Glenn on a Novel Approach to Reforming Social Security

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In Macroeconomics, Chapter 16 (Economics, Chapter 26), we discuss the problems facing the Social Security system. In this opinion column, which first appeared on the website of the Economist, Glenn discusses a new approach to discovering the views of the public on possible reforms to the system.

America Needs a Citizens’ Assembly to Reform Social Security

Of the various fiscal challenges faced by America, the one the public feels most keenly is the looming crisis in Social Security. It also presents an opportunity for a bold reform process outside the polarised and dysfunctional electoral process, built around consulting a sample of voters directly in a citizens’ assembly. This would have the twin benefits of bypassing both voters’ mistrust of politicians and politicians’ incomplete understanding of voters’ attitudes towards reform.

Voters are clearly ready for reform. Recent polling of swing-state voters by the Peterson Foundation, an organisation launched to promote fiscal responsibility, revealed broad opposition to inaction and support for reforms including raising the earnings cap subject to the payroll tax and capping Social Security benefits for better-off households. Only 17% of voters said they were likely to support a candidate in the upcoming midterms who promised not to touch the current system.

Social Security pays retirement benefits to 62m Americans and disability benefits to another 8m. But the 2026 Social Security Trustees Report (sstr) predicts that the system’s trust funds will be exhausted in 2032, and if no action is taken by Congress, benefits will need to be cut across the board by 22% at that time.

Elected officials have responded in a now-familiar way, with a proposal for a 13-member commission of members of Congress and experts. Historically, a commission held promise: one assembled in 1981 and commonly known as the Greenspan Commission after its chairman, Alan Greenspan, offered a sensible roadmap for gradual reforms in 1983. Today, such an approach, however well intentioned, is likely to fail, given how out-of-balance the system is. According to the sstr, it faces an actuarial deficit of 4.4% of payroll annually for the next 75 years. Tackling that via a commission would have been extremely difficult in the 1980s. Doing so today, with public trust in government and experts a lot lower, looks impossible. According to the Pew Research Centre, just 17% of Americans trust the federal government to do “what is right” always or most of the time, down from around 40% in the early 1980s.

America needs to experiment more boldly this time by entrusting the big decisions to voters, via a citizens’ assembly tasked with presenting clear options to elected officials. Social Security reform offers a logical use case for such an approach because the areas where change is needed are clearly delineated: retirement age, benefit formulas and the level and structure of taxation. And it can give insight to politicians about voters’ real views about the thorny economic and political trade-offs that will need to be made.

Citizens’ assemblies date back to ancient Athens as a way to inform democracy. In the modern era they have been used in several countries, including Belgium, France and Ireland, to develop policy. In Ireland, for example, recent citizens’ assemblies illustrated to politicians that attitudes towards abortion and same-sex marriage had changed more than legislators had realised.

A citizens’ assembly can help to break through policy gridlock by allowing ideas to be developed and debated in a higher-trust environment than a commission drawn from politicians and experts in whom the public has declining faith. Moreover, the ideas emerging from an assembly can sometimes reveal the “Overton window”—the range of reforms that the public can live with at that particular time—better than elected leaders can alone, as seen in the Irish case.

Three steps are critical to the success of any citizens’ assembly. The first concerns its composition. Its members, typically 50-100, should be chosen by lot, as with candidates for a jury. It should be an electorate in miniature, representative of the nation’s social strata and demography. Towards this end, sampling should be random to avoid simply selecting volunteers with particular upfront points of view. Those selected should be compensated for their time and expenses. Structured in this way, the citizens’ assembly can channel mistrust of politicians towards a reclaimed populism of actual voters’ input, not slogans.

Second, per the advice of William McChesney Martin, a former chair of the Federal Reserve, experts should be on tap, not on top. In contrast to the typical commission, experts’ role would be to provide information, not to suggest prescriptions. That would allow an assembly to develop reform options that reveal genuine voter sentiment, while neutralising populist mistrust of experts.

Third, politicians and their existing institutions need to support the work of the assembly. Congress should signal strongly that it will give serious consideration to proposals coming out of an assembly—and commit to an up-or-down vote on them, as with the process for military-base closures in 1988. Elected officials should not need reminding about the large benefit reductions that will kick in as a result of a failure to act by 2032.

