macroblog

Economists got it wrong, but why?

Economists definitely received some bad publicity this past week, most prominently in the New York Times, where Paul Krugman asked "How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?," a nonrhetorical question he goes on to answer this way:

"As I see it, the economics profession went astray because economists, as a group, mistook beauty, clad in impressive-looking mathematics, for truth… the central cause of the profession’s failure was the desire for an all-encompassing, intellectually elegant approach that also gave economists a chance to show off their mathematical prowess.

"Unfortunately, this romanticized and sanitized vision of the economy led most economists to ignore all the things that can go wrong. They turned a blind eye to the limitations of human rationality that often lead to bubbles and busts; to the problems of institutions that run amok; to the imperfections of markets—especially financial markets—that can cause the economy’s operating system to undergo sudden, unpredictable crashes; and to the dangers created when regulators don't believe in regulation."

For at least one part of the Krugman critique, I have some sympathy. On the occasion of a 2005 conference honoring the 25th anniversary of Chris Sims's pathbreaking article "Macroeconomics and Reality"—an article that was itself a critique of empirical practices then dominant in central banks—I had this to say about the dangers of groupthink and questions we might be missing as a consequence:

"We are close to falling dangerously in love with the basic New Keynesian framework, the sticky price aspects of it in particular. Here is a simple observation: In the [statistical models] that are identified in the usual ways, inflation wants to drop like a rock in response to a basic technology shock. Models that engineer significant price inertia don’t want to let that happen…

One final point. In my time at the Fed, I have come to appreciate that most of the really important policy choices have nothing to do with Taylor rules or the like. They have to do with those episodes of financial crisis in which Taylor-like rules are woefully inadequate. Think here October 1987, the period from summer 1997 through the end of 1998, and the aftermath of September 11, 2001."

Though Professor Krugman spends a lot of time attacking acolytes of the so-called "Chicago" school, the fact is that the New Keynesian framework (described here by Greg Mankiw) is the workhorse theory within policymaking circles. If economists were unable to see their way to the macroeconomic consequences of the unfolding crisis, criticism needs to start with that framework.

I think such criticism is warranted, but the thrall of the New Keynesian world view has little to do with how "beautiful" the model is or that it is built on a lot of "impressive-looking mathematics." Quite the opposite. As I said in my 2005 comments, "the dynamics of the policy briefing game seem to favor forecasting performance over theoretical integrity." The models that we use for policy analysis are constructed on the basis of what connects with the facts we see (or think we see) in the data. If these models fail to contemplate things that might happen, it is precisely because there is a bias toward frameworks that explain history.

Robert Lucas zeroed in on this point in his "defence of the dismal science":

"The Economist’s briefing [criticizing the foresight of mainstream economists] also cited as an example of macroeconomic failure the 'reassuring' simulations that Frederic Mishkin, then a governor of the Federal Reserve, presented in the summer of 2007. The charge is that the Fed’s FRB/US forecasting model failed to predict the events of September 2008. Yet the simulations were not presented as assurance that no crisis would occur, but as a forecast of what could be expected conditional on a crisis not occurring. Until the Lehman failure the recession was pretty typical of the modest downturns of the post-war period. There was a recession under way, led by the decline in housing construction. Mr Mishkin's forecast was a reasonable estimate of what would have followed if the housing decline had continued to be the only or the main factor involved in the economic downturn."

Some attempts have been made to exploit the information contained in data from the Great Depression. (If you have patience for technical analysis you can find an example here.) And there have been many attempts to jerry-rig existing models to capture the financial shocks and their aftermath, especially once we had seen what that sort of reality looks like. But, by and large, the last year has been a data point we haven’t seen before, and it is not so surprising that models designed to capture the average quarter in the economy’s life would not do so well when very unaverage events arise.

