Post from First Trust Economics Blog Brian S. Wesbury – Chief Economist Robert Stein, CFA – Deputy Chief Economist Nov 23rd, 2020 Who’s in charge of fiscal policy? That’s the real issue behind the recent dispute between Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell regarding the Treasury’s decision to end certain emergency lending facilities […]
Post from First Trust Economics Blog Brian S. Wesbury – Chief Economist Robert Stein, CFA – Deputy Chief Economist Nov 16th, 2020 Give Thanks! The US economy continues to heal. Payrolls keep growing, unemployment claims – though still elevated – are shrinking, key measures of the manufacturing and service sectors remain well into positive territory, and, as […]
Post from First Trust Economics Blog Brian S. Wesbury – Chief Economist Robert Stein, CFA – Deputy Chief Economist Nov 9th, 2020 While the election is still not certified, and court battles will drag on, it appears that we can draw two firm conclusions from the 2020 election. First, the pollsters were horribly wrong again. Secondly, American […]
Post from First Trust Economics Blog Brian S. Wesbury – Chief Economist Robert Stein, CFA – Deputy Chief Economist Nov 2nd, 2020 As the US opened up, real GDP rebounded sharply in the third quarter, growing at a 33.1% annual rate. However, real GDP is still down 2.9% from a year ago and the economy got a […]
Post from First Trust Economics Blog Brian S. Wesbury – Chief Economist Robert Stein, CFA – Deputy Chief Economist Oct 26th, 2020 To reiterate, this Thursday morning we expect the government to report a huge, and virtually unprecedented, surge of a 33.4% annualized growth rate in real GDP growth for the third quarter. There are still a […]
Post from First Trust Economics Blog Brian S. Wesbury – Chief Economist Robert Stein, CFA – Deputy Chief Economist Oct 19th, 2020 There is nothing normal about the 2020 recession. Massive nationwide shutdowns of “non-essential” businesses caused real GDP to drop at a 31.4% annual rate in the second quarter, the biggest drop since the 1930s. However, […]
Post from First Trust Economics Blog Brian S. Wesbury – Chief Economist Robert Stein, CFA – Deputy Chief Economist Oct 13th, 2020 COVID lockdowns crushed the economy in the first half of 2020, with real GDP down 5.0% at an annual rate in the first quarter and 31.4% at annual rate in the second quarter, the latter […]
Post from First Trust Economics Blog Brian S. Wesbury – Chief Economist Robert Stein, CFA – Deputy Chief Economist Oct 5th, 2020 Over the past couple of decades, the Federal Reserve has coalesced around an idea about inflation that is little more than theoretical, with no real data to back it up. That “idea” is that 2% […]
Post from First Trust Economics Blog Brian S. Wesbury – Chief Economist Robert Stein, CFA – Deputy Chief Economist Sept 28th, 2020 With the presidential election just over a month away, prospects for another round of fiscal stimulus seem to be dwindling. The recent death of Justice Ginsburg and the rapidly approaching election have shifted the Senate’s […]
Post from First Trust Economics Blog Brian S. Wesbury – Chief Economist Robert Stein, CFA – Deputy Chief Economist Sept 21st, 2020 The second quarter of 2020 was the mother of all economic contractions. Real GDP shrank at a 31.7% annual rate, the largest drop for any quarter since the Great Depression. However, based on the economic […]
