Is Cheaper Oil Good News or Bad News for U.S. Economy?
Oil prices have declined substantially since the summer of 2014.
Just Released: The New York Fed Staff Forecast, May 2015
Today, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRBNY) is hosting the spring meeting of its Economic Advisory Panel (EAP). As has become custom at this meeting, FRBNY staff are presenting their forecast for U.S. growth, inflation, and unemployment through the end of 2016. Following the presentation, members of the EAP, which consists of leading economists in academia and the private sector, are asked to discuss the staff forecast. Such feedback helps the staff evaluate the assumptions and reasoning underlying the forecast and the key risks to it. Subjecting the staff forecast to periodic evaluation is also important because it informs the staff’s discussions with New York Fed President William Dudley about economic conditions. In that same spirit, we are sharing a short summary of the staff forecast in this post. For more detail, please see the material from the EAP meeting on our website.
Just Released: April Empire State Manufacturing Survey Indicates Sluggish Conditions
The April 2015 Empire State Manufacturing Survey, released today, points to continued weakness in New York’s manufacturing sector. The survey’s headline general business conditions index turned slightly negative for the first time since December, falling 8 points to -1.2 in a sign that the growth in manufacturing had paused. The new orders index—a bellwether of demand for manufactured goods—was also negative, pointing to a modest decline in orders for a second consecutive month. Employment growth slowed, too. The Empire Survey has been signaling sluggish growth since October of last year after fairly strong readings from May through September.
No Guarantees, No Trade!
World trade fell 20 percent relative to world GDP in 2008 and 2009.
Highlights from the Global Research Forum on International Macroeconomics and Finance
International financial flows are a key feature of the global landscape and are relevant in many ways for central banks.
Crisis Chronicles: The Panic of 1819—America’s First Great Economic Crisis
As we noted in our last post on the British crisis of 1816, while Britain emerged from nearly a quarter century of war with France ready to supply the world with manufactured goods, it needed cotton to supply the mills, and all of Europe needed wheat to supplement a series of poor harvests.
Crisis Chronicles: The Crisis of 1816, the Year without a Summer, and Sunspot Equilibria
In 1815, England emerged victorious after what had been nearly a quarter century of war with France.
Crisis Chronicles: The British Export Bubble of 1810 and Pegged versus Floating Exchange Rates
In the early 1800s, Napoleon’s plan to defeat Britain was to destroy its ability to trade.
Crisis Chronicles: The Hamburg Crisis of 1799 and How Extreme Winter Weather Still Disrupts the Economy
With intermittent war raging across much of Western Europe near the end of the eighteenth century, by about 1795, Hamburg had replaced Amsterdam as an important hub for commodities trade.
Crisis Chronicles: The Collapse of the French Assignat and Its Link to Virtual Currencies Today
In the late 1700s, France ran a persistent deficit and by the late 1780s struggled with how to balance the budget and pay down the debt.
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