It is certainly clear that the dominant pre-2007 strain of New Keynesian models was inadequate to the task that would confront us post-2007. That this was the case was not unknown. If I may quote myself again:

"I have in the past agreed that it is useful to think of the policy choices [following financial market events like the stock market crash of 1987] as policy shocks. I would still argue that today. But it sure would be helpful if at least some of these events would appear as something more than completely random disturbances. In other words, it would be very useful to have usable measures of what we loosely call 'financial market fragility,' and more useful still to have a coherent [sophisticated] quantitative model that captures them."

The problem with that prescription was that the relative infrequency of such events would likely have required us to step outside of our existing data-driven policy models and apply more theory, not less.

So does all this lead to the conclusion that we ought to ditch the presumptions of rationality and (largely) efficient markets, as Professor Krugman suggests? I have my doubts. Even some of the examples in the Krugman article seem to rely on the power of those ideas. In describing the problem of the lower bound of zero on nominal federal funds rates, he says this:

"During a normal recession, the Fed responds by buying Treasury bills—short-term government debt—from banks. This drives interest rates on government debt down; investors seeking a higher rate of return move into other assets, driving other interest rates down as well; and normally these lower interest rates eventually lead to an economic bounceback…

"But zero, it turned out, isn’t low enough to end this recession. And the Fed can't push rates below zero, since at near-zero rates investors simply hoard cash rather than lending it out. So by late 2008, with interest rates basically at what macroeconomists call the 'zero lower bound' even as the recession continued to deepen, conventional monetary policy had lost all traction."

That whole story relies on a conventional monetary transmission mechanism, one that fundamentally plays off of efficient markets thinking.

In another passage from the New York Times article, we have this:

"I like to explain the essence of Keynesian economics with a true story that also serves as a parable, a small-scale version of the messes that can afflict entire economies. Consider the travails of the Capitol Hill Baby-Sitting Co-op.

"This co-op, whose problems were recounted in a 1977 article in The Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, was an association of about 150 young couples who agreed to help one another by baby-sitting for one another’s children when parents wanted a night out. To ensure that every couple did its fair share of baby-sitting, the co-op introduced a form of scrip: coupons made out of heavy pieces of paper, each entitling the bearer to one half-hour of sitting time…

"Unfortunately, it turned out that the co-op’s members, on average, wanted to hold a reserve of more than 20 coupons, perhaps, in case they should want to go out several times in a row. As a result, relatively few people wanted to spend their scrip and go out, while many wanted to baby-sit so they could add to their hoard. But since baby-sitting opportunities arise only when someone goes out for the night, this meant that baby-sitting jobs were hard to find, which made members of the co-op even more reluctant to go out, making baby-sitting jobs even scarcer…

"In short, the co-op fell into a recession."

That's a great example, but where is the irrationality? That tight monetary policy might cause a downturn in the economy may be absent from purely classical models, but it is dead center of the New Keynesian framework. The problem was that our mechanism for capturing monetary nonneutrality—essentially wage and price stickiness—was far too simplistic to capture the shocks that we were about to face (and that we arguably faced to lesser degrees during past financial market events).

In short, I accept the criticism that the dominant New Keynesian framework for forecasting and economic modeling needs some work (to say the least). I'm less convinced that we require a major paradigm shift. Despite suggestions to the contrary, I've yet to see the evidence that progress requires moving beyond the intellectual boundaries in which most economists already live.

By David Altig, senior vice president and research director at the Atlanta Fed

Every recovery is the same; each recovery is different

Two weeks ago, macroblog looked at the rather pessimistic expectations for what the economic recovery might look like this time around. Included was part of the narrative noting that structural adjustments are likely to impede a quick snapback in gross domestic product (GDP) over the coming quarters.

Macroblog reader Bryan Lassiter asked, "Do economists typically predict a weaker recovery than history suggests?" Good question. To state the question in a slightly different way, "Has the United States ever been in a situation where it experienced a deep recession and forecasters subsequently predicted a slow recovery that ultimately proved to be incorrectly pessimistic?"

To get at these questions, we can look at real-time real GDP data and the Survey of Professional Forecasters (SPF) available from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia (while the SPF started in 1968, forecasts of real GDP began in 1981).

