Downward revision in the level of nonfarm payroll (NFP) employment; stabilization in employment measures (establishment, household, research series); aggregate weekly hours trend up.
Doubling Exports
The Administration has committed itself to doubling exports in five years, via the National Export Initiative. Much of the journalistic coverage has focused on the regulatory, trade-credit financing, and export promotion measures being considered [0]. I wanted to take a macro oriented approach to the viewing the plausibility of this goal. Let me address this issue from a variety of perspectives.
Forecasts Compared
How does the Administration’s forecast of the levels of real GDP compare against those of the CBO, and the Blue Chip and Wall Street Journal surveys?
Commodity inflation update
The view I have been forming of near-term inflationary pressures is that we’re seeing two very different dynamics in play, with the dollar prices of things the Chinese can stockpile and import going up and the dollar prices of everything else (like U.S. wages and rents) under significant downward pressure. The last week seemed to bring some reprieve on the first front.
Federal Debt: The Time Series
Here is a graph of Federal debt held by the public, as a share of GDP, 1990-09.
John Cochrane on the credit crisis
University of Chicago Professor John Cochrane (hat tip: Capital Spectator) has an interesting analysis of the causes of the financial problems of the last few years.
Strong GDP growth with weak fundamentals
The Bureau of Economic Analysis reported today that the seasonally adjusted real value of the nation’s production of goods and services grew at a 5.7% annual rate during the fourth quarter. That’s great news, but…
“No rate hikes likely in 2010…”
Despite the somewhat startling conclusion (at least to me), the implications are pretty straightforwardly arrive at. From Michael Rosenberg, Financial Conditions Watch (Bloomberg, Jan. 27, 2010) (link added 1/29 8am) [not online]:
Fed Funds Rate Outlook — A Taylor Rule Perspective
With U.S. real GDP growth moving back into positive
territory in the second half of 2009 following four consecutive
quarters of negative growth (see Figure 1), the
economic forecasting community appears to be increasingly
optimistic about the U.S. economy’s growth prospects
for 2010-11….
G-7 Consumption Behavior and Global Rebalancing
Or, the end of the consumption follows a random walk view.
Following up this post last week on Lee et al., here is another analysis of consumption behavior, but this one is cross-country. From the abstract to “After the Crisis: Lower Consumption Growth but Narrower Global Imbalances?” by Ashoka Mody and Franziska Ohnsorge:
A budget freeze?
Here I offer some thoughts on President Obama’s new proposal.