Implicitly, Trump is saying John Taylor is crazy, since the original Taylor rule would imply even faster rises in the Fed funds rate (I am inferring from Professor Taylor’s discussion of neutral rates. Below I plot the implied Fed funds rate, assuming no interest rate smoothing, the Laubach-Williams one-sided estimate of the real natural rate, and a target variable of 4 quarter PCE inflation.

Continue reading →

A reader alerts me – from CNBC, indications farmers are going to take a hit, as export volume drops off a cliff.

United States tariffs are beginning to take their toll on farmers and the storage, shipping and freight operations they need to move their crops to market.

In North Dakota, soybeans from 2017 are still in storage after China pulled its contracts. Of the 15.9 million bushels left from that year’s crop, 12.1 million bushels are sitting in grain elevators. That is an increase of 68 percent.

Continue reading →

Has spending on international travel to and tourism in the US dropped more than expected based on world GDP and the value of the dollar? Yes.

Continue reading →

Today, we present a guest post written by Jeffrey Frankel, Harpel Professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and formerly a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers.

As international tourist arrivals have risen globally, those for the US have declined, as noted here.

Continue reading →