Today, I gave a presentation in the Wisconsin Alumni Association’s Global Hot Spot series, entitled America’s Macroeconomic Policies and the Global Economy. One figure from the presentation bears highlighting.
Coincident Indices for Wisconsin, Minnesota, California and the US
The Philadelphia Fed coincident indices for October are out. Figure 1 presents the log series, normalized to January 2011 = 0.
Trade Financing Use of China’s Yuan
From Reuters:
China’s yuan currency overtook the euro in October, becoming the second-most used currency in trade finance, global transaction services organization SWIFT said on Tuesday.
Some Observations on the Efficacy of Monetary and Fiscal Policy
Japan edition
Inflation and output are up. So too is gross fixed capital investment. The yen is weaker, and the real quantity of net exports is higher.
Presidents and the economy
An interesting new research paper by Princeton Professors Alan Blinder and Mark Watson examines differences in performance of the economy under Democratic versus Republican presidents. The paper begins:
The superiority of economic performance under Democrats rather than Republicans is nearly
ubiquitous; it holds almost regardless of how you define success. By many measures, the
performance gap is startlingly large–so large, in fact, that it strains credulity, given how little
influence over the economy most economists (or the Constitution, for that matter) assign to the
President of the United States.
Fiscal Drag in 2013
From Torsten Slok at Deutsche Bank:
[F]iscal drag in 2013 is 2.4%, ie if GDP growth in 2013 ends up being 1.7% then if we had not had the fiscal drag then GDP growth would instead have been 4.1% (=1.7% + 2.4%). ..
Forward rates and monetary tightening
The Federal Reserve has been trying hard to communicate that it intends to keep short-term interest rates low for quite some time. The market seems to have embraced the message.
Wisconsin Employment: October 2013
Two numbers to remember: 84 thousand and 107 thousand
Jeffrey Frankel: “The Dollar and Its Rivals”
JEC Chair Brady and the Inflation Outlook
From a statement by the Joint Economic Committee Chairman, October 9th, 2013:
I fear that the Federal Reserve through current policies of Quantitative Easing and maintaining extraordinary low interest rates may be providing the fuel for igniting high
inflation.