I immediately thought of the bread basket at Le Dip and cannot believe it is actually the winner because DC is objectively not a great bread town.

You should not take a Teams meeting in a coffee shop

Schools are mostly competing for students from upper income families who can pay so I imagine that answer is yes

The answer I got to this question (talking to economists who talked to admins about this) is that you get more demand if parents think their child is getting a discount off a high sticker price than if the school just lowers the sticker price

Big virtual hug

Nice job!

+1 on integrity and honesty
on boring: there are lots of jobs that seem exciting and are in fact tedious and awful. Economic and social measurement is mostly the opposite - seems like it might be boring until you start doing it

if you commit crimes in a green badge you are out of luck

It would make a great supplement to an undergrad macro course but also it's also just a nice read if you are want an approachable take on how to understand inflation dynamics

It's a rare gift to talk about economics is a way that is accessible to a general audience

Not at all what I mean -

There are many very smart economists at the Fed (and academia), who think about this deeply, and are very knowledgeable.

But there's just still a lot in this space that we don't fully understand (which is why research is so important)

Marty Olney just released a great little book on inflation - what causes it (we don’t really know), how the Fed manages it (lots we don’t know here too - how expectations are formed, whose matter more)

Super accessible and sadly very timely:

mitpress.mit.edu/978026255315...

March CPI: If one wants to see where the cost of war comes home it is in the energy complex inside the March CPI. That 30.7% increase in fuel oil and large double digit increases across the complex in addition to that 21.2% jump in gasoline prices. #Econ #EconSky

We are both posting very upstate NY takes after they have gone to bed

No way

Posting this from California made me homesick and hungry at the same time

(Bloomberg) -- Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell summoned Wall Street leaders to an urgent meeting on concerns that the latest artificial intelligence model from Anthropic PBC will usher in an era of greater cyber risk. Bessent and Powell assembled the group at Treasury's headquarters in Washington on Tuesday to make sure banks are aware of possible future risks raised by Anthropic's Mythos and potential similar models, and are taking precautions to defend their systems, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified citing the private discussions. A representative for the Treasury didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for the Fed declined to comment. The previously unreported meeting, arranged on short notice, is another sign that regulators consider the possibility of a new breed of cyber attacks as one of the biggest risks facing the financial industry. All the banks summoned to the meeting are classified as systemically important by top regulators, meaning their stability is a priority for the global financial system.

This is really impressive speed tbh. Not much gets by Powell.

Yikes

That would be amazing :)

1 in 6 Americans live in the Acela corridor and the California economy is one of the largest in the world

Thank you!

Modernization at BLS was underway but really picked up during the pandemic, when response rates cratered and the agency had to adapt quickly.

More recently, it's been constrained by a lack of money and staffing.

BLS budget peaked in real terms around 2010, it's been a downhill slide since then:
- cumulatively budget is down 18% in real terms since peak
- staffing down by more than that since DOGE
- declining response rates mean you need more field resources, not less

I think this has given people the impression that revisions are a bigger issue now than they used to be and so they are surprised to find that the trend is revisions have declined since the 1990s (electronic reporting, better statistical modeling).

I've thought about this a lot too, and I have two (possibly conflicting thoughts) about it
- disincentives to admit today's narrative could get revised away
- conversely, media does talk about jobs revisions more than any other data revisions, even tho CES is pretty precise compared to GDP, PPI.

*think* it’s both

Oh I’m saying I do it’s both

Sometimes it's just seasonal/statistical noise and sometimes it's the economy being bumpy and making measurement and seasonal adjustment harder too. I think we're in the latter territory, with multiple shutdowns (feds/contractors not getting paid), gov't layoffs, and some severe weather.

Me too apparently! I'm new to this 'not getting seeing the data a day or two before everyone else' world.

(My attempts to ask Claude about releases have not been great - especially if no one has written much about a report. I'm using a new tool with better accuracy, but it needs FRED data)

Is it unusual for FRED to not have updated employment situation numbers incorporated yet? (35 min post-release)

I used to marvel at new production sailboats with two bathrooms at the Annapolis Boat Show - who are these prima donnas who can't share a bathroom on a 40' boat - until a broker told me 'it's handy to have two in case one breaks on a trip' and that sobered me right up