Jason Furman

I posted about it at various times in the past.

But the better thing would be for the focus to shift to market-based core which excludes this.

Core PCE inflation rising lately, running ~3% annual rate.

But core PCE inflation ex portfolio services slowing lately, running just above 2% (when remeaned to reflect it usually runs low).

Some of the reinflation we've seen is rising stock prices counting as higher inflation.

There are pros and cons to the EC.

But IF we have one should not have discretion for electors. And a better set of tie breaking rules, ideally an odd number of electors (which you would get if we added 1 house seat for DC).

Bottom line: Many think EC gives Republicans an advantage because of 2000 & 2016. But were roughly even in 2024 & historically have alternated between different parties.

Arguments for & against EC but would more about incentives for campaigning & policies-not partisan advantage.

Take West Virginia where 533,566 people (70%) voted for Trump in 2024. Let's say it liberalized its rules and the new voters were only 60% for Trump it would still have added to Trump's national vote margin.)

(On this last, you might think that voting rules disproportionately discourage Democratic voters. The evidence on that is not completely clearcut because they also discourage rural Republican voters. But regardless...

On 3, would help GOP.

Red states generally have a higher "cost of voting index" than blue ones. IF Presidential elections were determined by the national popular vote many of these states would liberalize their voting rules so they could have more say in the national election.

Note this is a "static" analysis. IF the elections had a different rule so popular vote winner was President then people would act differently:

1. Campaigns and campaign promises would shift
2. Turnout would shift
3. Voting rules would change

I don't know impact of 1 & 2.

The methodology applies a uniform shift to every state such that the election tips. Eg, in 2004, if 1% of the votes in every state had shifted from Bush to Kerry that would have been just enough for Kerry to win Ohio & thus the EC. And would have lost popular vote by 0.5pp.

In 2000 & 2016 the Dems won the Presidential popular vote but lost the electoral college.

Just chance the opposite hasn't happened. Eg 2004: Kerry came closer in the EC than the popular vote.

This is the pop vote vote margin Dems would have needed in past elections to win EC.

Do you prefer Option 1 or Option 2? And why?

I literally picked up a free copy of Apple in China that someone left out on the street. I'll probably read it at some point.

That is discussed in my review, that he takes manufacturing for granted and doesn't treat consumption as an end.

Jason Furman’s review of Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future 5/5: In one respect, Breakneck is a classic work of a hedgehog. Dan Wang knows one big thing: China is run by engineers, and the United States is run by lawyers. He then applies that idea to many topics,...

"In one respect, Breakneck is a classic work of a hedgehog. Dan Wang knows one big thing: China is run by engineers, and the United States is run by lawyers. He then applies that idea to many topics..."

My review of the excellent Breakneck. www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

Trump fiscal has been roughly neutral with spending cuts plus tariff revenue equal to tax cuts.

But roughly neutral locks in a sustainable path with debt/GDP rising.

Yes. From 98 to 100, and they were right, is in my post.

P.S. Government still releases a lot of (most? all?) administrative data during a shutdown. So the above was from today's Daily Treasury Statement. UI Claims are also administrative data and have always (I believe if memory serves) been released on schedule in past shutdowns.

Sources: fiscal.treasury.gov/reports-stat...

whitehouse.gov/wp-content/u...

Technical footnote: Debt/GDP is conventionally debt on the last day of the FY (9/30/25) divided by GDP in the previous four quarters. I assumed a 6.0% annualized nominal GDP growth in Q3, if it is 4% it would be 100.0% and if it is 8% it would be 99.7%.

CEA's projection was that with OBBBA the debt/GDP would fall to 94% in FY 2026. IF nominal GDP grows 5.5% next year (well above CBO's latest forecast) then we would need about a $100 billion budget surplus to hit that target.

The United States ended FY 2025 with $30.287 trillion of debt.

That is likely 99.9% of GDP, up from 98.2% last year.

Note CBO's January forecast was 99.9% of GDP.

In June CEA projected that if OBBBA passed it would fall to 96.2% of GDP this year.

I know

Office hours today:

Student 1: Last summer I got to visit the New York Fed.

Student 2: I've visited eleven of the twelve regional banks--but I still haven't been to Dallas.

(And this is in a principles of micro class. Oh, and student 1 added she had been to Cleveland too)

FWIW, I interpret the "hard" data as being real the and "soft" data as being vibes which is more about their political enthusiasm than anything related to their actual economic decisions.

If you ask small businesses about job creation plans, job openings, inventory plans, earnings or capital expenditure plans they're much more dour than they were a few years ago.

But they express much more optimistic about the future than before. www.nfib.com/wp-content/u...

New from me @mollykinder.bsky.social Josh Kendall and Maddie Lee: how should we be tracking the impact of AI on the labor market? Tldr: no signs of major disruptions yet, but we plan to update our trackers monthly 1/

Lisa Cook case set for oral argument in January. She stays in place until then.

And also not something we should expect to be able to do at a weekly frequency.

Anyway, lessons learned:

-Be more skeptical about applying normal relationships to extraordinary times
-Be more skeptical of intuitive/appealing conclusions
-Confidence often doesn't tell you what you think it does
-Don't make predictions that can be falsified within weeks

But unfortunately what we came up with also totally wrong. Part of the issue is that a lot of the result was driven by a massive plunge in confidence. But confidence at a time like that was telling you more about political mood than economic decisions.