Is the inflation scare bubble over?
As of yesterday, the five year inflation breakeven was 2.5%, down from 2.72% in mid-May. The estimated inflation risk and liquidity premia adjusted 5 year breakeven was 1.62% as of 7/30 (when the corresponding actual breakeven was 2.56%).
Compare the CDC ensemble forecast released today, as compared to that generated the previous week and discussed in this post.
If I didn’t know anything about the changing pattern of wildfire burns, I would’ve probably concluded “all clear”. To see this, consider the following picture I could’ve drawn a year ago:
I had the pleasure of speaking with UW’s Ian Coxhead and Sandi Siegel, President of MITA and of ME Dey, at Talking Trade last week about trade, direct investment and competition in technology production.
The Economic Policy Uncertainty index, calculated using the Baker, Bloom and Davis methodology:
IHS-MarkIt (nee Macroeconomic Advisers) released monthly GDP today. The July employment situation will be released this Friday.
With large shares of populations vaccinated, case counts are no longer a good predictor of fatalities arising from Covid-19. Hospitalization might prove better (and ICU hospitalizations even better). The statistics do not augur well, particularly for Florida.
Angus, Atalay, Newton and Ubilava write “Editorial boards of leading economics journals show high institutional concentration and modest geographic diversity”. There’s no doubt diversity of all types is an issue of concern in the economics professions, and here’s one more dimension.
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.