Fell 34.3% (not annualized, in log terms) in July.
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Deceleration – The July CPI Release
From BLS today:
The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) increased 0.5 percent in July on a seasonally adjusted basis after rising 0.9 percent in June, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Over the last 12 months, the all items index increased 5.4 percent before seasonal adjustment.
Business Cycle Indicators as of August 2
IHS-MarkIt (nee Macroeconomic Advisers) released monthly GDP today. The July employment situation will be released this Friday.
Geographical Diversity in Journal Editing (and the J Int Money Finance)
Angus, Atalay, Newton and Ubilava write “Editorial boards of leading economics journals show high institutional concentration and modest geographic diversity”. There’s no doubt diversity of all types is an issue of concern in the economics professions, and here’s one more dimension.
Still Crazy After All These Years
Although there is something to be said for consistency. For instance, I see someone blogging (!):
Why Did US Economic Policy Uncertainty Rise So Much During the Pandemic?
I was doing a review of measured economic policy uncertainty, and found an interesting divergence between the US and Europe:
“this [Covid-19] pandemic ain’t 1918–never was, never will be”
— Comment by rick stryker, August 19, 2020.
Term Spread and Inflation Breakeven Declining, and Real Rates Still Low
All suggesting slowing growth…maybe
“Do Central Banks Rebalance Their Currency Shares?”
Paper by me, Hiro Ito, and Robert McCauley. From the abstract.
Policy Uncertainty Six Months, A.T.*
* “After Trump” .
Figure 1: US Economic Policy Uncertainty index (news) (blue, left scale), US Trade Policy Uncertainty categorical index (red, right scale), both monthly averages of daily data. NBER defined recession dates shaded gray, NBER peak at dashed line; orange denotes Trump administration. Source: policyuncertainty.com, and NBER.
Part of this decline in uncertainty could be attributable to the economic management team.