The chart plots the depth of the recession on the x axis and strength of recovery on the y axis (updated from the 7/24 post to include last Friday's GDP release). The blue diamonds were constructed using forecasts that were made in the quarter the recession officially ended; the red squares are what actually happened.

To illustrate the exercise, pretend we're back in the fourth quarter of 2001 and the recession is over (although we didn't know it). Given what we thought we knew about the economy at the time, we can look at what forecasters were expecting in terms of GDP and compare it with what was ultimately reported by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. Looking at the 2001 recession, we can see that the expectations for recovery were not that far off, but the severity of the recession was lessened—partly because of data revisions and partly because of forecast error. The 1990–91 recession showed a similar pattern, but in reverse. That is, the recovery forecasts were close to the actual experience, but the depth of the recession ended up being more severe than initially thought.

What stands out in the chart is the recovery following the 1981–82 recession. In real time, four-quarter GDP growth was expected to be about 3.5 percent but wound up being much stronger at nearly 8 percent. In this instance, the response is yes to the initial question of whether economists typically predict a weaker recovery. With the 1981–82 episode, we saw a recession where economists had forecast a recovery that ultimately turned out to be much stronger than anticipated. However, the 1981–82 blue diamond was still relatively close to the cluster of other recessions on the chart, meaning the recovery forecast was not exceptionally weak. Thus, the current recession still seems to be an outlier. Given the almost 4 percent decline experienced in GDP, the hope would be to see something stronger than the 2.5 percent growth expected over the next year.

Whatever the impediments to a sharp recovery, forecasts are certainly telling us that economists are treating this recession as being different from previous ones.

To help track the economy going forward, check out our weekly Economic Highlights and Financial Highlights.

By Mike Hammill, economic policy analyst at the Atlanta Fed

A look at the recovery

Earlier this week my boss, Atlanta Fed President Dennis Lockhart, weighed in with his views about the shape of the economic recovery to come while speaking at a meeting of the Nashville, Tenn., Rotary Club:

"The economy is stabilizing and recovery will begin in the second half. The recovery will be weak compared with historic recoveries from recession. The recovery will be weak because the economy must make structural adjustments before the healthiest possible rate of growth can be achieved."

This quote was noted by Rebecca Wilder at News N Economics, along with similar sentiments from Nouriel Roubini and Mary Daly at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. You might add to the list Tim Duy's comments at Wall Street Pit and this assumption from Moody's Investor Services, reported at Seeking Alpha:

"Moody's predicts a 'hook-shaped' recovery path for banks, 'characterized by an upward tilt that lies somewhere in between a U- and an L-shaped economic recovery, implying a painful journey.' "

Says Dr. Wilder of the prospective recovery: "pathetic."

More colorful language than I would use, but if current forecasts come true, the early stages of the recovery will be as unusual as the recession itself.

How unusual? See for yourself:

The chart plots the four-quarter growth rate of gross domestic product (GDP) from the trough of a recession against the depth of the corresponding contraction, as measured by the cumulative loss of GDP over the course of the downturn. The points within the red circle represent all previous postwar recessions, and they form a nice, neat, easily discernible pattern. That is, the pace of growth in the first year after a recession has, in our history, been reliably related to how bad the recession was. The deeper the recession, the faster the recovery.

The points within the blue circle are based on forecasts of GDP growth from the third quarter of this year through the third quarter of 2010, obtained from the latest issue of Blue Chip Economic Indicators (which reports survey results from "America's leading business economists"). From top left of the circle to bottom right, the points represent the 10 lowest forecasts of the most optimistic members of the 50 Blue Chip forecasting panel, the panel's consensus (or average) forecast, and the 10 highest forecasts of the most pessimistic panel participants.

I chose the third quarter as the reference point because nearly two-thirds of the Blue Chip respondents indicate that, in their view, the recession will indeed end in the third quarter of this year. Assuming this occurs, this recovery would appear to be a big outlier. Either we are about to continue making history—and not in a good way—or current guesses about the medium-term economy are way too pessimistic.

