Isn't It Interesting That the Feds are Spending Again, and the Economy is Slowing Down?

The Treasury released its monthly budget figures today.

Overall, the monthly budget deficit came in at $64.4 billion, about $2 billion more than analysts expected.

Here's a look at the 12 month moving sum in Feds spending.

The first thing that stands out is that the Feds are back spending again, after a brief period of prudent budgeting from 2009 to the latter half of 2014.  The 12-month moving sum of total expenditures is about $3.7 trillion, about $200 billion above where the figure was at this time last year.

The spending increase started around fall 2014.

How has the economy performed over this period?  Is the economy performing better because of Federal spending?

An answer to these two questions follows.