Key Business Cycle Indicators, August 15th

Figure 1: Nonfarm payroll employment (blue), industrial production (red), personal income excluding transfers in Ch.2012$ (green), manufacturing and trade sales in Ch.2012$ (black), and monthly GDP in Ch.2012$ (pink bold), all log normalized to 2019M01=0.  Source: BLS, Federal Reserve, BEA, via FRED, Macroeconomic Advisers (7/25 release), and author’s calculations.

7 thoughts on “Key Business Cycle Indicators, August 15th

  1. Moses Herzog

    It is said by pretty reliable sources that the ECB is not expected to match the Fed on easing policy (i.e. ECB will not lower rates at the next specified juncture to change rates), I’m assuming this will be good for the Euro, at least short term (maybe this “expectation” has already been accounted for in market prices??). Some chart I was looking at seems to imply the Euro rise has more room to go (unless it made a huge move today, I did not watch Thursday’s markets closely).

    You know who/what the “lag” in ECB rates behind the move in US Fed Res rates reminds me of??? Wait for it…… Wait for it…….. Our good gentleman of old school courtesy and manners…… Professor Ashoka Mody.

  2. Moses Herzog

    I’m glad they discuss sample sizes in this newspaper article, as I know Barkley Junior seems slightly confused over the importance of sample sizes, as when Barkley got over-the-top giddy and started dancing around the Blue Ridge Mountains a few weeks ago when he found a poll that showed Kamala Harris leading Joe Biden by 1%. That 1% equated to 6 potential voters who had been surveyed. Word has it, it was a very exciting moment in Barkley’s scholarly findings.
    https://youtu.be/yQJjbJQdymA?t=154

    “ ‘If, hypothetically, the hyoid bone is broken, that would generally raise questions about strangulation, but it is not definitive and does not exclude suicidal hanging,’ he said.

    A handful of studies conducted over the past decade have produced conflicting results about the likelihood of a hyoid break in a suicide. In a study of 20 suicidal hangings in Thailand, published in 2010, one-fourth of the men who hanged themselves had broken hyoids. In a larger study of suicidal hangings of young adults and middle-aged people in India, conducted from 2010 to 2013, hyoid damage was found in just 16 of 264 cases, or 6 percent. The study addressed the discrepancies in academic reviews, saying wide variations in findings of hyoid breaks are ‘possibly due to factors like age of the victim, weight of the victim, type of suspension and height of suspension.’

    Hyoid fractures have previously sparked controversy in jailhouse and other contentious deaths.”

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/autopsy-finds-broken-bones-in-jeffrey-epsteins-neck-deepening-questions-around-his-death/2019/08/14/d09ac934-bdd9-11e9-b873-63ace636af08_story.html?noredirect=on

    Not sure where most of the polls have Kamala Harris right now, here in mid-August— I especially would want to know those polls with a larger sample size than 600. I’m hoping Barkley Junior will update us on Kamala’s progress farther down in this thread.

    1. Barkley Rosser

      Moses,

      There you go again, reminding people yet again of how you owe me an apology for claiming that I was lying about the existence of that poll. I have several times since then noted that Harris has declined in the polls, which clearly happened after her weak performance in the second Dem debate. Why do you keep obsessing over this point that shows what an unethical person you are?

      Let me note that when you requested of Menzie that he weigh in on your nonsense about population genetics he instead requested of you that you “hew” more to to being “on-topic.” Here are three matters that have never been topics introduced by him or Jim H. that you have repeatedly brought up and continue to do so.

      1) This minor poll in Iowa that you claimed did not exist and refuse to apologize for lying about.
      2) The intelligence level of Nancy Pelosi
      3) A bizarre claim that a distribution over a genome implies that the same distribution holds over a population.

      Not only are all three of these always off-topic, not a single person here has ever provided one remote shred of support for your rantings on these topics. You are insulting Menzie by your continuing obsession with them, and just make yourself look like an unethical idiot when you bring them up.

  3. AS

    Professor Chinn,
    Looking at a chart on Macrotrends’ website https://www.macrotrends.net/1369/crude-oil-price-history-chart, it looks like there has been a spike in oil prices prior to or during past recessions. Any thoughts on the Macrotrends’ chart? Perhaps the US crude oil production or the changing relationship of oil to GDP may change the past relationship of oil price spicks to recession.
    The EIA has an interesting chart of US crude oil production since 1920. The actual data looks quite impressive. Even the log of production looks impressive. Monthly data can be downloaded from January 1920.
    EIA website data: https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=pet&s=mcrfpus2&f=m

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