On another note, if you would like to do a little prognosticating of your own, I commend to you our new weekly editions of Economic Highlights and Financial Highlights.

By David Altig, senior vice president and research director at the Atlanta Fed

Private sector forecasts at variance

Economic forecasts are notoriously inaccurate. That isn't a statement about the ability of forecasters, but rather a statement about the complexity of the economy. If you're looking for a humbling experience, I recommend you give it a try.

And today's economy would seem to be an exceptionally difficult environment in which to forecast. As economists peer into the future, there seems to be an unusually wide range of opinion about what to expect. Uncertainty is running pretty high right now in the minds of the top prognosticators.

Consider the following predictions from the Blue Chip panel of economists concerning the economy's growth rate a year and a half from now (fourth quarter 2010). The average growth rate expected in that time frame from the panel is 3 percent, which isn't that different from the six-quarter-ahead forecast they have made every June during the past 10 years or so. But if you compare the difference between the economic optimists (the 10 highest growth forecasts) relative to the economic pessimists (the 10 lowest growth forecasts), the discrepancy between the two views is large relative to recent history. In short, the forecasts on the optimistic end of the spectrum are now more optimistic while the pessimistic forecasts are a little more pessimistic.

Uncertainty over the medium-term outlook is particularly large regarding the experts' views on inflation. In the latest survey of the Blue Chip panel, the difference between the 10 highest and the 10 lowest inflation predictions for the fourth quarter of 2010 was a gaping 3.7 percentage points (compared with an average of about 1.5 percentage points over the past decade and a half). This wide range of opinions about inflation prospects started to emerge last year as economic conditions deteriorated.

Disharmony in the panel's inflation outlook doesn't so much suggest that those expecting inflation now see greater inflationary risks—at 3.2 percent the medium-term inflation prediction of the highest 10 inflation forecasts isn't materially different from where it has been since the late 1990s. Instead, the larger variance in the inflation outlook is coming from those at the bottom of the panel's forecast distribution that are anticipating even more downward price pressure than in previous years.

Pinpointing the future trajectory of the economy is generally considered more difficult near turning points in the business cycle—though the current uncertainty would appear to be particularly large, recession or not. Such uncertainty about the future is surely adding to the challenges facing the business community as it strives to get back on its feet.

By Laurel Graefe, economic research analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta

Dueling forecasts

When smart people debate, something interesting is bound to come of it, so I have been reading an interchange over the past couple of days in the blogs of Greg Mankiw and Paul Krugman. Krugman's blog provides the necessary background on the source of the debate:

"Greg Mankiw challenges the administration's prediction of relatively fast growth a few years from now on the basis that real GDP (gross domestic product) may have a unit root—that is, there's no tendency for bad years to be offset by good years later.

"I always thought the unit root thing involved a bit of deliberate obtuseness—it involved pretending that you didn't know the difference between, say, low GDP growth due to a productivity slowdown like the one that happened from 1973 to 1995, on one side, and low GDP growth due to a severe recession. For one thing is very clear: variables that measure the use of resources, like unemployment or capacity utilization, do NOT have unit roots: when unemployment is high, it tends to fall."

It is certainly true that when "unemployment is high, it tends to fall," but where it falls to is not always so obvious:

Prior to the 1973–75 recession, the average quarterly unemployment rate was 5 percent. If you had a forecast contemplating a return to "normal" following this particular recession you would have been holding your breath for a couple of decades.

Professor Krugman makes the central point, I believe, when he makes reference to the "difference between, say, low GDP growth due to a productivity slowdown… and low GDP growth due to a severe recession." That statement is, itself, recognition that the economy does periodically experience protracted episodes during which average growth and average unemployment simply do not revert to previous levels—at least not for a long time.

