As promised by Donald Trump? “We’re going to have prices down- I think you’re going to see some pretty drastic price reductions.” Associated Press, Trump holds a press conference at Mar-a-Lago, YouTube (January 7, 2025). And here’s the data we have. Figure 1: CPI…

Based on residential investment construction July release (starts 1.428 mn > 1.29 mn Bbg consensus; permits 1.354mn < 1.39mn Bbg consensus): Figure 1: Residential fixed investment (bold black), Survey of Professional Forecasters August median f’cast (light blue), GDPNow of 8/19 (dark…

trillions of dollars that appear to be economic growth are just borrowing from the future — a debt that will eventually have to be repaid with taxes or inflation. Both will kill growth. Consumers are in the same boat. Families have…

Is gold supplanting the dollar? Did the use of sanction by the US reduce holdings of dollars by targeted central banks? Did the 2018-19 tariffs reduce holdings of dollars by countries hit with Section 232 tariffs? Jeff Frankel, Hiro Ito and…

Here’re the July PPI and CPI for coffee. Figure 1: PPI for roasted coffee, n.s.a. (blue), and CPI for coffee, s.a. (tan), all in logs 2025M01=0. Source: BLS via FRED, and author’s calculations. Note that near month futures for coffee are…

From Bunn and Pomerleau/Tax Foundation, “Will E.J. Antoni Raise Your Taxes?”: Every year the IRS adjusts more than a dozen tax thresholds to account for inflation, a process called indexing. In 2020 the 10% tax bracket applied to income up to…

With the outsized jump in the PPI, the natural question to ask is whether this implies a jump in the CPI. The evidence is mixed in terms of the aggregate PPI and the aggregate CPI, as noted in this post. More…

From Daily Signal: President Donald Trump was right to fire BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer, a Biden appointee, for these mistakes, even if they were the result of systemic flaws, not partisanship. Antoni, whom Trump nominated as her replacement on Monday, can…

Manufacturing employment, exports declines. Employment release from DWD today.

It’s really a statement on our times. Source; Kalshi, accessed 8/15/2025. As noted in an excellent article by Lauren Gurley in WaPo, these are some views of Dr. Antoni, two of which I was unaware of: Bureau of Labor Statistics data…

Preliminary readings for August. Not particularly good. Figure 1: One year ahead CPI inflation expectations, % (blue, left scale), Consumer Sentiment (red, right scale). Dashed line at “Liberation Day”. Source: U.Michigan. 5 year inflation expectations at 3.9% were up from 3.4%,…

The picture as of today’s releases, with IP, retail sales below consensus. Figure 1: Nonfarm Payroll from CES (bold blue), implied NFP Bloomberg consensus as of 7/1 (blue +), civilian employment with smoothed population controls (orange), industrial production (red), personal income…

Shocker in PPI: 0.9% vs. 0.2% m/m consensus: Figure 1: Instantaneous inflation for core CPI (blue), core PCE deflator (green), core PPI (tan) per Eeckhout (2023), T=12, a=4.  Source: BLS, BEA, via FRED, and author’s calculations. 

SP Global’s monthly GDP series is up (with prediction of flat GDP in Q3): Figure 1: Nonfarm Payroll from CES (bold blue), civilian employment with smoothed population controls (orange), industrial production (red), Bloomberg implied consensus as of 8/13 (red square), personal…

Thanks to Paul Krugman for citing my brief paper on EJ Antoni’s 2022 recession claim, in “Hackification”, all in the cause of exposing the abuses of data now taking place. Krugman quotes Hannah Arendt: Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate…

A paper (Nov. 2024) (first version Oct. 2024): Downloadable data used in the paper here [xlsx]. This paper is a rebuttal to this article (paper on different server, in case article disappears from original site). Key graph from their paper: .…

From CNN today: “Until it is corrected, the BLS should suspend issuing the monthly job reports but keep publishing the more accurate, though less timely, quarterly data,” he told Fox Business. “Major decision-makers from Wall Street to D.C. rely on these…

From the CPI release today: Figure 1: CPI all urban (bold blue), CPI – household furnishings and operations (tan), CPI – final demand, consumer durables (green), all in logs 2025M01=0. Source: BLS via FRED, author’s calculations. While m/m CPI headline growth…

Bloomberg, Truflation at 2.8% y/y; Cleveland Fed at 2.72%. Figure 1: CPI-all (bold black), Cleveland Fed nowcast (red triangle), Bloomberg consensus, Truflation estimate (light blue square). Source: BLS, Cleveland Fed, Truflation, author’s calculations.

