If you think that’s Kevin Hassett opining, you’d be wrong. It’s actually CEA Chair Ed Lazear on May 8, 2008. NBER retrospectively determined that the business cycle peak was December 2007, so that a recession was underway for four months by that time. Today, NEC Chair Kevin Hassett stated “I don’t see any sign of recession”
[source] Answer: Because, by virtue of the Executive Office of the President getting the release numbers the night before, he knew the numbers were going to be pretty bad (+22K < +75K Bloomberg consensus). (By the way, if I as a EOP staff member gave away market moving news before the official release, I would’ve been fired, and prosecuted. Just sayin’).
With NFP at +22K < +75K Bloomberg consensus (hinted at by Trump signaling “pay no heed to the numbers behind the curtain”), we have the following picture of key indicators of the NBER’s BCDC (including the 48K downward revision in previous two months):
The yield curve at the short end is almost as inverted as it was in November 2024. In fact, it’s more inverted than on January 21st, 2025, the day after Trump’s inauguration. Yet, at the long end of the spectrum, 30 year yields are back up to January 21st levels.
WisPolitics Luncheon on 9/16, 11:30-1pm.
From the FT today:
Michael D. Bordo is Distinguished Professor of Economics emeritus at Rutgers University, a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and Distinguished Visitor at the Griswold Center for Economic Policy Studies. Robert N McCauley is a non-resident senior fellow at Boston University’s Global Development Policy Center and associate of the faculty of history at the University of Oxford.
JOLTS data indicates the vacancies to unemployed ratio has descended to unity.
Starting teaching today a course on the financial system. Here are some graphs of the current situation, through August.
Q2 final sales to private domestic purchasers — arguably a better indicator over time about momentum in the economy in the wake of the tariff-frontrunning — was 1.9% q/q AR. Four days ago, nowcasted final sales for Q3 was 2.4%. Today’s GDPNow release takes that number down to 1.7%, a slowdown from Q2.