I subtitle this post “The Shadow of ShadowStats” which is now offline and available only by subscription. Referring to under-estimated inflation, Peter St. Onge (Heritage) and Jeffrey Tucker (Brownstone Institute) argued in June that not only are we now in a recession, we’ve been in recession for the past four years!
GDP 2nd Release for Q2
Revised up 0.2 ppts, 0.2 ppts above consensus. Final sales up 0.2 ppts. GDO rises 2.1% q/q SAAR.
Brad Setser on China’s True Trade Balance
Brad Setser has been diligently cross-checking the external accounts of China. For purposes of thinking about how policymakers are trying to snatch aggregate demand across borders, the trade balance is key.
EJ Antoni on the Current Recession
Economic Sentiment and Confidence in August
Conference Board’s Confidence Index exceeds consensus (103.3 > 100.9), with July index revised up. Here’re August readings for confidence, sentiment and news.
Guest Contribution: “Lessons from 85 Years of Movies about Finance”
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. An earlier version appeared at Project Syndicate.
Different Counts of NFP Gains
All show gains since January 2023, save the CPS based.
Guest Contribution: “Exchange Rate Models are Better than You Think, and Why They Didn’t Work in the Old Days”
Today, we present a guest post written by Charles Engel, Donald D. Hester Distinguished Chair in Economics at UW Madison and Steve Pak Yeung Wu, Assistant Professor of Economics at UCSD.
Spreads in the Meatpacking Industry: Beef
Here’s the time series on beef farm-to-wholesale spread, in 1982-84$.
A Puzzle: Private NFP and the Preliminary Benchmark vs. Current Official
The ADP survey cumulative increase in private NFP since 2023M03 is 3.1mn, more than the 2.8mn reported in the current official CES series.