Robert J. Barbera and Jonathan H. Wright We’ve written two pieces recently on Treasury yields amid the COVID recovery.  Wednesday’s  release of the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee’s Survey of […]

There is much excited talk in the press these days about the rise in ten-year yields to 1.5 percent and the rise to 2 percent for the breakeven inflation rates expressed when we comparing Treasury nominal and TIPS yields. The bond vigilantes are back! Another Great Inflation around the corner!

In December of 2019, the U.S. unemployment rate stood at 3.6% and prime age labor force participation, at 82.9%, was at an 11 year high. Today, December 2020 jobs figures were released, with unemployment at 6.7% and participation at 81%, both making it clear that today’s economic backdrop is bleak. These data also make clear that engineering an extended period of strong growth is highly justifiable.

How bad a year was 2020? During the year, the United States economy lost a net 9.4 million jobs — 6.2% of the jobs it had at the end of 2019. That is by far the largest annual decline since 1950. The years that included the financial crisis more than a decade ago had seen the largest losses of jobs, with a 3.7% decline in 2009 following a 2.6% fall in 2008. The year just ended was a little worse than the two of them combined.

In the spring of 2009, amid the darkest moments of the Great Recession, I published a book and a blogpost. The book, reviewed here, championed the notion that mainstream macroeconomic thinking failed to appreciate, for good and ill, the central role that finance plays in capitalist economies.

The United States, unlike many countries, releases its GDP figures as annual rates. That makes no sense now, when there are clearly forces at work that will not continue for quarters to come. It makes more sense to say the economy contracted 9.0% in the second quarter and expanded 7.1% in the third quarter.

Friday’s employment report indicates almost half of the jobs that vanished in the Pandemic have been recovered.. But there are some industries where there has been hardly any recovery – and those are mostly businesses that will not come back completely until there is a widespread belief that COVID-19 is no longer a threat to what used to be considered normal activities.

Source: The Conference Board Remember the sunny forecasts when the Pandemic began? This was to be a brief recession, followed by a “V” shaped recovery. You could see that forecast […]

It is tempting to look at the continued recovery of the labor market in July and be encouraged – even if there are indications that August may see a reversal. […]

One number stands out in today’s estimate of second quarter GDP, and it isn’t the overall real GDP decline of 32.9%, on an annualized basis, even though the headlines will […]

The new Quinnipiac Poll, released Wednesday, finds that – for the first time this year – more people disapprove than approve of the way President Trump is handling the economy. […]

The 538 webpage, part of ABC news and originally set up by Nate Silver is running an ongoing biweekly survey of academic macroeconomic forecasters about the coronavirus recession. Allan Timmermann […]