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I don’t have the answer, but the two series do make quite a picture (all in logs since five years ago): Figure 1: Log difference from 6/29/2021 in bitcoin (green, left scale), in gold (blue, right scale). Source: TradingEconomics.com. On equities, note the Nasdaq is down, while the SP500 is below peak, but not yet falling drastically. Figure 2: Log difference from 6/29/2021 in Nasdaq (green), in SP500 (blue). Source: TradingEconomics.com. For economists, a bubble occurs when the price d

Coincident continues to rise through May, while Bloomberg consensus for NFP growth is for +114K, roughly same growth rate as in May: Figure 1: Civilian employment adjusted to NFP concept smoothed population controls (bold orange), manufacturing production (red), ADP private nonfarm payroll employment (light green), Bloomberg consensus of 6/29 (light green +), real retail sales, CPI deflated (black), freight services indexes (brown), and coincident index in Ch.2017$ (pink), GDO (blue bars), all

As of NYMEX open: This has occurred as the chances of a near term reopening have declined. Notes: August 1 (orange), September (blue), October (green). Source: Kalshi, accessed 6/28/2026, 5:15PM CT.

I’ve been remiss in reporting on this important work by Kristin Forbes, Jongrim Ha and Ayhan Kose, documenting periods of monetary policy tightening ad loosening, and characteristics of those episodes. From the paper: Source: Forbes, Ha and Kose (ungated version, 2024). The methodology of identifying the cycles will look familiar to those familiar with business cycle dating. The chronology is here: Source: Forbes, Ha and Kose (ungated version, 2024). From the abstract: We analyse cycles

As of yesterday: Source: Barchart, accessed 6/27/2026. Literally, prices are higher near future than front month, which is different from backwardation (which was typical during most of the war). This seems to coincide with a recent drop in re-opening expectations. Source: Kalshi, accessed 6/27/2026 4:45pm.  

Nowcasted June inflation will be down — but for core not down much… Figure 1: Headline PCE deflator instantaneous inflation (blue), core PCE (tan), per Eeckhout (2023), both T=12, a=4. June observation uses y/y nowcast of 6/26. Source: BEA, Cleveland Fed, and author’s calculations.

As of the 2026Q1 3rd release: Figure 1: GDP (bold black), GDI (red), GDO (blue), GDP+ growth iterated on 2022Q2 GDP (green), all in bn.Ch.2017$ SAAR. Source: BEA 2026Q1 3rd release, Philadelphia Fed, and author’s calculations. GDO is growing more slowly than GDP (1.4% vs. 1.6% q/q AR; 2.4% vs. 2.5% y/y).  

Beats consensus/preliminary (49.5 vs. 48.9), rising above May final (44.8) — but still low: Figure 1: U.Michigan Economic Sentiment (blue), Conference Board Confidence Index (brown), Gallup Confidence (green), all demeaned and divided by standard deviation 2021M01-2025m02. NBER defined peak-to-trough recession dates shaded gray. Red dashed line at “Liberation Day”, purple at US-Israel-Iran war. Source: UMichigan, Gallup, Conference Board, and author’s calculations. The Michigan Sentiment

The Financial Post reports: Economists in a Bloomberg survey now see Canada’s economy expanding just 0.7% this year after shrinking in the first quarter. Here’s a picture of the forecasted deceleration: Figure 1: Canadian GDP (blue), Bloomberg consensus (red square), prior Bloomberg consensus (light red square), all in mn.Ch.2017C$, SAAR. Source: CanStats, FP, author’s calculations.  

GDPNow updated downward: Figure 1: GDP (bold black), GDPNow of 6/26 (blue square), St . Louis Fed news nowcast of 6/26 (orange circle), NY Fed nowcast (red triangle), May SPF (purple), June FT Booth  survey (chartreuse), 10th/90th percentiles (chartreuse +), all in bn.Ch.2017$, SAAR. Source: BEA 2026Q1 3rd release, Atlanta Fed, NY Fed, St Louis Fed, Philadelphia Fed, FT-Booth survey, and author’s calculations. There’s less dispersion in nowcasts and tracking forecasts. Goldman Sach

From U.Michigan, preliminary sentiment at 48.9 vs. 46.1 consensus. Figure 1: U.Michigan Economic Sentiment (blue), Conference Board Confidence Index (brown), Gallup Confidence (green), all demeaned and divided by standard deviation 2021M01-2025m02. NBER defined peak-to-trough recession dates shaded gray. Red dashed line at “Liberation Day”, purple as US-Iran war start. Source: UMichigan, Gallup, Conference Board, and author’s calculations.

