Viewpoints: January 2021

Two decades of price mismeasurement and policy confusion have left everyone bewildered and puzzled over inflation. Inaccuracies in inflation measurement are far from being merely academic; it reopens the fundamental issue of inflation [...]

While I was still trying to "process", as the kids say, the events that took place the Wednesday before, on January 13, the Treasury released its December 2020 budgetary data. In the Calendar Year (CY) 2020, the federal government ran [...]

The statistical bounce off a record plunge in economic activity linked to the pandemic has proved to be short-lived. The economy is not moving forward in a sustainable way, evident by three consecutive monthly declines in retail [...]

In December, payroll employment fell 140,000, the first monthly decline since April. The job loss would have been much larger if it were not for the ability of a large number of businesses to offer their employees the ability to work [...]

Tinges of optimism that had crept into discussions about the global economic outlook toward the end of last year have given way to more balance and even perhaps heightened pessimism in recent weeks. Rapidly rising case numbers in the [...]