Above Pre-Covid peak. From Motio Research:
September Real Median Household Income Estimated
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Inflation: A Discussion in Milwaukee
A Main Street Agenda town hall meeting on inflation to be held today, Tuesday, Oct. 15, from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Clinton Rose Senior Center, 3045 N. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive. Register here. American Press Institute/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel/Wisconsin Public Radio/Robert M. La Follette School of Public Affairs. Livestreamed here.
Chatting about math with ChatGPT
I’m still trying to learn how to use ChatGPT to improve my productivity. One thing I’ve been experimenting with recently is to ask it to check my math. As it turns out, I’m still better at math than the algorithm. Here is a link to a recent discussion I had with ChatGPT. My entries are the short strongly indented statements. In this little conversation, ChatGPT made six separate math errors. Each time it confidently asserted something to be true when in fact it was provably false, and each time it would cheerfully admit its error when I pointed it out.
My recommendation is to keep ChatGPT on a short leash. Don’t ask it anything you can’t directly confirm yourself.
Guest Contribution: “Social Security Reform: Between a Cliff and a Hard Place”
Today we present a guest post written by Lindsay Jacobs, Assistant Professor at the Robert M. La Follette School of Public Affairs, at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Recession since 2022? A Magic Asterisk-Mystery Meat-Special Sauce Approach to National Income Accounting
In a recent paper, Antoni and St. Onge (2024) have argued that the peak in GDP, properly measured, was in 2021Q4.
Nowcasts, Weekly Indicators, and Additions to the “Recession Camp”
Nowcasts for NY and St. Louis Feds out today; St. Louis up from 1.14% to 1.73% q/q AR. NY Fed, and GS tracking unchanged at 3.2%.
Why So Glum? Sentiment by Partisan Grouping
Michigan consumer sentiment declined, below consensus (68.9 vs 70.9). Why?
Contextualizing the Inflationary Impact of the 10%/60% Trump Tariff Plan
I was trying to think about how to contextualize the impact of the Trump 10%/60% tariffs on inflation. McKibbin-Hogan-Noland (2024) trace out the impact of this measure (as well as mass deportation) on inflation using an updated version of the G-Cubed model. In 2025, they estimate inflation will be 0.6 percentage points above baseline. Goldman-Sachs also come up with similar implied effects (although in their scenario, they only assume a portion of the tariffs are implemented)
Instantaneous Core Prices
Updated to include core PPI:
CPI and CPI Core Surprise on Upside
CPI m/m at 0.2% vs. 0.1% consensus [correction 7:15pm CT MDC] (Core 0.3% vs. 0.2% consensus). Here are snapshots of instantaneous inflation rates for September headline, core, supercore, and services supercore CPI, headline and core PPI and HICP and headline and core PCE deflator for August.