Yep, its that bad

After some crosstalk with fellow members of the commentariat at Calculated Risk, one remark was "Are you sure? It can't be that bad!"

So I made a clean download of the data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) Table 2.1 (FD: well, I took all the Section 2 tables because I could). From Line 1, Personal Income I subtracted Line 17, Government Social Benefits to Persons. I then Q1 from the first year of the series from Q1 of the second year of the series and then copy/pasted to the end of the data...producing the graph above (with at least the y-axis labeled, another hat tip to RATM).

Yes, it's that bad.

BEA NIPA Tables


Edit: after some discussions regarding normalization, here is the (YoY change in personal income - govt benefit payments)/(personal income - govt benefit payments)

Continued Deterioration in Personal Income - Govt Social Benefits

(NB: Y-axis is in billions of USD - hat tip RATM)
Well we had our 3.5% preliminary GDP number out this morning, so what is the sustainability of this "recovery?" Given how central consumption is to the economy, how has the personal income of my fellow citizens been doing - and not just the headline number, but what is personal income less government social benefit transfer payments?

Data from the latest BEA release, soon to be updated with September numbers (NIPA Table 2.1)
Download MS Excel Table with 2009 values

Link to previous post on topic

Time normalized data for CDC US Outpatient Influenza Surveillance: 1997-present

This is the publicly available data from CDC, current up to the end of week 41 (October 11-17, 2009).

CDC Current Weekly FluView Report
Archive of FluView Weekly Reports
CDC Historic Influenza Surveillance Data
Notes on the CDC data:
1. Some years contain a "week 53", the years without week 53 do not have that data point.
2. Some of the years only have data from week 40 to week 20 (approximately the months of October-April).
3. Starting in 2003-2004 influenza season data, the CDC began providing a weighted % ILI value, which is the data used in the plots from 2004 forward. Prior years use the unweighted CDC reported value.

Treasury Marketable Debt Rollover Update

Well it's a "good news/bad news" story...the average tenor of the outstanding marketable debt has decreased as both the one quarter and cumulative two quarter rollover amount of debt have decreased. On the other hand, the marketable debt outstanding has increased by 6.0% over 3Q2009, slightly faster than the 5.6% increase in marketable debt in 2Q2009 (current quarter annualizes at ~26% rate of increase).

Though in examining the "good news", one wonders who is buying the long end of the curve at the current yields, when the information available in the press is that foreign central banks are moving to the shorter end...[sighs] ok maybe I'm not wondering too much...


Previous posts on Treasury marketable debt maturity:
2Q2009 Update
1Q2009 Update
4Q2008

EMRATIO - return to cliff diving?

The monthly reported value of EMRATIO took a relatively big leg down month over month of -0.4% in September, and the year over year comparison of the 3 month moving average is even more disconcerting as it represents the largest decrease for this recession and the seventh new all time record for the series...


Link to FRED for EMRATIO