The Bureau of Economic Analysis announced today that U.S. real GDP grew at a 3.5% annual rate in the third quarter. That’s the second quarter in a row that the number has come in above the 3.1% average for the U.S. economy over the last 70 years, and is well above the 2.2% average rate since the recovery from the Great Recession began
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Category Archives: Uncategorized
Guest Contribution: “China’s Q3 GDP Reportedly Slowed to 6.5%. Or Is It 6.4%?”
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.
Private Nonfarm Payroll Employment Growth in US and Wisconsin (Not Pretty!)
Figure 1: US private nonfarm payroll employment (dark blue), and Wisconsin (red), both in logs, normalized to 2017M01. Source: BLS, DWD, author’s calculations.
The Fed: Drumpffeind
So sayeth Donald Trump today. From FoxBusiness:
“My biggest threat is the Fed,” Trump said on Tuesday during an interview with FOX Business’ Trish Regan. “Because the Fed is raising rates too fast, and it’s too independent,” he complained.
Trump: “I think the Fed has gone crazy”
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.
I’m Already Tired of Winning: MidWest Ag Trade Edition
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.
More on the International Travel “Trump Slump”
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.
Guest Contribution: “Bill Nordhaus & Paul Romer, Nobel Prize winners”
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.
The Tourist “Trump Slump”
As international tourist arrivals have risen globally, those for the US have declined, as noted here.
The Mini-Recession of 2015-16?
Neil Irwin at the NYT has an interesting article on the localized recession in 2016. One conclusion he makes:
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