From CNBC: “I am pleased to announce that I am nominating Highly Respected Economist, Dr. E.J. Antoni, as the next Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on Monday evening. Just to clarify, Dr. Antoni declared…

Let’s hope capex investment in data centers is sustained. Figure 1: Nonresidential fixed investment (blue) GDPNow of 8/7 (light blue square), nonresidential fixed investment minus data center capex (dark red), GDPNow of 8/7 (red square), all in bn.Ch.2017$ SAAR. Annual data…

Today we are pleased to present a guest contribution by Mark Copelovitch (University of Wisconsin – Madison) and Thomas Pepinsky (Cornell University). Are cryptocurrencies viable as money? What is the economic function of “shitcoins” and “stablecoins”? And how can we understand the political…

Courtesy of Ed Yardeni: Source: Yardeni as edited by Chinn. In terms of assessing how the general economy is responding to tariff and other uncertainty shocks, one might want to look at the SP500 excluding the Magnificent 7. As of August…

We’re about halfway into Q3. Nowcasts put equipment and structures investment — particularly forward looking investment — at near flat relative to Q2. Figure 1: Equipment and Structures investment (blue line, left log scale), GDPNow nowcast of 8/7 (light blue square),…

Personally, I’m not convinced, but if you are, then consider this graph: Figure 1: Nonfarm payroll employment from July release (bold black), from June release (green), civilian employment adjusted to the NFP concept, experimental research series using smoothed population controls (bold…

Here’re other prior 2 month cumulative revisions, normalized by employment (after all, the country has been growing for the past 100 years): Source: Abecasis, Walker, “US Daily: Q&A on the Revisions in the July Employment Report,” Goldman Sachs, August 2, 2025.…

From Cleveland Fed, Goldman Sachs, plus Bloomberg consensus – generally, acceleration in the q/q annualized: Figure 1: Quarter-on-Quarter annualized inflation of CPI (bold black), Cleveland Fed nowcast as of 8/8 (gray square), Bloomberg consensus, Kalshi betting CT (chartreuse triangle), Goldman Sachs…

Lots of stories regarding the impact of CEA Chair’s temporary appointment to the vacancy at the Fed Board. For an insight into Dr. Miran’s views, here’s a list of his peer reviewed articles. Peer-Reviewed Article Balanced budget requirements lead to substantial…

I hear that Bannon is pushing Heritage Chief Economist EJ Antoni for BLS Commissioner. EJ Antoni: Source: Heritage Foundation, accessed 8/7/2025.  If he is nominated, I’ll just observe that he declared (with St. Onge) a recession starting in 2022 [1]. And…

Manufacturing employment, hours, capacity utilization down since March 2025 (pre-“Liberation Day”); manufacturing production (Fed index) flat since March. Figure 1: Manufacturing employment, all employees (brown), manufacturing aggregate hours (green), manufacturing production (blue), real value added in manufacturing (blue bars), all in…

Bill McBride’s assessment here. In early April, I went on recession watch, but I’m still not yet predicting a recession for several reasons: the U.S. economy is very resilient and was on solid footing at the beginning of the year, and…

You think the official BLS NFP series is worrying, consider the alternatives: Figure 1: BLS establishment nonfarm payroll (NFP) July series (bold blue), Jun series (light blue), Philadelphia Fed early benchmark (green), and experimental BLS household series adjusted to NFP concept,…

Discussed the employment numbers on WPR this morning. One question came up, which inspired this post – how’s Wisconsin doing, tradewise, given the states’ trade/manufacturing dependence. Figure 1: 12 month trailing moving average of Wisconsin goods exports deflated by US goods…

From Cavallo et al. (Aug. 2025): Source: Cavallo,  et al. (Aug 2, 2025). Some data consistent with an impact of tariffs: Figure 1: PCE-durables deflator (blue), PCE-services deflator (tan), in logs 2025M01=0 Source: BEA.

