There aren’t many measures of euro area wide economic activity at higher than monthly frequency, to my knowledge. One series is the Woloszko (OECD) Weekly Tracker, based upon big data and machine learning, discussed here. VoxEU post here. This measure shows deceleration in the week through 9/17.
Guest Contribution: “The Dollar Dazzles Once More”
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.
Rumors of the Vast Data Conspiracy Continue
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:
Weekly Economic Activity through September 17th
Year-on-year, activity growth is still growing. Shown below are the Lewis-Mertens-Stock (NY Fed) WEI, and the Woloszko (OECD) Weekly Tracker, and the Baumeister-Leiva-Leon-Sims Weekly Economic Conditions Index for the US, for data up to a few days ago (September 17th):
Recession on the Horizon?
IGM-FTmid -September survey:
US, Euro Area and China GDP over the Pandemic and Recovery
Following up on the last post, here is a graph of three major economies.
World Bank: “Is a Global Recession Imminent?”
A Note by Justin Damien Guénette, M. Ayhan Kose, and Naotaka Sugawara.
Weekly Economic Activity through September 10th
Year-on-year, activity still seems to be increasing. Shown below are the Lewis-Mertens-Stock (NY Fed) WEI, and the Woloszko (OECD) Weekly Tracker, and the Baumeister-Leiva-Leon-Sims Weekly Economic Conditions Index for the US, for data up to a week ago (September 10th):
Hurricane Maria and Puerto Rico 5 Years Later
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.
Did US Inflation Accelerate Relative to Euro Area?
Yes, for core, no for headline: