The Federal Forecasters Consortium conference took place a month ago, but the video links are now up,

• Morning announcements and Fred Joutz Retrospective (Fred discussion starts at 17:50) [slides]
• Invited Panel Session Dr. Baoline Chen (U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis), Dr. Neil Mehrotra (U.S. Department of the Treasury), Dr. Jason Schachter (U.S. Census Bureau), moderated by Neil R. Ericsson (Federal Reserve Board).
• Special Afternoon Session: Simple vs. Complex  Chaired by Kevin Dubina. “Thinking through the pros and cons” by Anne Morse; “Evidence from Forecasting Competitions” by Neil R. Ericsson; “Why do projections?” by Maria Hussain

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According to Senator Ron Johnson, this is the reason (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, March7, 2022):

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That’s the senator on the climate change issue, in tonight’s Wisconsin senatorial candidate debate. For him, it’s “not solvable.”

I’ve never heard him say it, but the logical conclusion must be that he’s awaitin’ for the Rapture, so no need to worry (at least for those who will be moving on).

From ISW (8:30pm ET):

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From JohnH on 9/2/2022, in response to anonymous’s query: “how’s the crossing of the dneipr and reconquesta of kherson going?”

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As I wrote yesterday, “tomorrow is another day”.

Figure 1: UK Economic Policy Uncertainty (blue), and centered 7 day moving average (red). ECRI defined recession dates shaded gray. Source: policyuncertainty.com, ECRI and author’s calculations.

In some ways, policy uncertainty — at least as measured using text — is not as bad as I would’ve thought. Here’s the Baker-Bloom-Davis index:

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A (conspiracy-minded) reader writes: “Where is this being reported? Heck FRED doesn’t even graph real corporate profit growth. Shhhhh!”. But all one has to do is search for “corporate profits” (5 seconds) and then an appropriate deflator. I use the PCE deflator, and I get the following graph in FRED, which I download:

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Now seems a useful time to re-assess some of the pronouncements made in the wake of the tragic disaster that struck Puerto Rico in September 2017. First, fatalities of Americans (contra Mr. Trump’s seeming assertion these were not American) were much higher than some commentators claimed. Second, arguments that economic policies undertaken in 2016 and 2017 (i.e., the austerity measures associated with PROMESA) caused more deaths than Hurricane Maria are incorrect. Finally, the economic challenges that existed before the hurricane struck — including insufficient tax revenues — remain, even as the economy has rebounded.

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A new ebook, edited by Luis Garicano, Dominic Rohner, and Beatrice Weder di Mauro.

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