As I prepped for final lectures in my macro policy course, I generated these graphs.
Nowcasting the US Economy:
Figure 1: Reported GDP (blue bars), Atlanta Fed GDPNow (red), NY Fed nowcast (green), and Macroeconomic Advisers (black), all in billions Ch.2009$ SAAR, on log scale. Source: BEA 2018Q1 advance; Atlanta Fed (4/26), NY Fed (4/27), Macroeconomic Advisers (4/26).
The Bureau of Economic Analysis announced today that U.S. real GDP grew at a 2.3% annual rate in the first quarter. That’s a modest slowdown from the 3.1% average we saw over the previous 3 quarters. 3.1% is also the average growth rate for the U.S. economy over the last 70 years. But the Q1 reading is pretty much on par with the 2.2% average growth since the Great Recession ended in 2009.
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In this post I showed the negative impact on some US allies from tariffs on Chinese exports to the US, highlighting the importance of distinguishing between gross value and value added. Here is another graphical depiction of how tariffs on Chinese exports to the US are — in part — tariffs on US value added…
From WSJ op-ed via AEI:
The second factor [in the slow recovery] is less obvious, but possibly also of great importance…. Congress and [the] President signaled their intentions to introduce major changes in taxes, government spending and regulations–changes that could radically transform the American economy.
…
… other government proposals created greater uncertainty and risk for businesses and investors. …
Reader CoRev argues that economic uncertainty indicators such as the Baker, Bloom and Davis based on content analysis of newspaper articles are instances of GIGO (garbage in, garbage out). Here is a plot of another indicator suggesting current elevated uncertainty.
Figure 0: Measure of risk/uncertainty (red). Observation for April is data through 4/23.
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A recent article on the predictive abilities of yield curves (Shrager/Quartz) includes a nifty interactive which allows you to look at yield curves over time. Below, I do a snapshot comparison, across the world.
Figure 1: Ten year-three month term spread (blue bars), as of 9 July 2016. China observation is Five year-three month term spread. Euro ten year rate is for Germany. Source: Economist, data as of April 18.
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Figure 1: Cumulative sum of mass shooting casualties, beginning 2016M11; deaths inflicted by non-Muslims (dark red), wounded inflicted by non-Muslims (pink), deaths inflicted by Muslims (dark blue), wounded inflicted by Muslims (light blue). Source: Mother Jones. Tabulations of religion of perpetrator by author.
Longer perspective displayed in this post.
Despite reader Ed Hanson‘s comment:
[T]he current Monthly EPU is at an elevated level, but it has been at this elevated level 7 out of the past 9 years. The elevated value is better described as normal for about the last decade.
And his concluding admonishment:
Perspective, Menzie
I still believe that economic policy uncertainty as measured by the news based index (which Ed Hanson was discussing) is elevated.
Figure 1: Monthly Economic Policy Uncertainty, news based (blue), baseline (red), as reported. Source: http://www.policyuncertainty.com.
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. This is an extended version of a column that appeared at Project Syndicate on April 17th.