With apologies to John Donne.
Jim provided some key points in his Thursday post regarding the 21Q2 advance figures. Here are my additional takeaways: (1) the Administration’s forecast locked down in February looks prescient; (2) Final sales were higher than GDP, (3) exports have not buttressed growth, partly because of slow rest-of-world growth, (4) price growth is a rising share of nominal GDP growth.
Consumption, personal income and St. Louis Fed’s real manufacturing and trade industry sales were released today. The July employment situation will be released next Friday. This is the picture today.
The Bureau of Economic Analysis announced today that seasonally adjusted U.S. real GDP grew at a 6.5% annual rate in the second quarter. That’s well above the 3.1% average growth that the U.S. experienced over 1947-2019. Kudos to Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta economist Patrick Higgins, whose nowcast of 6.4% that Menzie highlighted yesterday anticipated today’s release on the nose.
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Q2 GDP will be released tomorrow morning, and Jim will be providing his insights on the numbers. Today, the IMF released its July 2021 World Economic Outlook forecasts, which gives us and opportunity to recap where we stand. [Updated 7/29, 1pm Pacific]
The upward trend in acres burned is shown below.
Although there is something to be said for consistency. For instance, I see someone blogging (!):
I was doing a review of measured economic policy uncertainty, and found an interesting divergence between the US and Europe:
William Luther at AIER asks “Is Inflation Merely Catching Up?“:
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. A shorter version appeared at Project Syndicate. The underlying econometrics are spelled out in “The Virus, Vaccination, and Voting: An Econometric Analysis.” I am grateful for the excellent research assistance of Randy Kotti.
— Comment by rick stryker, August 19, 2020.