There will certainly be a recession this year. Unless there won’t. That is the consensus view of economists. The bad news is that even the optimists are having difficulty explaining away the reams of incoming data, and that even the cheeriest of the bunch are predicting a no-to-low-growth outlook for the rest of this year.

Earlier this week the Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen, speaking for the bank’s monetary policy committee, gave some not-very subtle hints that the policymakers view of things is gloomier than it was in mid-December when Yellen announced the committee’s “confidence that the economy will continue to strengthen.” Now, that confidence, which stirred the Fed to raise interest rates, has been shaken by events. Its economists, who traditionally produce forecasts that prove overly optimistic, seem not to know whether what is ailing the economy will prove temporary or a harbinger of a long, hot summer. Here’s the sort of data that has them uncertain of their next move, if a next move there is to be.