Section 2 Extra Credit Sources for Fall 2022

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Module 3 Extra Credit Posts for Spring 2024

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For March 18 I announced in class that I would skip this one because I couldn't get the article link I wanted to use to open properly. I'll see if I can get it ready for Friday. So that make this one the last one that will appear on Test 3. For March 15 A month ago we looked at the big 4 recession indicators. I was worried because we had 2 reds in January, and I said we should keep on eye on the other two. Well, now it looks like this : Those 2 missing ones for January both came in as green. Plus another green one for February. So it's kind of more of the same: some troubling data, but most of it ... isn't. That's been the story for almost 2 years now. For March 13 Yesterday, the BLS announced the CPI and its inflation rate for February. The number came in right around expectations: an increase of 0.4% in prices in February, and an increase of 3.2% over the past year. Here's the press release . On the surface, those seem like pretty small numbers.  BUT, if you ...
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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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Module 1 Extra Credit Posts for Spring 2024

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For January 31st This post, and all others back to the start of the semester are the ones I may ask short answer extra credit questions about on Exam 1.  *** On Wednesday we just looked at some random news links about the FOMC's monetary policy decision ( this was one , and here is another ). Keep in mind that those articles were being updated in real time, so they may look a little different with the passage of time. As expected, they kept their target interest rate in the same range. They announce this at a press conference with a Q&A afterwards. Here's a video , and here's a transcript of the official statement . (Note that the video is one of those live event thingies where they just put the camera on and let it run ... so it's almost 2 hours long, but the speaker (Chairperson Jerome Powell) doesn't even come out until about the 59 minute mark). Those statements are super carefully worded because a lot of money is riding on potential interest rate changes; i...
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