Dashboard from the materialized period object + the de-blended store. Actuals are deterministic; synthesis (below) is narrated for the current period only.
Headline — where each bloc stands
Regime scatters — connected over time · connected scatter / Gapminder
Per bloc: the path over recent periods; filled dot = this period, arrow from the prior. First is the growth×inflation map with named, shaded quadrants.
Animated regime map — growth × inflation over time · Gapminder motion
Indicators — pick a metric, compare blocs · recession shading + crosshair
One pane; switch the metric, all blocs overlaid on a comparable basis (GDP shown YoY for every bloc). Grey bands = US GDP-contraction quarters. Hover for a readout.
Per-region breakdown — 2026-Q2 vs 2026-Q1, with trend
Change views — table-lens & slope · Datawrapper
A Table-lens — color = change · sparkline = trend · text = dated value
B Slope — prior → now per bloc, one panel per metric
Whole-board snapshot — parallel coordinates · parallel coordinates
Each bloc crosses all metric axes (min–max normalized across blocs for 2026-Q2).
Synthesis
2026-Q2 is, at the label level, a quarter of stasis: every bloc ended the period in the regime it entered — the US still overheating / late-cycle, China on deflation watch, the euro area and Japan both at stall-speed, at target. But beneath an unchanged map the quarter's defining motion is a widening inflation split — the US holding above target while disinflation broadens through Japan and the euro area — the divergence the May monthly flagged with only one week of data in hand, now corroborated by the fuller quarter. Growth is stalled across all four; the action this quarter was in prices and in the long end of curves, not in the cycle's regime.
The period's arc
The quarter ran across three months — only April and May carry hard actuals, June has not yet printed — and across five weekly runs (W14 the quietest at two active blocs, W21 the busiest at three). No bloc switched regime label over those weeks: the verdict ladder records every start-label equal to its end-label. The arc is therefore not a turn but a deepening of positions already held. The US stayed late-cycle with CPI at 3.95% (April, % YoY), policy held at 3.75%, and unemployment flat at 4.3% — the one bloc carrying above-target inflation into mid-year. The May monthly's read, made one week in, was that the US was re-accelerating while the rest of the world cooled; the quarter did not contradict it.
Cross-bloc currents
The cross-bloc story is divergence on two fronts — inflation and the long end.
- Inflation splits. Japan's disinflation is the clearest: core CPI fell to 1.1% from 1.4%, with headline at 1.4%, leaving Japan at target. China sits on the other failure mode — a deflation watch label, manufacturing PMI slipping to 50.3 from 50.4 and barely above the 50 expansion line, unemployment easing to 5.2% from 5.4%. Against both, the US 3.95% print is the lone above-target reading.
- The long end backed up. The quarter's sharpest move was in US rates: the 10-year rose from 4.4% to 4.57% while the 2s10s slope flattened from 0.52 to 0.43. Japan's yield-spike mechanism fired in every one of the quarter's five weeks, its 10-year at 2.52% — the global back-up in long rates, not a domestic-cycle event, was the quarter's most persistent transmission. The dollar held broadly firm (DXY near 99.3, EURUSD near 1.16).
What to watch
- Whether the US-versus-rest inflation divergence persists or converges as June and the back half print — the single thread tying the quarter together.
- US core PCE, the Fed's actual reaction variable: it adjudicates whether the above-target headline is supply (reverts) or demand (sticks), and with policy held at 3.75% it is the input most likely to move the regime label.
- China's deflation watch: an LPR cut from 3.0% would fire the credit-impulse channel; absent one, the deflation-risk read hardens.
- The long end: if the US 10-year extends beyond its quarter-end 4.57% and Japan's yield spike keeps firing, the rates back-up — not growth — stays the dominant cross-bloc force into the next quarter.