As is often the case, I cannot verify this claim made by EJ Antoni, Chief Economist for Heritage Foundation. What is true is that the price of natural gas (piped) has declined. But not for electricity. And roughly 42% of households are heated/cooled by electricity (a rising share), compared to 47% for natural gas. In addition, for lighting etc. you’d need to draw on electricity. Figure 1: CPI natural gas (piped) (blue), CPI electricity (red), simple arithmetic average (black), all s.a.,

Heritage Foundation’s Chief Economist EJ Antoni speculates: Well, I can imagine. The world price would be slightly lower, but we wouldn’t be insulated from a price shock exactly for the reason he identifies for why natural gas prices have fallen in the US: we lack sufficient facilities to export natural gas (as it’d have to be LNG). I want to pose a different counterfactual. What if we’d maintained incentives for EV’s, maybe even expanded them more than we did. Th

Which is good insofar as we’re going to get plenty more of it (see quote here). PPI upside surprise +1.1% vs. +0.7 m/m (Bloomberg). Core slightly below consensus  (+0.4% vs. +0.5%). AIER’s Everyday Price Index near my estimate of (1.18% m/m vs 1.16% nowcasted). Figure 1: Headline CPI (bold black), chained CPI, n.s.a. (green), CPI for wage earners and clerical workers (red), CPI-ex shelter (orange), PCE deflator (purple), PPI final demand (teal), GDP deflator (pink), AIER Everyday P

Readers of Econbrowser know that I’ve put a lot of stress on using high frequency measures of uncertainty and risk to interpret recent events. One of those indices is the Caldara-Iacoviello GeoPolitical Risk index (GPR), referenced in too many of my posts. Matteo Iacoviello and his coauthor Jonathan Tong have undertaken a new project of invaluable service to the profession, developing AI-GPR, which uses LLMs (paper here). Here’s the recent time series on AI-GPR. Figure 1: AI-GPR (b

Everyday prices nowcasted to outstripping measured CPI and subindices: Figure 1: CPI-all urban (bold black), CPI wage earners and clerical (green), CPI ex-shelter (purple), CPI chained (red), PCE deflator (chartreuse), AIER Everday Price Index (pink), all 2025M01=1.0, on log scale. Chained CPI is n.s.a. April AIER EPI is nowcasted using CPI and gasoline price changes. May PCE deflator is nowcasted as of 6/10. Source: BLS, BEA via FRED, AIER, Cleveland Fed, and author’s calculations. Interestin

Given positive Q1 GDP growth (albeit with downside surprise of 0.3% vs 0.5% q/q Bloomberg consensus, vs. 0.4% Melbourne Institute nowcast), there’s been a substantial amount of commentary regarding elevated recession risks [1] [2]. I find this surprising as the IMF’s April WEO projected 2% y/y growth for 2026 — of course conditional on a baseline that assumed eventually decreasing oil prices.  On June 3, OECD projected 1.9%, while the latest Economist Intelligence Unit forecast

Friday release of May employment (labor force survey): Figure 1: Monthly employment from Labor Force survey (blue), nonfarm payroll employmet from Survey of Payroll, Employment and Hours (SPEH) (red), and monthly GDP  (green), all in logs, 2025M10=0. Source: StatCan, and author’s calculations. The last two observations on civilian employment — based upon population controls, etc. — pertain to Q2 (rather than Q1), as does the last observation on monthly GDP. See this post on q

From WisPolitics: “We’re going to come out and your fertilizer prices are going to go way down just like they were four months ago. Your fertilizer’s down, your energy’s down, your oil, your gas is all coming way down. And frankly, I thought it would go much higher than it did,” Trump said during the visit, his first in Wisconsin of his second term. So far, the situation has not been improving during the course of the war: Figure 1: Ag Econ Barometer index (blue, left scale), log ratio of worl

At least according to EJ Antoni’s definition, in his critique of employment growth under the Biden administration: gov’t and the gov’t-dominated healthcare sector [employment growth].. it’s all tax-payer funded, and it’s not at all sustainable. OK, here’s the picture of employment growth since January, decomposed into “sustainable” and “unsustainable” components (in this latter case, health and social services, and government employmennt). Figure 1: Month on