From the IMF (9/27/2024):
Whither FEMA under Trump
From Mandate for Leadership, aka Project 2025, page 135:
Business Cycle Indicators – August Monthly GDP
Here’s a snapshot of key indicators followed by the NBER’s Business Cycle Dating Committee, along with SPGMI’s monthly GDP.
Manufacturing in Recession? (Revisited)
High frequency indicators (PMI, etc.) suggest — and have suggested — a slowdown in manufacturing. Still, other indicators indicate sideways trending. Here’s a picture, incorporating the just-available manufacturing value added for Q2, as well employment incorporating the preliminary benchmark revision.
Guest Contribution: “The Federal Funds Rate: FOMC Projections, Policy Rule Prescriptions, and Futures Market Predictions from the September 2024 Meeting”
Today, we present a guest post written by David Papell and Ruxandra Prodan-Boul, Professor of Economics at the University of Houston and Economics Lecturer at Stanford University.
Bloomberg Economics: Mass Deportation Impact on GDP, Inflation
Gasoline and Oil Prices
We have weekly gasoline prices through week ending 9/30:
Wisconsin GDP Revised Up (a lot!)
Wisconsin GDP grew at 4.2% SAAR in Q2. The 2023Q4 figure was raised 2.7% by the annual update (the corresponding figure for US GDP was 1.2%).
“It’s almost as if you have no economics training at all…”
With apologies to Kramer’s boss in Seinfeld. From Oren Cass’s “Trump’s Most Misunderstood Policy Proposal: Economists aren’t telling the whole truth about tariffs,” The Atlantic:
Their first mistake is to consider only the costs of tariffs, and not the benefits. Traditionally, an economist assessing a proposed market intervention begins by searching for a market failure, typically an “externality,” in need of correction. Pollution is the quintessential illustration. A factory owner will not consider the widespread harms of dumping pollutants in a river when deciding how much to spend on pollution controls. A policy that forces him to pay for polluting will correct this market failure—colloquially by “making it his problem.” It imposes a cost on the polluter in the pursuit of benefits for everyone else.
Q2 GDP Growth by State
The country is in the black, overall, according to Friday’s release.