FRED has added over 37,000 series from the gross domestic product by county release from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The current, real, and real growth values comprehensively measure the goods and services produced in a county, parish, or county equivalent. The release tables provide an easy way for users to compare the size and growth of county economies across the United States.
Energy, health care, and housing may be pushing down our low rate of inflation: Is it weaker demand or stronger supply that’s at work?
FRED has added 286 new indicators of uncertainty, expanding the World Uncertainty Index portion of the Economic Policy Uncertainty release with indexes for individual countries. These indexes—developed by Hites Ahir (International Monetary Fund), Nicholas Bloom (Stanford University), and Davide Furceri (International Monetary Fund)—determine uncertainty using the frequency of the word “uncertainty” (and its variants) in the quarterly Economist Intelligence Unit country reports. The release tables have been updated to group the regional and individual country indexes.
FRED has added 78 new indicators of policy uncertainty for the U.S. and the world, expanding the offerings from the Economic Policy Uncertainty release. The series added include a variety of news-based indexes of uncertainty around overall economic and trade policies, as well as indexes of market volatility, for particular countries, sectors of the economy, and regional aggregates. The release tables group the series by concept and similar methodology. To learn more about the individual methodologies behind each index, look for the relevant description in each of the series notes.
In this newsletter, we use graphs to visualize the relationship between the monetary base and the consumer price index, map the population and commercial banks in U.S. Federal Reserve Districts, share some tips for playing FREDcast, and quiz you on the tools of monetary policy.
This assignment provides instructions on building the graph below and includes suggested writing prompts for out-of-class assignments.
This assignment provides instructions on creating the population and commercial banks maps below and suggests prompts for in-class discussion. See how you do on our sample discussion questions below.
Click on the map above to view an interactive version.
Question: Name the largest and the smallest Federal Reserve Districts in terms of resident population.
Again, click on the map above to view an interactive version.
Question: How many commercial banks are in Texas and New Mexico combined? What Federal Reserve District includes those two states?
Monetary policy is informed by economic activity. In September 2019, weaker demand for U.S. exports and low inflation resulted in a decrease in interest rates. Read on for more details and a list of resources to become a better FREDcast forecaster.
According to the Federal Open Market Committee, “Information received since the Federal Open Market Committee met in July indicates that the labor market remains strong and that economic activity has been rising at a moderate rate.”
“Consistent with its statutory mandate, the Committee seeks to foster maximum employment […] The Committee decided to lower the target range for the federal funds rate to 1-3/4 to 2 percent.”
https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/pressreleases/monetary20190918a.htm
Q1. How did the rates of change of the Brazilian money supply and the consumer price index change in the early and mid-1990s?
Q2. Based on the information contained in the graph, how do changes in the growth rate of the money supply impact consumer price inflation?
Q1. How did the size of M1 and the velocity of M1 change between 2001 and 2008? Did both increase, decrease, or remain constant?
Q2. How did the size of M1 and the velocity of M1 change after 2008? Did both increase, decrease, or remain constant?
Q3. According to the quantity theory of money, how would the general price level change if the money supply increased and its velocity decreased?
One of the functions of the Federal Reserve System is to be the “fiscal agent” of the U.S. Treasury. That involves making payments on its behalf and receiving its receipts.
Q1. Consider the Treasury’s general account balance at the Fed since 1990. How has it changed?
Beginning in October 2008, the U.S. Treasury assisted the Federal Reserve System in responding to the 2008-09 Financial Crisis by issuing additional short-term debt through the Supplementary Financing Program.
Q2. How would the Treasury’s role in fighting the Financial Crisis show up in its general account balance at the Fed?
Now that you’ve aced this quiz, give it to your students using this dashboard. To customize this dashboard, just click the “Save to My Account” button at the top of the dashboard.
FRED has added both the current and real-time Sahm Rule recession indicators, created by Claudia Sahm as part of a policy proposal for the book “Recession Ready: Fiscal Policies to Stabilize the American Economy.”
The Sahm Rule identifies signals related to the start of a recession when the three-month moving average of the national unemployment rate (U3) rises by 0.50 percentage points or more relative to its low during the previous 12 months. The current series is calculated using the revised values for the unemployment rate (UNRATE series in FRED), while the real-time series is calculated using only the unemployment rate (and the recent history of unemployment rates) that were available in a given month.
On October 4, 2019, FRED will no longer include data from the FTSE Russell. All 36 series from the Russell Indexes will be deleted from the FRED database, Excel Add-in, mobile apps, APIs, and all other FRED services.
Custom links to these series or custom graphs that contain these series may be broken or may return unexpected results. We apologize for this inconvenience and hope you continue to find value in our free data services.
FRED has added over 400 series on the refugee population and international migrant stock from the World Bank’s World Development Indicators.
International migrant stock is the number of people born in a country other than the one they live in, including refugees. Refugees are people recognized as such
Asylum seekers—people who have applied for asylum or refugee status and who have not yet received a decision or who are registered as asylum seekers—are excluded.
These series include data for individual countries, country groups, and the world. Search FRED for “refugees” or “migrant stock” to explore the data!
FRED has added over 440 data series from the Board of Governors’ H.4.1 statistical release Factors Affecting Reserve Balances. The release tables provide a detailed view of the reserve balances of U.S. depository institutions, the condition statements of each Federal Reserve Bank, and several other tables on the assets, liabilities, and commitments of the Federal Reserve Banks.
FRED has added over 18,500 series from the Local Area Unemployment Statistics release of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS): monthly and annual-average estimates of civilian labor force, employed people, unemployed people, and unemployment rates for all census regions and divisions, states, and counties as well as metropolitan areas. The data are based on the Current Population Survey (CPS), which is the household survey used to calculate the national unemployment rate.
