US GDP in Gold

Based on numbers from the St. Louis Fed, our newest addition to the Charts section of the website shows the US GDP in gold grams – billions of them! 

This series is similar in appearance to the long term DJIA, but with less volatility.  This makes sense, as stocks tend to follow in the footsteps of the overall economy.  But the Dow has it's own sense of timing, peaking about 4 years before the GDP in the 60s, and falling much further during the 70s, then rising over 36 times in value from 1980 to 1999, while the GDP rose a little over 9 times from it's low.  Once again, the Dow peaked first, in 1999, while the GDP kept climbing until 2001.

The last 6 years have been devestating, with the GDP falling by 47% from 1,222 Gg in the Spring of 2001 to 647 Gg  2007.