What do current financial indicators tell us about where the economy is headed?
Author Archives: James_Hamilton
Crawling forward
Another month of weakly improving auto sales.
What drives media slant?
University of Chicago professors Matthew Gentzkow and Jesse Shapiro propose an answer.
Treasury Supplementary Financing Program (SFP)
The SFP, the U.S. Treasury’s program for assisting with the balance sheet of the Federal Reserve, is making a sudden and dramatic comeback.
The Fed’s discount rate hike
The Federal Reserve Board announced on Thursday that it is raising the interest rate at which banks borrow from the Fed’s discount window to 0.75%, a 25-basis-point increase, and intends to return discount lending primarily to the traditional overnight loans.
“The rate hike cycle begins,” declared 24/7 Wall St, and
Business Week reported:
Treasuries fell, pushing yields to the highest levels in at least five weeks, amid concern the Federal Reserve’s increase in the discount rate signaled policy makers are moving closer to lifting benchmark borrowing costs.
But I don’t believe that’s what the discount rate hike means at all.
The new normal
Also included in Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke’s statement to Congress last week were some guidelines for what we might expect Federal Reserve decisions and communications to look like as we make the gradual adjustment to more normal conditions.
Bernanke on the Fed’s balance sheet
Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke last week released a statement of how the Fed intends to manage its bloated balance sheet over the next few years. Here I offer my interpretation of what his plan involves.
Reactions to last week’s economic data
Here I offer some thoughts on last week’s numbers for employment, auto sales, and commodity prices.
Commodity inflation update
The view I have been forming of near-term inflationary pressures is that we’re seeing two very different dynamics in play, with the dollar prices of things the Chinese can stockpile and import going up and the dollar prices of everything else (like U.S. wages and rents) under significant downward pressure. The last week seemed to bring some reprieve on the first front.
John Cochrane on the credit crisis
University of Chicago Professor John Cochrane (hat tip: Capital Spectator) has an interesting analysis of the causes of the financial problems of the last few years.