This blog post accompanies the SDPR Morning Macro segment that airs on Monday, December 16. Last Friday, December 13th, the U.S. Census Bureau reported its advanced estimates for retail and food-services sales for November 2019.  The report underwhelmed, signaling lower-than-expected sales during a crucial holiday-shopping month.  According to the Wall Street Journal, “Consumers held […]

  This blog post accompanies the SDPR Morning Macro segment that airs on Monday, December 2. Interest rates attract enormous attention in the financial press, and no wonder: credit—and, so, the cost of financing credit—supports many of the economic activities in which households, firms, and governments around the world engage.  In this regard, the U.S. […]

  This blog post accompanies the SDPR Morning Macro segment that airs on Monday, November 18. The U.S. economy has been in the expansion phase of its business cycle since the second quarter of 2009—the end of the Great Recession a decade ago.  An expansion is one of four so-called phases of a business cycle; the other […]

  This blog post accompanies the SDPR Morning Macro segment that airs on Monday, November 4. Last Wednesday, the Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) cut its target range for the federal funds rate by a quarter of one percent; the range is now 1.5 to 1.75 percent.  This was the third rate cut since July.  The […]

  This blog post accompanies the spring-2019 season finale of SDPR Morning Macro, which airs on Monday, May 20.  Please watch and listen for us in the fall.  Keep in touch.  And thank you. In February 1948, crowds filled Prague’s Old Square as Communist Czechoslovak Prime Minister Klement Gottwald announced the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia had successfully […]

  This blog post accompanies the SDPR Morning Macro segment that airs on Monday, May 13. Macroeconomic growth relies on credit. Credit is allocated in the financial system, where, by definition, individuals, firms, and governments with a surplus of  funds—think, lenders, for example—transfer these funds to individuals, firms, and governments with a shortage of funds—think, […]

  This blog post accompanies the SDPR Morning Macro segment that airs on Monday, May 6. Hours before this blogpost published, the Wall Street Journal reported that President Donald Trump announced, in a pair of tweets, that if trade negotiations between the United States and China dragged on much longer, he would significantly increase or […]

  This blog post accompanies the SDPR Morning Macro segment that airs on Monday, April 29. In The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, John Maynard Keynes (1936) observed, “Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually slaves of some defunct economist.  Madmen in authority, who hear […]

  This blog post accompanies the SDPR Morning Macro segment that airs on Monday, April 15. Tax day, what better day to discuss tax policy? In principle, the objectives of tax policy include, for example, high standards of living, full employment, strong and robust economic growth and innovation, low rates of poverty, and strong environmental […]