July was down, and we won’t have August numbers until September 20th (maybe a day earlier from DWD). Using official nationwide nonfarm payroll employment, Wisconsin employment is growing.
Nowcasts – Updated
GDPNow Q3 growth nowcast now up to 2.5%, from 2.1%.
If You *Really* Are Worried about Federal Debt Accumulation…
Consider this graph (based on Penn Wharton Budget Model scoring, from the Economist):
Choi, Dang, Kirpalani, Perez on “Exorbitant privilege and the sustainability of US public debt”
From the paper abstract:
When Did the Debt-to-GDP Ratio Jump in the Last Decade?
Federal debt held by the public as a share of GDP:
Reminder: Wisconsin Exports under Trump
If you forgot what the trade landscape looked like — and how Trump’s policies impacted Wisconsin — here’s a picture of Wisconsin real exports during and after (was thinking about this, prepping for WisconsinEye show tomorrow, where Mike Knetter will be talking).
GDP Nowcasts: Continued Growth into Q3
We have plenty of competing assessments as of today. From three Federal Reserve Banks and Goldman Sachs.
EJ Antoni/Heritage on What Unemployment Rate We Should Be Looking At
EJ Antoni/Heritage writes alarmingly about how excluding marginally attached workers from the calculation of unemployment is misleading:
Kudlow: “We Are in the Front End of a Recession”
Audio here, at 2:30 approximately. He also says private NFP gain is down to +56K, while private ex-health care and social services (all essentially government), was only up +12K. Here’s the picture I get looking at current vintage/latest release:
The Ito-McCauley Database on Individual Central Bank Reserve Holdings
Hiro Ito and Robert McCauley have compiled a dataset(first discussed in this 2019 working paper) of the currency composition of international reserves over the 1999-2021 period. This dataset was used in Ito and McCauley (2020), Chinn, Ito and McCauley (2022), and Chinn, Ito and Frankel (2024).