One of the striking things about the economic projections reported by the Reserve Bank presidents and Board's governors in the minutes from the last meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee was the rather large variation in views about GDP growth, even as far out as 2011:

That sense of uncertainty is shared by private forecasters:

What gives? There are lots of reasons for differences of opinions, and I obviously cannot (and should not) try to divine what is anyone else's deepest forecasting thoughts. But for me, "low growth due to severe recession" does not automatically imply a demand-driven downturn from which the economy will quickly spring back.

When I look ahead, I envision the U.S. economy over the next several years in terms of a simultaneous process of recovery and reformation: Recovery in the sense that the actual contraction of GDP will end, but reformation in the sense of structural transformation in financial markets, consumer behavior, and perhaps an adjustment of the global imbalances that are arguably at the root of much of the financial instability that has characterized the past decade.

If we are right, the long run is indeed rosy, but the long run will only arrive after some significant and protracted headwinds abate. And that is not a picture that suggests a rapid bounce back to "normal" growth.

By David Altig, senior vice president and research director at the Atlanta Fed

The evolving economic outlook

I understand that economic forecasts are notoriously inaccurate. The last time I looked, the root mean square error of economists’ year-ahead growth forecasts was 1.4 percentage points. In other words, you’d expect the consensus forecast to be within about 1½ percentage points of the actual outcome only about two-thirds of the time (and individual forecasts tend to be even worse than the consensus).

Accurate or not, predictions of the future are an essential input into decisions made throughout the economy, and the negative tone in the incoming data has led most forecasters to sharply cut their growth expectations through 2009. The first chart below shows how the Blue Chip consensus growth forecast for 2008–2009 has evolved.

As of October 10 (before forecasters had seen most of the September data), the Blue Chip consensus forecast showed the economy entering a period of negative growth last quarter and remaining that way (or near it) until the second quarter of next year with subpar growth continuing through the end of next year.

Indeed, the current Blue Chip growth projection for the U.S. economy is a sharp deterioration from what economists had been anticipating when the year began. In January, the consensus outlook called for the year to start off a little sluggishly before gradually resuming a more typical growth path. As the year unfolded, however, and the deep problems affecting the housing market became more evident, growth prospects waned.

Want some good news? Economic forecasts are notoriously inaccurate. And they are especially inaccurate at turning points, which, according to the Blue Chip consensus, we’ve recently passed. Why do forecasts perform worst just when needed most? The shocks that hit the U.S. economy from time to time are complex and not very well behaved. The likelihood of extreme outcomes—so-called “tail risks”—vary from shock to shock. Moreover, there may be “nonlinearities” in response to these shocks, meaning economic relationships that operate one way when the economy is in an expansionary state may operate differently when the economy is in a recessionary state. So a model that may have worked well during the good times may not work so well during the bad.

Perhaps the evolution of the economic outlook during the previous business cycle is a useful example. Consider the next chart, which shows the evolution of the consensus forecast for 2001–2002, beginning with January 2002. As the data revealed the economy was in some distress, the economic outlook deteriorated—severely so when it became clear the U.S. economy was in recession (and in November 2002, the NBER officially declared that a recession had actually begun the previous March).

But remember, there are (at least) two turning points in the business cycle. There’s the downturn and a recovery. So the same problems that make spotting recessions hard also make it hard to anticipate the rebound. Again, let’s look at what happened during the last business cycle. The next chart shows how the consensus forecast evolved as the economy transitioned from recession to expansion, which, coincidently, began in November 2001.

Between November and May of that time, the incoming data revealed that the consensus forecasts made during the recessionary period were overly pessimistic. The onset of expansion occurred sooner, and with more strength, than economists initially expected.

I am not aware of any individual forecast that can consistently outperform the consensus. And this is not an argument denying the economy is facing difficult times. But perhaps it’s useful to keep in mind the limitations of economic forecasts in times like these.

