From GkF on Friday:

GfK’s long-running monthly Consumer Confidence Index dropped 11 points in July (since the June interviews conducted before the Referendum) from -1 to -12. The survey dates back to 1974 and July sees the sharpest month-by-month drop for more than 26 years (March 1990). This is also a further 3-point drop from the -9 recorded by the Brexit Special in early July. All five measures used to calculate the Index saw decreases this month.

Update, 8/2 1:45am Pacific: And here is measured policy uncertainty in the UK.

Figure 1: UK Policy Uncertainty. Source: policyuncertainty.com accessed 8/2.

The Bureau of Economic Analysis announced today that U.S. real GDP grew at a 1.2% annual rate in the second quarter. Not good news.
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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.

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That’s the title of a book commissioned by the Norges Bank on the bicentennial of the Bank’s founding, and edited by Michael D. Bordo, Øyvind Eitrheim, Marc Flandreau and Jan F. Qvigstad (published by Cambridge University Press). Here’s the table of contents:

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The Chinn-Ito index revised and updated to 2014 is now available here.

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A previous post on mass shooting casualties has been widely circulated. Here I update to include recent data, and to normalize by population. An upward trend indicates the incidence of casualties is rising.

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New industrial output numbers, including for manufacturing, confirm a slowdown in at least part of the tradables sector.

Figure 1: Real value of the US dollar against broad basket (black, left scale), manufacturing production (red, right scale), manufacturing employment (blue, right scale), all in logs, 2013M01=0. Source: Federal Reserve Board, BLS, and author’s calculations.

Both production and employment now on a slight downturn, despite recent dollar depreciation. The dollar is 14% higher in log terms relative to mid-2014.

The BEA released quarterly state GDP figures today. As of 2015Q4, Kansas has just experienced two consecutive negative GDP growth, a distinction shared with only three other states — Alaska, Oklahoma and Wyoming (North Dakota experienced three quarters of negative growth, but experienced positive growth in Q4). Over the past five quarters, Kansas has experienced four quarters of negative GDP growth.

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A poll conducted from April 11 to May 17 by the Asian and Pacific Islander American (APIA) Vote, Asian Americans Advancing Justice (AAJC) and AAPI Data provides some interesting results regarding the Republican project to increase influence in this demographic.

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