Will Tanzman, Lori Simmons As the tech industry moves increasingly into alignment with the far right, the issue of worker power has never been more important. The Chicago campaign offers some key lessons. The post In Chicago, a Coalition of Unions, Community Organizers, and Riders Have Forced Uber to Come to the Table appeared first on The Nation.
Daniel Bessner, Derek Davison On this episode of American Prestige, Erik Baker on the deep-seated roots of US hustle culture. The post The History of America’s Entrepreneurial Work Ethic appeared first on The Nation.
From WSJ July survey out today: Figure 1: GDP (bold black), WSJ July survey mean (tan), lowest/highest 10% based on 2025 q4/q4 growth (gray lines), GDPNow of 7/9 (inverted light blue triangle), NY Fed nowcast of 7/11 (red square), all in bn.Ch.2017$, SAAR. Source: BEA, WSJ, Atlanta Fed, NY Fed, and author’s calculations. Only one forecast is for two consecutive negative quarters of GDP growth (AC Cutts, five consecutive quarters), while there are many forecasts of an individual quarter of negative growth. The WSJ survey mean trajectory is close to the May SPF median. Not surprisingly, the WSJ growth rate for Q2 is just between the Atlanta and NY Fed nowcasts (see here). A cautionary note from the WSJ: Diane Swonk, chief economist at KPMG US, cautioned that official economic indicators, which combine actual data from surveys with estimates, often struggle to capture inflection points. “As good as our stats are, they just weren’t made for these kinds of very large moves in policy that cause a knee-jerk reaction,” Swonk said. “It makes it even harder to read the tea leaves.” Trump’s policies—which besides tariffs include a clampdown on illegal immigration, stepped-up deportations and a just-signed megabill cutting taxes and some spending—may also take time to filter into the real economy.
As of today: Figure 1: GDP (bold black), GDPNow of 7/9 (light blue inverted triangle), NY Fed nowcast of 7/11 (red square), St. Louis Fed news nowcast of 7/11 (light green triangle), Goldman Sachs of 7/11 (pink x), FT Booth June survey median (blue square), all in bn.Ch.2017$ SAAR. Source: BEA, Atlanta, NY, St. Louis Feds, Goldman Sachs, FT-Booth, and author’s calculations. The Atlanta Fed nowcast (GDPNow) is a bottom up (component by component forecast), while the NY Fed nowcast is top down. The St. Louis index uses data surprises to generate the nowcast of aggregate GDP growth. Given the nature of the distortions attendant tariff front-loading, I would put more weight on the Atlanta Fed nowcast (it predicted negative growth, while the NY Fed and St. Louis Fed nowcasts predicted positive). Final sales to private domestic purchasers (aka “core GDP”) should be less sensitive to distortions. Figure 2: Final sales to private domestic purchasers (bold black), GDPNow of 7/9 (light blue inverted triangle), in bn.Ch.2017$ SAAR. Source: BEA, Atlanta Fed, and author’s calculations. The Atlanta Fed nowcasts a slight decline (0.9% annualized) in final sales to private domestic purchasers. As is, reported sales are far below the median forecast of the May Survey of Professional Forecasters.
See here and here. Every morning I wake up, think I can’t see anything more crazy than what occurred yesterday, and then I check the news. Figure 1: Top panel, EPU-trade; Middle panel: Trade Policy Uncertainty; Bottom panel: EPU. Orange shading denotes second Trump administration. Orange dashed line denotes election. Source: policyuncertainty.com, Iacoviello et al.
Based on IMF data (COFER, IFS): Figure 1: USD shares of fx (blue bars), EUR (tan), all other (gray). USD(EUR) share assumes 60%(35%) of unallocated reserves are in USD(EUR). Source: IMF COFER, and author’s calculations. The drop in USD reserves out of total FX reserves is not apparent. However, gold has taken on a heightened importance in recent years. Taking this into account, we have Figure 2. Figure 2: USD shares of fx and gold reserves (blue bars), EUR (tan), all other (gray), and gold (yellow). USD(EUR) share assumes 60%(35%) of unallocated reserves are in USD(EUR). Assumes quantity of gold holdings stay constant in 2025Q, and observed . Source: IMF COFER, World Gold Council, and author’s calculations. To the extent that total reserves are the relevant measure, the dollar has dropped by 1.4 percentage points in 2025Q1; the standard deviation of changes is 0.6 ppts. If central banks on net acquired gold in Q1 (World Gold Council suggests 50 tonnes whereas I assumed 0 tonnes), then the drop would be even larger.
From (1) Reich and Prussian Minister of Economics and General Plenipotentiary (1937), and (2) President of the Reichsbank (1939) (discussion, Kopper (1998)). While it’s an inexact analogy, it’s of interest to recall it was Hermann Göring. I thought of this when I saw Russell Vought on TV today: Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought vowed Friday to press an investigation into renovations at the Federal Reserve building, which he called a “palace” where costs are running amok. A great line from the Wikipedia entry on Schacht: [Schacht] had grown increasingly dissatisfied with Göring’s near-total ignorance of economics, and was also concerned that Germany was coming close to bankruptcy. The main points of disagreement were the Goering’s demand for rearmament despite fiscal strains, aiming for autarky/self-reliance, and dismissal of concerns about deficit spending. Sounds familiar to me. <small>* Aside: Walther Funk succeeded Schlacht as President of the Reichsbank. I spent half a year living in Funk’s house, on the Wannsee, currently the home of the American Academy in Berlin (as a guest of my wife, a fellow there).</small>
From Cleveland Fed today: Figure 1: Year on year core CPI inflation (blue), core PCE (tan), Bloomberg consensus of 7/11 (teal triangle). June, July 2025 observations are Cleveland Fed nowcasts as of 7/11. Source: BLS, Cleveland Fed, Bloomberg.
Civilian employment adjusted to NFP concept, manufacturing production, real retail sales, ADP’s private NFP, and BTS freight services index. The sole exception is the Philadelphia Fed coincident index, based on labor indicators. Figure 1: Implied Nonfarm Payroll early benchmark (NFP) (bold blue), civilian employment adjusted smoothed population controls adjusted to NFP concept (orange), manufacturing production (red), private NFP (ADP) (light green), real retail sales (black), vehicle miles traveled (brown), and coincident index in Ch.2017$ (pink), GDO (teal bars), all log normalized to 2021M11=0. Source: Philadelphia Fed [1], Philadelphia Fed [2], Census, ADP, Federal Reserve, BTS via FRED, BLS, BEA 2025Q1 third release, and author’s calculations. Note that every NBER BCDC indicator for May is down — including SPGMI’s monthly GDP, as shown in this post.
Mark Hertsgaard US Senator Sheldon Whitehouse called on Democrats to stop enabling the fossil fuel industry’s “malevolent propaganda operation.” The post Has the Climate Movement Been Too Polite? This Senator Thinks So. appeared first on The Nation.
