From Bloomberg: Upon signing the foreign assistance bill, this is what’s heading to Ukraine first tranche ($1bn): Stinger anti-aircraft missiles Small arms and additional rounds of small arms ammunition Additional ammunition for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicles Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) Vehicles High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles (HMMWVs) Tube-Launched, Optically-Tracked, Wire-Guided (TOW) missiles Javelin and AT-4 anti-armor systems Claymore anti-personnel munitions This is in addition to longer-range ATACMS. Also: The ..read more

Continues to rise, according the the Phildaelphia Fed’s coincident index, just out. The divergence with GDP continues to persist. Figure 1: Wisconsin Nonfarm Payroll Employment (dark blue), Philadelphia Fed early benchmark measure of NFP (pink), Civilian Employment (tan), real wages and salaries linearly interpolated, deflated by national chained CPI (sky blue), GDP (red), coincident index (green), all in logs 2021M11=0. Source: BLS, BEA, Philadelphia Fed [1], [2], and author’s calculations. The 3 month annualized growth rate of the Wisconsin coincident index is 3.7%; y/y it’s ..read more

Official is 5.3% y/y (consensus 4.8%), vs BOFIT 4.3%. Source: BOFIT (2024). The BOFIT alternative is based on reported nominal GDP and using alternative price deflator. The Fernald-Hsu-Spiegel CCAT is not yet available for Q1. As of 2023Q4, CCAT y/y deviation from trend was slightly above official GDP.   ..read more

From Peter Coy, in NYT:   “If you liked what Trump did on the economy the first time, you’ll like what he does the second time,” Stephen Moore, an unpaid senior economic adviser to the Trump campaign, told me. “He wants to hit the ground running. He feels like the clock is ticking.” “The difference between Trump and Reagan, and I worked for both, is that Trump is not especially ideological,” Moore said. “Reagan was ideological. Trump is a businessman. When you talk about issues with him, he deals with common sense.” Moore said Trump doesn’t always act on his threats of raising tariffs, w ..read more

There’s been a lot of discussion of overcapacity in Chinese production, and the resulting pressures in US and other markets. Here’s a picture of the Chinese real exchange rates. Figure 1: China trade weighted CPI deflated real exchange rate (blue), and US-China bilateral CPI deflated real exchange rate (tan), in logs. Up denotes increase in value of Chinese currency. Chinese CPI adjusted by author using X-13. Source: BIS, FRB, BLS via FRED.  In principle, I’d prefer to use PPI deflated real rates, or even unit labor cost deflated (see this paper), but those are harder to come by. The Chi ..read more

Yes, using either Chained CPI, or East North Central CPI: Figure 1: Wisconsin total wages and salaries deflated using chained CPI (blue), using official East North Central subregion CPI, adjusted using X-13 (tan), all in billion 2023$ at annual rates. NBER defined peak-to-trough national recession dates shaded gray. Source: BLS, BEA, NBER, and author’s calculations. The picture doesn’t really change if one expresses in per capita terms: Figure 2: Wisconsin total wages and salaries per capita deflated using chained CPI (blue), using official East North Central subregion CPI, adjusted using X ..read more

I’m not sure what it brings to the debate (see PolitiFact Wisconsin,  WisconsinWatch). The JEC-Republicans State Inflation Tracker : quantifies the inflation costs that American households are facing in the high inflationary environment that began in early 2021. We define monthly inflation costs as the additional expenditures in a given month required for a household to attain the same standard of living it achieved in the baseline month, January 2021. When I first was apprised of this resource, I thought “Great! – Somebody’s gone through the trouble to figure out a state-specific infl ..read more

From Motio Research: Updated Figure 1: Now includes red line at February 2020 peak value of 115.8 by MDC, which Motio Research suggests be taken as the peak for 2020. Source: Motio Research ..read more

Industrial production continues to rise, while February monthly GDP erased January’s decline. Figure 1: Nonfarm Payroll employment from CES (bold blue), civilian employment (orange), industrial production (red), personal income excluding current transfers in Ch.2017$ (bold green), manufacturing and trade sales in Ch.2017$ (black), consumption in Ch.2017$ (light blue), and monthly GDP in Ch.2017$ (pink), GDP, 3rd release (blue bars), all log normalized to 2021M11=0. Source: BLS via FRED, Federal Reserve, BEA 2023Q4 3rd release, S&P Global Market Insights (nee Macroeconomic Advisers, IHS Ma ..read more

From IMF WEO ..read more