Although a variety of factors influence the movement of interest rates, the Federal Reserve strongly influences the movement of interest rates through its policies. Through its “Open Market Operations” (the purchase and sale of Treasury securities), the Federal Reserve primarily controls the money supply in the U.S. The amount of money circulating in the economy […]
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The Financial Crisis The graph below shows the U.S. unemployment rate over the period 2001–2010. After reaching a peak unemployment rate of 6.3% in June 2003 during the recession following the turn of the century, the unemployment rate began a gradual decline and bottomed out at 4.4% in late 2006 and early 2007. Over a […]
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First a little background on measuring economic growth. The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) compiles and publishes Gross Domestic Product (GDP) statistics, which measures the U.S. output of goods and services and is the benchmark for measuring economic growth. Quarterly GDP growth is usually expressed as a percentage that represents the rate at which U.S. economic output […]
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The Financial Crisis The United States began 2009 with arguably the worst economic landscape since the Great Depression, an economic scenario that began to unfold in late 2007. A tanking stock market, falling housing prices, increasing unemployment, and an economic recession. The root cause of the crisis – the housing market. A collage of factors […]
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Overview First, a quick long-term overview on trends in business debt. The blue line in Chart 1 below shows the amount of outstanding nonfinancial corporate business debt securities and loans from 1945 through the first quarter of 2020. The shaded areas of the chart indicate recession periods. From a long-term perspective, the amount of corporate […]
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During the economic recovery the split between how individual and corporate taxes comprised total federal tax revenues changed, primarily as a result of the 2018 federal tax changes. Before we review what happened in the last decade during the economic recovery, a long-term view of what has changed. Chart 1 below shows the percentage composition […]
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Overview First, a quick long-term overview on trends in U.S. international trade. Chart 1 below shows U.S. net exports from 1980-2019. Net exports are defined as the exports of U.S. goods and services to other countries minus the imports of goods and services from other countries to the U.S. In other words, it shows the […]
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What happened with manufacturing during the economic recovery? Did manufacturing employment rebound during the recovery? Well, yes and no, it depends on how you look at the numbers. First, a long-term overview of what has happened to manufacturing employment in the United States. Chart 1 shows two lines. The blue line indicates the number of […]
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Wealth Distribution Relative to before the financial crisis of 2007-2009, wealth inequality increased during the economic recovery. The Federal Reserve tracks wealth distribution in the United States through their Distributional Financial Accounts (DFA) database. The Distributional Financial Accounts provide quarterly estimates of the distribution of U.S. household wealth, beginning with the third quarter of 1989. […]
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Before the onset of the coronavirus, the United States enjoyed its longest period of economic growth in history – beginning in 2010 and ending in 2020. During that period some things stayed the same, and some things didn’t. This blog series will take a look at what happened to some key economic factors over that […]
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