By Mike Bryan, vice president and economist of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta

The World According To Goldman Sachs (And Almost Everyone Else)

From my email, "A Tale of Two Tail Risks," from Goldman Sachs' Michael Vaknin:

• Sub-prime mortgage woes still hold centre-stage as housing fundamentals deteriorate further.
• A full-blown spillover from credit markets to other asset classes is unlikely as corporate sector and global macro fundamentals remain strong.
• Rather, credit market will feature less leverage, more convents, elevated volatility and gradual supply absorption.
• Upward risks to global inflation also remain high on the list of what investors worry about currently.
• On our baseline case, prudent monetary policy should limit a build-up of inflationary pressures.

Some details:

From a fundamental standpoint, there are two conflicting forces to consider. First, the ongoing deterioration in the residential housing market will continue to weigh on the mortgage market. Recent housing market data point to further inventory accumulation, while price indicators suggest the deceleration in house prices has gained more traction recently. The Case-Shiller 10- and 20-city composite indexes have declined sharply in April (7?% on annualized basis). The resulting decline in housing equity, along with the recent widening of mortgage rates and tightening of contractual mortgage conditions are all likely to keep credit investors on high alert.

On the bright side, corporate fundamentals remain fairly robust. Corporate default fundamentals are in good health, and from a macro perspective, corporate earnings are still supported by broadly favourable global demand conditions. While measures of industrial activity (including our Global Leading Indicator) have been somewhat softer than expected recently, from a level perspective the global manufacturing cycle remains comparatively strong, and a more broad-based weakness in the data is needed to shift this perception. Today's US ISM and the upcoming US payroll data are highly important in this respect.

That ISM report was, of course, a good one, although today's news on pending home sales failed to break the string of lousy housing data and factory orders for May were primarily lauded for being less bad than expected.  But put it together and the consensus seems to be that it all adds up to the Goldman Sachs story.  That's what came through in yesterday's round-up of forecasts from the Wall Street Journal, and the story that we're sticking to appeared again today in Bloomberg's coverage of the housing sales and orders reports:

Economists and the Federal Reserve predict growth will accelerate from its first quarter pace, the weakest since 2002, even as housing remains a burden. Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said last month there was no sign of "major spillovers'' from the housing slide. Industry reports for June show manufacturers are raising production as businesses spend on investment.

"The second half is coming together almost perfectly according to the Fed's plan,'' said Mark Vitner, senior economist at Wachovia Corp. in Charlotte, North Carolina. "Housing is going to be a drag but if we get some strength in business spending then the economy will be able to handle it.''

Though some of the forecasters in that Wall Street Journal survey -- about 20 percent --- put inflationary risks at the top of their wish-not list, GS's Vaknin wants to ease their minds:

As global activity continues to grow at an above-trend rate and commodity prices remain elevated, a re-acceleration in consumer price inflation, particularly in the major markets, remains a clear risk to the outlook for financial asset returns. Consider that, on a year-on-year basis, headline inflation in advanced economies has accelerated from 1.7% in Q4:06 to around 2.0% currently, driven largely by higher food and energy prices. Such acceleration comes on the back of extended tightness in production capacity: According to the OECD, the output gap in this group of countries is about to move into a positive territory by year-end after hovering in negative levels since mid-2001.

Despite these seemingly worrying observations, we that think inflation, particularly in the G-7, should accelerate only moderately before stabilizing at benign levels early next year. Granted, elevated food and energy prices may keep headline inflation above core measures for a bit longer. But this should be seen in the context of two important developments: (1) US core inflation is on a genuine deceleration path, and (2) Monetary policy stance remains prudent in other major economies where upside inflation risks are clearly higher.

The "monetary policy stance" is key, and it probably explains why so many commentators are taking their predictions of a policy-rate cut off the table for the time being.

Bad News Bulls

From the Wall Street Journal (page A2 in the print edition):

Economic growth in the U.S. is likely to recover as the year goes on, but that might not be an entirely good thing, according to the latest Wall Street Journal survey of forecasters.

The Journal's seers are feeling rather chipper about the near-term prospects for economic growth... 

Having run a veritable gantlet of threats to its health, the nation's economy is in a better place than it was just a few months ago...

