Buckle up. That is a decent message to read into this week’s tea leaves. The road ahead may not be the yellow brick road some experts predicted. Well, maybe the brick road minus a number of bricks might be a better description.

Buckle up. The Chinese economy cools. A natural occurrence for one that has boiled for years.

You may think this is good for us. Now those Chinese won’t compete so fiercely for our jobs. They may not. Then again, in a slower economy over there, they may grow more fierce. Remember too, the Chinese buy a lot of stuff from us. Wish them to suffer and you wish your customers woe.

Buckle up. The government recalculated the growth of our own economy. Downward. Toward anemic.

And there is likely more bad news to come. The balance of trade figures came out Wednesday. Lousy figures. They will cause the economists to revisit the GDP figures they already lowered. To lower them further.

Meanwhile the administration heaps flowers round the latest job figures. Look at these bright spots, they urge us. You can build a mountain of blossoms around a casket. Sooner or later your eyes find their way to it. The latest job figures belong in one.

The Fed sees the same dreary picture. This week it hung the “Buckle Up” sign on its wall. 

It has precious few tools left in its kit to stimulate the economy. It will pull them out. Like the guy who has only a hammer to fix a clock, it will push more cheap money into the system. And hope entrepreneurs and home buyers and credit card users will leap for joy. And will seize the cheap money and use it to stir up things.

Alas, the Fed knows there are already trillions of dollars sitting on the sidelines. Pushing more is like bringing the plate of bread after dinner.

Buckle up. This week’s figures on productivity of our workers were not good. This usually bodes poorly for the future.