FRBSL — Meet the People behind FRED

Backgrounder on the economic data charting service provided by the Fed — making economic data free for all.

On the Economy — FRBSL
Meet the People behind FRED

FRED Blog — Did the U.S. government just achieve a surplus? : A closer look at our national accounts

Almost all governments run deficits, so it’s a big deal when a government achieves a surplus. This graph includes data for all levels of U.S. government (local, state, and federal) on the net result of their lending and borrowing: A net deficit appears below the zero line, and a net surplus appears above the zero line. Notice the sudden jump in the fourth quarter of 2017 that reaches just above zero? This is a seasonally adjusted data series, by the way, so this jump has nothing to do with the regular influx of tax payments as the filing deadline approaches. (And that particular seasonal jump is in the second quarter, anyway.) So what’s going on here?...

Notice "achieve." No one ever says, "achieve a deficit," only "achieve a balance" and "achieve a surplus."

FRED Blog
Did the U.S. government just achieve a surplus? : A closer look at our national accounts

FRED Blog — How Y=C+I+G has evolved : 70 years of quarterly national account data

FRED now has 70 years of quarterly national accounts data for the United States, which is an opportunity to look back at how the U.S. economy may have changed since 1947. In the graph above, we look at the three main expenditure components of real gross national product: real consumption, real investment, and real government expenses. They’re normalized to 100 for the first quarter of 1947, to make them more comparable....

FRED Blog
How Y=C+I+G has evolved : 70 years of quarterly national account data

Ramanan — FRED Graph: US 🇺🇸 Sectoral Balances

The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis has a nice website FRED where you can create charts and even observe them when new data gets updated. Below is the U.S. sectoral balances chart. This is a static image file. For the dynamic chart, track the link above (the header of this page).

The Case for Concerted Action
FRED Graph: US 🇺🇸 Sectoral Balances
V. Ramanan

Dirk Ehnts — Data source for US sectoral balances (links to data and updated graph)

FRED.

It looks like the private sector is starting to save more and/or invest less. The government deficit has stabilized, and so has the current account deficit. Given that the dollar is expensive and global growth weak, demand from the rest of the world will be relatively weak. In order to grow, demand must come from domestic sources then. The private sector, as I just wrote, does not seem to go on a spending binge (and into debt) right now, so it seems like expansionary fiscal policy is the way forward. Let’s see what 2017 brings.

econoblog 101
Data source for US sectoral balances (links to data and updated graph)
Dirk Ehnts | Lecturer at Bard College Berlin

FRED® Blog — Four shades of inflation risk

The St. Louis Fed recently released a price pressures measure that calculates, among other things, the likelihood inflation will run above 2.5% over the next year. Related measures capture probabilities for deflation and lower inflation—between 0% and 1.5% and between 1.5% and 2.5%. By the way, the relevant index is not the consumer price index (CPI), but rather the personal consumption expenditures price index (PCEPI), which is used by the Federal Reserve for its 2% inflation target. Take a look at this Economic Synopses essay for more details.…

FRBSL — The FRED® Blog
Four shades of inflation risk

circuit — Nod to the St. Louis Fed: NIPA tables now on FRED

This is news worth sharing for all those policy wonks out there. The St. Louis Fed has added over 10,000 new data series from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) National Income and Product Account tables to its excellent FRED database and research tool. FRED now counts over 70,000 series of data.

Fictional Reserve Banking
Nod to the St. Louis Fed: NIPA tables now on FRED
circuit

Sean Carmody — The power and peril of FRED

“FRED” is the St.Louis Federal Reserve Economic Database. It is an excellent repository of economic data, currently boasting 45,000 time-series from 42 data sources. The web-site offers a powerful interface for creating charts of FRED data. Unfortunately, it is a little too powerful, offering a rather dangerous feature: the secondary axis.

I have railed against secondary axes before. They tend to lure the viewer into seeing spurious correlations....

Read it at Stubborn Mule
The power and peril of FRED
by Stubborn Mule