The 60 economists who took part in the survey, conducted in mid-June, offered a mostly upbeat outlook for an economy that has recently sustained declines in both manufacturing and business investment, and that still faces a deepening housing slump.

With consumer spending holding up, a weaker dollar propelling U.S. exports and a pickup in production and investment, they expect real gross domestic product -- a broad measure of economic activity, adjusted for inflation -- to grow at an annualized rate of 2.6% in the second half of this year and 2.9% in 2008. That is down from 3.3% in 2006, but much better than the 0.7% pace of the first quarter of 2007.

... but worry that the Fed might ruin the party:

Forecasters, however, also see a mounting risk: Thanks to longer-term shifts in the U.S. and global economic landscapes, even a little growth could lead to a resurgence of inflation, which would be painful for American consumers and could cause the Federal Reserve to ride the brakes by keeping short-term interest rates higher.

The real-side rationale is pretty straightforward:

With consumer spending holding up, a weaker dollar propelling U.S. exports and a pickup in production and investment, they expect real gross domestic product -- a broad measure of economic activity, adjusted for inflation -- to grow at an annualized rate of 2.6% in the second half of this year and 2.9% in 2008. That is down from 3.3% in 2006, but much better than the 0.7% pace of the first quarter of 2007.

It is probably worth pointing out that the survey was conducted over the period from June 8th through  the 18th, before last week's run of negative news in the housing market.  And looking at the most recent spending data, Calculated Risk -- not a member of the survey panel as far as I know -- is skeptical that consumer spending is "holding up":

You can use the monthly series to exactly calculate the quarterly change in PCE [Personal Consumption Expenditures]. The quarterly change is not calculated as the change from the last month of one quarter to the last month of the next (several people have asked me about this). Instead, you have to average all three months of a quarter, and then take the change from the average of the three months of the preceding quarter...

... in general, the two month estimate is pretty accurate. Maybe June was exceptionally strong, or maybe April and May will be revised upwards, but the two month estimate suggests real PCE growth in Q2 will be about 1.5%.

That seems entirely plausible, but month-to-month and quarter-to-quarter changes in specific categories of spending tend to jump around:

    :

Thus, to CR's initial question on perusing the May PCE numbers...

Is this just a one quarter slowdown? Or is this the beginning of a housing related slump in consumer spending?

... I'd side with those saying not slumpy enough to cause real problems -- at least not so far as we can tell at this point.  No, what the Journal's experts really seem concerned about is the price picture:

An increasing number of economists worry that the battle with inflation isn't over, despite the benign message sent by recent data. As of May, the Fed's preferred measure of inflation -- the "core" index of personal-consumption prices, excluding food and energy -- was up only 1.9% from a year earlier. That compares with 2.4% as recently as February.

It seems to me that The Skeptical Speculator has about the right take on the issue:

The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas publishes two other measures of inflation based on personal consumption expenditures. The first is the overall personal consumption expenditures price index that is already reported by the Commerce Department. The other is the trimmed-mean price index that excludes components of personal consumption expenditures that have the highest and lowest rates of change.

The latest data provided on the Dallas Fed website show that these other measures of inflation remain above the Federal Reserve's comfort zone. The 12-month inflation rate based on the overall PCE price index was 2.3 percent in May and the inflation rate based on the trimmed-mean measure was 2.2 percent...

Based on this observation the Skeptical One draws this conclusion...

...  with the economy expected to recover from the second quarter onward, further moderation is likely to be limited. In fact, many economists think inflation will re-accelerate as the level of resource utilisation in the economy remains high despite the recent slowdown.

... an opinion that is shared by the WSJ panel:

In the survey, one in five forecasters saw a resurgence of inflation as the greatest risk facing the economy. That is more than twice the proportion who saw it as the No. 1 risk six months ago. As a result, they now see little chance that the Fed will lower its target for short-term interest rates from the current 5.25% by December. They do, however, lean toward a cut to 5% by June 2008. Six months ago, they were betting the Fed would cut rates to 4.75% by December.

December is, of course, a long way away.