The OECD has a nifty toy, the Business Cycle Clock, where you can construct animations of business cycles for different countries. The example below shows USA Industrial Production, Business Confidence, Consumer Confidence, and a Composite Leading Indicator – the arrow heads show March 09 and the tails the previous periods. The four quadrants show downturn/slowdown/expansion/recovery. You can even throw up two different countries to compare performance. I wish there was a way to export the animations.