This week’s livestream featuring Menzie Chinn and Lydia Cox, moderated by Mike Knetter, is Tuesday, Aug. 5, at 7 p.m. CDT (hosted by the Wisconsin Alumni Association): Register here. In the first half of the year, the Trump administration has reshaped…

Through 8/3: Figure 1: EPU (blue, left scale), EPU-trade (green, right scale). Source: policyuncertainty.com.  Trade policy uncertainty, I can see why that’s risen. Economic Policy Uncertainty? Well, if you start disassembling the economic data infrastructure that underpins TIPS, Social Security COLAs,…

From the NYT: Two days after President Trump fired the top labor official in charge of compiling statistics on employment, Kevin Hassett, the director of the White House National Economic Council, insisted on Sunday that the administration was “absolutely not” shooting the messenger…

Maybe, maybe not. With the employment release of Friday, here’re the pictures, first of NBER’s BCDC key indicators, and second of alternative indicators (recalling all the most recent data will be revised): Figure 1: Nonfarm Payroll from CES (bold blue), implied…

Durables consumption has experienced extreme volatility over the last 9 months (since the election). However, services and nondurables should follow the permanent income hypothesis — at least halfway (DSGE’s usually incorporate about 50% hand-to-mouth consumers). So what do we see? Figure…

Policy uncertainty through 8/1: Figure 1: EPU – trade (blue, left scale), EPU (green, right scale). Source: policyuncertainty.com.

CEA Chair Miran asserts that some of the surprise in the employment numbers is due issues of seasonality. Can we see that? I can’t… Here’s y/y growth rate of the official series and the seasonally adjusted series. Figure 1: Year-on-year growth…

As of 1:35PM CT today, the President has fired the Commissioner of Labor Statistics, within 6 hours of the latest employment release. So what all of feared about the safety of the independence of our economic statistical agencies has come to…

Tales from the Employment Situation release for July: (1) July Establishment employment change below consensus; (2) Revisions make trends slower; (3) Adds data indicating a slowdown. Figure 1: Nonfarm Payroll Employment, July release (bold black, right log scale), implied Bloomberg consensus…

Today, we present a guest post written by Jeffrey Frankel, Harpel Professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and formerly a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, and Sohaib Nasim.  A shorter version appeared at Project Syndicate.  Donald Trump…

Baker, Bloom and Davis and Caldara et al. measures: Figure 1: EPU-trade category (blue, left scale), and Trade Policy Uncertainty index (red, right scale). Source: Baker, Bloom & Davis policyuncertainty.com, and Caldara et al. TPUD. [updated 7/28] Tariffs will go into…

Though not quite to February rates: Figure 1: Instantaneous inflation for core CPI (blue), core PCE deflator (brown), core PCE deflator (market) (green) per Eeckhout (2023), T=12, a=4.  Source: BLS, BEA, via FRED, and author’s calculations.  How has inflation evolved for people…

CRFB spreadsheet here for now; to be updated. Figure 1: CBO GDP projection from January 2025 (black), implied CEA June forecast (blue), both in bn.Ch.2017$, by fiscal year. Source: CRFB. A quarterly look at the CEA implied forecast calculated by me here.…

Following up on Jim’s post on the GDP release yesterday, looking at different aspects of economic activity: Quarterly Indicators First, ignoring the self-congratulatory remarks of CEA47, consider the level of GDP relative to the 2024H2 trend: Figure 1: GDP fm Q2…

Atlanta Fed nowcast incorporating advance economic indicators indicates 2.9% q/q AR, up from 2.4%. The news is in final sales to private domestic purchasers. Figure 1: Final sales to private domestic purchasers (bold black), GDPNow of 7/25 (red *), GDPNow of…