traditionally been a strong indicator of recession... You'd think that based on this "everything is awesome" narrative that all the numbers would be growing. And yet, much of the data show that manufacturing is shrinking. Or to be even more clear, that the US is in a manufacturing recession.

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In Texas, for example, just 4% of businesses report that they are growing. 38% are shrinking. The Philadelphia Fed's Manufacturing Index has been in recession since September of last year. The San Francisco Fed's Total Factor Productivity is also reporting negative growth.

The New York Fed's Empire State Manufacturing Index was at minus 16.6 for February. In fact, the last time the index was below -15 was in October 2008, ten months into the Great Recession.

The numbers are all pretty clear: there's an obvious industrial and manufacturing downturn.