Economic growth is subject to gradation. There is almost no purpose in making such a declaration, for anyone with common sense knows intuitively that there is a difference between robust growth and just positive numbers. Yet, the biggest mistake economists and policymakers made in 2014 was to forget that differences exist between even statistics all residing on the plus side.

It was misconception sometimes by design, an almost honest error created by circumstances. The economy had been so bad for so long, six years going on seven by 2014, that it was merely assumed any upturn would be the upturn. So even when growth underwhelmed that year, those calling it “robust” and “strong” were projecting those words onto what they really believed was an intermediate stage before those terms would really apply.

New orders for durable goods, for example, were estimated to have increased by almost double digits in a few months during the summer of 2014. According to the benchmark estimates of the time, average growth in orders was approaching 7% or better. That level of expansion isn’t actually robust, but it wasn’t ever expected that growth would stop accelerating. By the following year, 2015, given the trajectory of the unemployment rate, there was, for economists, every reason to believe 7% was just the next stop on the road to a 10% average, then 15% (as 2006) or maybe even close to 20% (as 2010).

It wasn’t ever a realistic assumption, though, merely the FOMC and Janet Yellen projecting their biases onto an economy that didn’t really exist. You could already see even by the middle of 2014 that growth had peaked, the second derivative of acceleration down to zero or close to it. There was long before then a clear lack of momentum evident just how long it took to get even to 7% (it should have happened by the end of 2013). Extrapolations are always dangerous especially when they always go in a straight line, taking no account of the slope.