“I think Trump is really holding a grudge, and rightly so” noted Antoni, “I’m not sure that there’s anything Trump can do to work with this institution [the Fed]. I think what he really needs to do is clean house.
January Conference Board confidence index comes in at 104.1 vs. 105.7 Bloomberg consensus, down from 109.5 in December. A 5.4 point decline is about 1 standard deviation (2021M07-2024M12). More interestingly, expectations (as opposed to current situation) is also down.
Mr. Bruce Hall quotes from Avila in a FRB Cleveland note:
Egg prices and price index through December, egg CFDs through January.
Also, if egg prices are not reported, will higher egg prices matter? From Fox5 Atlanta:
The Trump Administration has frozen many federal health agencies’ communications with the public until at least the end of the month.
The freeze affects the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), based in Atlanta, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)—entities tasked with fighting epidemics, ensuring food safety, and advancing disease research, according to a memo obtained by the Associated Press.
A comparison:
From AP:
…on Thursday during the World Economic Forum’s annual event in Davos, Switzerland, Trump said he would reduce oil prices, and then “I’ll demand that interest rates drop immediately, and likewise, they should be dropping all over the world.”
Started teaching on Wednesday. Here’re some graphs in the intro lecture on macro policy (now that content is gated, and only accessible to students).