Viewpoints: 2019

Reflecting the relatively muted national increase, in general, states saw little change in payroll employment in October. Only 4 states (Texas, Maryland, Utah, and Nebraska) reported statistically significant gains. Michigan reported [...]

Policymakers have become enmeshed in the "politics of their numbers" and mistakenly see an inflation shortfall when in reality it's a policy problem. Monetary decisions nowadays are based on a single price gauge that is not fully [...]

BEA has released estimates of state GDP for the second quarter. Along with the new quarterly figures revised histories of state GDP were released, consistent with last summer's GDP revision. The highlighted figures were real growth [...]

Preemptive policy moves have been a defining feature of monetary policy. In the past policymakers have made preemptive rate adjustments in response to potential inflation pressures, financial market turmoil, and now perceived risks [...]

In mid September of this year, the Fed lost control of the federal funds rate to the upside. On September 17, the effective federal funds rate exceeded the midpoint of its target level by 17.5 basis points (see Chart 1, the blue [...]

Its now nearly two year since the Trump Administration and Congress passed major tax cuts for businesses and individuals and followed that legislative initiative up with a relatively large increase in spending for defense and [...]

Federal budget deficits need to be analyzed nowadays in the context of how much it is propping up the economic growth cycle because after a decade of record federal deficits the current business cycle would ran out of gas without [...]

How strong is the consumer sector? It depends on where you sit in the food chain of consumer sales and finance. Nominal growth of consumer spending in 2019 has slowed to its weakest growth rate in three years, with many traditional [...]