Figure 1: 10 year-3 month constant maturity Treasury spreads (blue), 10 year-2 year (red), 5 year-3 month (green), in %. Source: Federal Reserve, Treasury.
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Do Macroeconomists Ignore Demographics (and Secular Stagnation)?
Reader Steven Kopits makes an astounding claim about macroeconomists (including me, and Jim Hamilton, et al.):
Capital Goods Imports and Equipment Investment
The last time we saw equipment investment declining was 08Q1; and capital goods imports in 08Q3
Figure 1: Imports of capital goods other than automobiles (blue, left scale), and equipment investment (brown, right scale), both in billions of Ch.2012$, SAAR. Source: BEA, 2012Q2 2nd release.
Given depreciation, net equipment investment is probably declining.
Manufacturing Employment, Hours Decline in September
Figure 1: Manufacturing employment – production and nonsupervisory workers (blue), aggregate hours (teal), manufacturing production (red), in logs 2019M01=0. Source: BLS, Federal Reserve Board, via FRED, and author’s calculations.
James Hamilton at UW Madison: Predicting the Next Recession
The video of Jim Hamilton’s inaugural Juli Plant Grainger Institute lecture at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Economics is now up!
Click here for YouTube video.
Must see for anybody who is serious about critically reading the tea leaves regarding an incipient recession (Spoiler: As of 9/11, he was sceptical a recession had begun). Interesting conjecture about using holding period returns on Treasury securities of different maturities to isolate a expectations hypothesis of term structure component (my reading).
(Aside: for conventional wisdom, see my Econ 435 notes for Econ on EHTS/yield curve/recession prediction)
John Williams on monetary policy and the current economic outlook
I moderated a discussion this morning with John Williams, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, in which John shared his perspectives on monetary policy and the current economic outlook. You can watch on Youtube (conversation begins at 44 minutes in).
Term Spreads and Economic Policy Uncertainty
In August, an elevated economic policy uncertainty index was associated with an increasingly inverted yield curve. The measured Economic Policy Uncertainty (EPU) index as of today is 582 (sure to be revised, but still…).
Life Moves Fast: “Will Donald Trump be impeached by year-end 2019?”
56% at noon Pacific today, according to PredictIt:
That is, articles of impeachment approved within the next three months.
Whistle-Blower Complaint: Audio, Text
“A Closer Look at Japan’s Rising Consumption Tax”
That’s an important new Economic Brief by Thomas A. Lubik and Karl Rhodes of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond:
Japan plans to raise its national consumption tax next week from 8 percent to 10 percent. Some commentators and economists have blamed previous consumption tax increases for causing recessions in 1997 and 2014, but little statistical analysis has been published to support or refute such claims. This Economic Brief highlights new evidence that significant changes in Japan’s household consumption behavior did in fact coincide with the 1997 tax hike.
This issue is important as Japan is on the cusp of raising its consumption tax in just a few days.