Section 2 Extra Credit Sources for Fall 2022

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Section I Extra Credit Posts for Spring 2023

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Since I moved the exam back by 1 week, only posts below here (January 30th or earlier) will potentially be sources of extra credit questions on Exam 1. For January 30th We get U.S. macroeconomic data from more than one source. Some comes from the BEA. Another big source is the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS.gov). We also get some from the Census Bureau (they don't just sit around for 10 years between each decennial population census). These agencies release many different measures of the inflation rate (used for different purposes). An important one, because it's used by policymakers in D.C., is the PCE. Measures of this are released at the same time as GDP. Last week's announcement showed a rate of 3.2%/year during 2022 IV. You can find this on FRED, although it might not be the top link in Google. Today it was the second one, and the codename for the data series is PCEPI. If you go there, it shows a graph in which the last couple of years of higher inflation are the ste...
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Module 1 Extra Credit Posts for Fall 2025

September 22nd Skipped this today.   September 19th Skipped this today. September 17th The decision on interest rates was announced before class. What they are deciding on is a target for a rate; but it's not a rate that you or I have access to. Instead it is a rate used by banks between themselves. It's ... kind of ... the rate they all have in common. The thinking is that other rates that are less common will move in tandem with this one (and yes, they do tend to fairly strongly). They also don't set a rate anymore, rather they set a quarter point range in which it can fluctuate.  I showed a graph in class, but you should redo that search (since it was so close to the announcement that the data had not been updated yet). To see their upper limit on that range, you can use keywords like " FRED FOMC upper limit ". It is now 4.25%/year. The lower limit is 0.25%/year lower. The upper and lower limits were dropped by 0.25%/year. You will sometimes hear this referred ...
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Module 2 Extra Credit Posts for Spring 2024

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For February 19 This will be the last post from which short answer extra credit questions for Test 2 will be drawn. There's an interesting tidbit of data out this week. The FOMC makes monetary policy on behalf of the Federal Reserve (the U.S. central bank).  The FOMC walks a fine line, since they make decisions about setting interest rates. On one hand, they want to be open about their decisions. On the other hand, a lot of money is invested to figure out what they're going to do before they do it.  One way they balance these is that they do release the minutes of their 1.5 day meetings, but not until about a month after the meeting. Today we got the minutes from the January meeting covered earlier this semester. Armchair-macroeconomists and politicians will tell you that inflation is down. End of story.  Then the politicians say "Yeah us!" But there's more to it, since inflation tends to be persistent. And it can ignite again, sort of like the embers of a dying f...
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