Viewpoints

Recently, I shared my concerns about price mismeasurement for owner-occupied housing with a senior official who works in the Division of Consumer Prices at the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The senior official agreed with me, [...]

The performance of the world economy in coming months remains hostage to a number of factors but the evolution of the COVID-19 virus is the most important. As we discuss below, however, recent evidence on the virus front has been very [...]

Some positive trends Amidst the daily barrage of bad news stories that pervade the international media, a number of positive trends have unfolded in recent weeks. For example: • At the global level there has been a sharp retreat in [...]

Suppose Congress passes something close to Biden's Administration stimulus proposal of $1.9 trillion. In that case, that will lift the cumulative amount of fiscal stimulus in the past 12 months to $5 trillion---three tranches $2.2 [...]

January was riddled with some troublesome headlines. Political instability engulfed a number of countries including the US, Italy, the Netherlands – and via vaccine concerns – the European Commission. Worries about COVID mutations in [...]

Two decades of price mismeasurement and policy confusion have left everyone bewildered and puzzled over inflation. Inaccuracies in inflation measurement are far from being merely academic; it reopens the fundamental issue of inflation [...]

While I was still trying to "process", as the kids say, the events that took place the Wednesday before, on January 13, the Treasury released its December 2020 budgetary data. In the Calendar Year (CY) 2020, the federal government ran [...]

The statistical bounce off a record plunge in economic activity linked to the pandemic has proved to be short-lived. The economy is not moving forward in a sustainable way, evident by three consecutive monthly declines in retail [...]