China recently signed a regional trade agreement – the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) – with 14 other Asia-Pacific countries. Touted as the world’s largest regional free trade agreement, it includes countries that make up 30% of the world’s gross domestic product. But it does not include the United States, even though some of the ... READ MORE >
Economics
The middle market economy—often overlooked in the wake of large public companies and emerging Wall Street darlings—is the backbone of U.S. economic growth, accounting for the majority of new U.S. jobs and some 40 percent of the nation’s GDP.
RSM U.K. Financial Conditions Index: Adjusting expectations after double-dosed shocks
The news that Oxford/AstraZeneca has created a vaccine that is potentially 62% effective with two full doses and 90% effective if a person gets a half a dose followed by a full dose is a much-needed boost for a beleaguered U.K. economy. This will bolster U.K. financial conditions and economic prospects heading into the end of the year. New cases of ... READ MORE >
Coronavirus update: The beginning of the end
The number of potential coronavirus vaccines has increased to three with Oxford/AstraZeneca announcing on Monday that that their technology is potentially 62% effective with two full doses and 90% effective if one gets a half a dose followed by a full dose. Moreover, the vaccine requires distribution and storage at normal temperatures, which will be ... READ MORE >
CHART OF THE DAY: Household debt increases as consumers resume borrowing
Consumers resumed borrowing after a pullback in the second quarter during the onset of the pandemic, according to the New York Federal Reserve’s third-quarter report on household debt and credit balances. The net increase of $87 billion in total household debt outstanding was driven primarily by growth in mortgages, with an $85 billion increase, and auto ... READ MORE >
Anticipating a flood of personal and commercial bankruptcies in 2021
The roughly $3 trillion in pandemic aid pumped into the economy in the spring worked to such an extent that it most likely prevented an increase in personal and commercial bankruptcies. But that is likely to change as the long shadow of the economic shock causes firms and individuals to turn to the courts for a fresh start through the shedding of ... READ MORE >
Comment: Treasury Department moves to end select pandemic-era lending programs
Risks to the economic outlook have been rising recently because an array of benefits meant to blunt the economic downturn are scheduled to expire on Dec. 31. Those risks increased on Thursday when the Treasury Department told the Federal Reserve that it would not extend nine of the 13 liquidity and lending programs aimed at easing the effects of the ... READ MORE >
CHART OF THE DAY: A key measure of future inflation implies disinflation risks
The Federal Reserve’s preferred forward-looking inflation metric -- called the five-year, five-year forward break-even inflation rate -- implies that pricing risks to the economic outlook revolve around disinflation, not inflation, over the next 10 years. The metric -- which measures the expected inflation rate over the five-year period that begins five ... READ MORE >
Jobless claims: Data going wrong way as pandemic intensifies
Initial jobless claims increased by 742,000 for the week ending Nov. 14 as the pandemic intensified and lockdowns spread across the economy. Continuing claims increased to 6.37 million, while 20.3 million people remain on some form of unemployment insurance, according to Labor Department data released on Thursday. Given the exhaustion of unemployment ... READ MORE >
The year ahead: Resilience, recovery and reimagination
A series of cross currents in public health, public policy and economics will shape growth conditions across the American economy during the year ahead. The juxtaposition of an intensifying pandemic and the encouraging developments in the race to find a vaccine is the perfect metaphor for growth over the next year. We are all waiting for a vaccine, yet we ... READ MORE >
Coronavirus update: A worsening emergency, as seen in five charts
It took seven days for the novel coronavirus to infect another million people in the United States, with cases growing from 10 million on Nov. 6 to 11 million on Nov. 13. At the current rate of spread – and unless state and local governments insist on social-distancing practices – the RSM model shows a million new cases being contracted every five ... READ MORE >