Saturday, July 11, 2009

Treasury Marketable Debt Rollover Update


Here is the quarterly update to the Treasury rollover plot. "Good news" in the sense of being less bad, as the rate of increase has slowed on a quarterly basis and the maturity distribution of the change improved - unlike last quarter, the front quarter rollover grew at a slower pace than the total.


What is still distressing is the rate of growth. While the QoQ rate of growth declined to 5.6% from the previous quarter's 8.1%, this still annualizes out to ~24% growth rate (a three year doubling time for the marketable debt). As I like to look at YoY growth rates, I checked that and may go back to work up a recent YoY growth rate history...2Q YoY growth was 41%.


Previous US Treasury marketable debt posts
1Q 2009 update
4Q 2008 post

Saturday, July 4, 2009

EMRATIO Year Over Year Decline - Uncharted Waters



In keeping with the KISS principle, I am currently paring back my different views of unemployment to the EMRATIO data from the St. Louis Fed FRED series...


Short version: the current rate of change for job losses as measured by the EMRATIO, or civilian employment to population, exceeds everything on the books by a wide margin - the energy shock recessions of the '70's, the double dip of the'80's - which appears to be even worse than it might otherwise seem as the economy is now strucuturally far more dependent on wage supported spending power.

Thursday, July 2, 2009

BLS Birth/Death Model - 3 Month Cumulative Impact



Lots of discussion on the net effects of the Birth/Death model, here is my modest contribution. For the last three months, the cumulative impact of the B/D model has been to reduce the reported job loss by a third - there's your green shoot right there...