Conference Board index at 98.3 vs. 102.7 Bloomberg consensus, down from upwardly revised 105.3. Here is a picture of (standardized) U.Michigan Sentiment, Conference Board and Gallup Confidence measures.
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EPU Today: 655
A big jump:
The 50th anniversary of Alice Rivlin’s tenure as the founding director of CBO
From the CBO website:
“so called economists at the Fed”
That’s EJ Antoni talking on something called Wealthion at minute 3:30.
Policy Uncertainty in the US, Globally
as measured by Baker, Bloom and Davis’s EPU. I was in Europe, and conversations were in high gear about how things now seemed. And text mining confirms:
AP: “Trump begins firings of FAA air traffic control staff just weeks after fatal DC plane crash”
Article here.
The Russian Economy: How Many Contingent Liabilities?
It seems like a funny question to ask given Russian government debt to GDP isn’t that large. Craig Kennedy argues that taking into account forced bank lending means that (contingent) government liabilities are much larger than conventionally-defined public liabilities (report here). The summary:
“Trump administration wants to un-fire nuclear safety workers but can’t figure out how to reach them”
From NBC. I’d say emblematic of the smash and attempt to repair approach of the Trump 2.0 administration.
EPU after Reciprocal Tariffs Announced, Before New Steel, Aluminum Tariffs
Up, up and away.
Correlation or Causation?
We know that correlation does not necessarily mean causation. But sometimes you gotta wonder, especially as Mr. Trump’s administration is busily dismantling the CIA. First, GW Bush ignore the PDB of August 8, 2001, on “Bin Laden determined to strike in US”. Then Trump 1.0 eliminates the NSC directorate on pandemic preparedness before the Covid-19 pandemic (and apparently with the exception of Peter Navarro(!) ignores warnings about Covid).
