Economics Roundtable
Graph-of-the-Year Candidates
Donald Marron likes European interest rates. Click on the image to get a bigger version. Can you find three distinct subperiods?
Brad DeLong favors the U.S. gdp gap.
Finally, it's hard to argue against the payroll employment graph below (straight from FRED) and the comparison across recessions (courtesy of Calculated Risk).
Looking Up At 2001
In February 2001, U.S. payroll employment peaked at 132.5 million. The November 2011 figure of 131.7 million still falls 800,000 jobs short of the earlier peak.
Click on the chart for a larger version.
November Payroll Employment
Remember M1?
Money Supply M1 growth is now over 20% per year over a 12 month lag. M1 growth has touched 20% before, but not with excess reserves of $1.6 trillion. Where is M1 headed?
Click on the chart for a larger version.
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Political Calculations
The good news? It looks to be much better than all the new shows from last year. The bad news? It's another CSI. Still, with broadcast television being what it is, you should make room on your fall TV viewing schedule for CSI: Legoland! ...
According to Nomura Global Economics, there has been a rather dramatic divergence between the "real" and "official" unemployment rate in the United States since 2009. FT/Alphaville's Cardiff Garcia explains (HT: Tyler Cowen):
What are we to make of journalist, editor and author Jonathan Chait's New York Magazine article "Inequality and the Charles Murray Dodge"?
Here's the particular passage we have in mind as we ask that question:
Did you know that the most downwardly mobile members of society are millionaires?
The advance GDP estimate for the fourth quarter of 2011 was released on Friday, 27 January 2012, with that quarter's inflation-adjusted GDP figure being reported at $13,422.4 billion, in terms of constant 2005 U.S. dollars.
That value is just 0.29% higher than what we would forecast using our ...
How good are stock market earnings forecasts?
Well, if you go by our chart below, which we constructed by sampling data we obtained from S&P roughly one-year apart (at the dates indicated) and mostly looking one-year-ahead in time, the answer is: not good at all!
Two weeks ago, we observed that the number of seasonally-adjusted initial unemployment insurance claims being filed each week was still following the same trend it has since 9 April 2011, but that it was becoming increasingly volatile, suggesting that the trend is beginning to break down:
In his 2012 State of the Union Address, President Obama sought to "embrace manufacturing". Since the President has been in office for three years now, we thought we would take a look at how well he's done so far in embracing manufacturing, by ...
On 23 December 2011, the Republican party majority in the U.S. House of Representatives caved in on its opposition to President Obama and the Democratic party majority in ...
If you're just an average investor, how can you pick up on whether or not a company is cooking its books?
Craig Newmark recently pointed to one ...