In 2014, the news has been grim — from ISIS to Ferguson to Ebola. But the US economy has been one relative bright spot. Each year around the holidays, Neil Irwin sits down and writes about economic trends to be thankful for and this year he says it was a whole lot easier. Irwin is senior economic correspondent at the New York Times' data project "The Upshot" and author of The Alchemists: Three Central Bankers and a World on Fire.