These are pretty graphs, but without a discussion of how the data was collected and what it means, i find it somewhat difficult to determine if the blog author'

These are pretty graphs, but without a discussion of how the data was collected and what it means, i find it somewhat difficult to determine if the blog author's analysis is correct. Even hitting the original homepage for the data isn't very helpful (at a cursory glance): http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/INDPRO http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/INDPRO What counts as being manufactured in America? Does US assembly of parts made in other locales count? Because if it were to be the case that automated assembly of things made in China count, then productivity/efficiency could be seen as increasing, even though the majority of a product was created and built elsewhere. Anybody know?