On the 38th anniversary of Vincent Chin’s murder. From Politico:
President Donald Trump’s top spokesperson on Monday defended his use of the term “kung flu” to describe the novel coronavirus has sickened millions across the globe, asserting that the president was merely trying to emphasize the virus’ place of origin in China.
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“The president does not believe that it is offensive to note that this virus came from China,” McEnany said Monday when asked about Conway’s condemnation of the term.
The shape of the recovery, when it comes, depends on the answer.
New cases are rising in some counties. Those counties account for a substantial share of US GDP.
Like the rest of the nation, employment in Wisconsin recovered slightly. Unanswered is how sustainable the recovery is.
Employment has been cut tremendously. With massive impending revenue shortfalls, state and local spending will continue to remain depressed, placing a drag on the economic recovery – just as austerity measures slowed the recovery from the Great recession.
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. He was a member of the NBER’s Business Cycle Dating Committee for 25 years, with his term ending last fall. A shorter version appeared in Project Syndicate and in The Guardian.
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. He was a member of the NBER’s Business Cycle Dating Committee for 25 years, with his term ending last fall. A shorter version appeared in Project Syndicate and in The Guardian.
As of today, here are key monthly indicators followed by the NBER Business Cycle Dating Committee:
Figure 1: Nonfarm payroll employment (blue), industrial production (red), personal income excluding transfers in Ch.2012$ (green), manufacturing and trade sales in Ch.2012$ (black), and monthly GDP in Ch.2012$ (pink), all log normalized to 2019M02=0. Source: BLS, Federal Reserve, BEA, via FRED, Macroeconomic Advisers (5/29 release), Bloomberg, and author’s calculations.
The NBER Business cycle Dating Committee has dated the most recent peak at February 2020 for monthly data, and 2019Q4 for quarterly. Jeffrey Frankel describes the reasoning for this date.
Q2 nowcast from Atlanta Fed is -48.5% (6/9), from NY Fed is -25.9% (6/12), St. Louis Fed is -38.9%(6/12), all SAAR. IHS Markit is -37.4% as of today.
From The Hill:
Sharp increases in the number of coronavirus cases diagnosed in states across the nation have some local elected officials considering pauses in reopening their economies.
The rising number of cases are hitting hardest in Sun Belt states like Arizona, California, Florida and Texas. All four of those states reported their highest single-day increase in the number of confirmed cases over the weekend.
Officials have also pointed to a troubling trend in the number of people who must be hospitalized for treatment, raising anew the frightening prospect of an overwhelmed health system. …
From Goldman-Sachs today:
Source: Goldman-Sachs, “Global Economics Comment: Tracking Coronavirus,” June 13, 2020.
Today, we’re fortunate to have Giovanni Pellegrino (Aarhus University), Federico Ravenna (Danmarks Nationalbank, University of Copenhagen, HEC Montreal, CEPR) and Gabriel Zullig (Danmarks Nationalbank, University of Copenhagen) as guest contributors. The views expressed represent those of the authors, and do not necessarily represent those of Danmarks Nationalbank , or any other institutions the authors are affiliated with.