Productivity and costs for 2019Q4 were released yesterday.
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Business Cycle Indicators as of 1/29 as Real 10 Year Rate Goes Negative
Monthly GDP growth is slow in December:
What Is the Size of Russian Forces in Ukraine?
Back to Zero — and Beyond! [updated]
Updated 1/30/2020 – Treasury yield curve inverted relative to 1 month all the way out to somewhere between 10yrs and 20yrs!
Ten year TIPS yields that is; the 10yr-3mo spread is 4 bps.
Figure 1: Ten year – three month Treasury spread (blue), and Ten year TIPS yield (red), both in %. Source: Federal Reserve via FRED, Treasury, and author’s calculations.
Disposition of Forces in Donbass Region, Ukraine
As of 24 January, according to the Information Analysis Center:
Source: Information Analysis Center.
Discussion of presence of Russian T-72-B3 tanks in Ukraine, here.
Judy Shelton to the Fed?
From the White House:
A “Critique” of Confidence Intervals
Steven Kopits opines on statistics:
I don’t like confidence intervals for two reasons:
David Romer: “In Praise of Confidence Intervals”
That’s the name of a new NBER working paper, and a paper presented at ASSA (slides; I didn’t get to see myself). As I get to teach applied econometrics for public policy this semester, I thought this was interesting paper. From the abstract:
GAO: “Office of Management and Budget—Withholding of Ukraine Security Assistance”
From GAO today on “the drug deal”:
In the summer of 2019, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) withheld from obligation funds appropriated to the Department of Defense (DOD) for security assistance to Ukraine. In order to withhold the funds, OMB issued a series of nine apportionment schedules with footnotes that made all unobligated balances unavailable for obligation.
Faithful execution of the law does not permit the President to substitute his own policy priorities for those that Congress has enacted into law. OMB withheld funds for a policy reason, which is not permitted under the Impoundment Control Act (ICA). The withholding was not a programmatic delay. Therefore, we conclude that OMB violated the ICA.
Year in Review, 2019: “Victory at IAD” and Other Alternative Facts
It’s the year that Donald Trump said that in the war against Great Britain, “Our army manned the air, it rammed the ramparts, it took over the airports, it did everything it had to do, and at Fort McHenry, under the rockets’ red glare, it had nothing but victory.”