Selection, expert input and politicians’ commitment map well into Social Security reform. Over multiple sessions (the Irish deliberation on abortion unfolded over several weekends in a six-month period) the assembly would agree upon objectives and principles, a menu of reform options and a recommendation for formal consideration by Congress. Outside experts would provide background information on design choices (say, refining the current system or moving, for example, to a system with a flat benefit for all) and the budget and individual tax-and-benefit consequences of options (say, changes in the retirement age, payroll tax, and benefit level and structure). With this input, the assembly would evaluate options with both principles and political feasibility in mind.

Such an assembly offers an opportunity for meaningful action before the 2032 deadline. Were it successful, that would also provide momentum in related areas, such as the need for budget consolidation and policies towards artificial intelligence.

Social Security reform is stuck in deep political mud. A citizens’ assembly might just be the way to free it. It’s surely worth a tr

How Good Were the Deals during Amazon’s Prime Big Deal Days?

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Amazon concluded its fall Prime Big Deal Days yesterday. Amazon also has a Prime Day in the summer. The company generally reports that its Prime Days result in higher sales and that the lower prices Amazon charges during these periods result in substantial savings to consumers. For example, in October 2024, Amazon announced that, “Globally, Prime members saved more than $1 billion across millions of deals, including on seasonal merchandise and gifts.”

Most consumers likely expect that on Prime Days they can buy goods more cheaply on Amazon than on competing sites. That assumption isn’t always accurate, however. For example, Wirecutter is a product-review website owned by the New York Times. Yesterday, it recommended as one of several “best deals from Amazon’s Prime Big Deal Days” Breville’s Smart Oven Air Fryer Pro. Amazon was selling the oven at a price of $320, 20 percent less than its regular price of $400.

Image from amazon.com

Was that price unusually low? Not in comparison with Amazon’s competitors. Target, Best Buy, and Macy’s were also charging $320 for the same oven. Walmart was charging only $280. This price matching is unsurprising. Amazon’s Prime Days are widely publicized and Amazon’s competitors have an incentive to respond with sales of their own rather than lose business to Amazon. For instance, during Prime Days, Walmart was also advertising that on their site “Deals Are Heating Up in a Major Way.”

The price matching by competitors is, of course, not good news for Amazon. The following figure shows the demand for Breville ovens on amazon.com. For Amazon to experience an increase in the revenue it earns on the ovens from cutting the price by 20 percent, the quantity of ovens it sells would need to increase by more than 20 percent. Suppose that, hypothetically, Amazon would have sold 500 ovens per day at a price of $400 (point A).

If Amazon cuts the price of the ovens to $320 and its competitors keep their prices at $400, the demand curve for the ovens on amazon.com is D1, so the quantity of ovens Amazon sells increases to 650 per day (point B). In this case, Amazon’s revenue increases from $400 × 500 = $200,000 to $320 × 650 = $208,000. But if Amazon’s competitors match Amazon’s price cut—as we know that they did—then the demand curve for the ovens is D2, so the quantity of ovens Amazon sells increases only to 550 (point C). In this case, Amazon’s revenue decreases from $400 × 500 = $200,000 to $320 × 550 = $176,000.

(In Microeconomics, Chapter 6, we note that when two demand curves intersect, the flatter demand curve, D1—the one with the smaller slope in absolute value—is more price elastic than is the steeper demand curve, D2. In other words, a firm faces a more elastic demand curve when competitors match the firm’s price cuts than when they don’t.)

One way to think about the pricing of these ovens is that with Prime Day price cuts, Amazon pushed itself and its competitors into a prisoner’s dilemma. If we simplify the situation by including just Amazon and Best Buy, we can construct the following payoff matrix. (We discuss payoff matrices and the prisoner’s dilemma in Microeconomics, Chapter 14, Section 14.2.)

In this payoff matrix, Amazon and Best Buy are better off if they both charge $400 and earn a profit of $5,000 per day from selling the ovens (the upper left-hand quadrant). But if Amazon knows that Best Buy will charge $400, Amazon is better off gaining sales by charging $320 and earning a profit of $7,000 rather than a profit of $5,000 (the lower left-hand quadrant). If Amazon knows that Best Buy will charge $320, Amazon is better off also charging $320 and earning a profit of $4,000 rather than a profit of $2,500 (the lower right-hand quadrant).

Because the payoffs are symmetrical, we can conclude that both firms will charge $320, ending up with the smaller profit shown in the lower right-hand quadrant rather than the larger profit shown in the upper left-hand quadrant. The two firms are in a prisoner’s dilemma.

As we discuss in Chapter 14, in practice, firms can escape the prisoner’s dilemma in situations like this one because the firms are in a repeated game. In that situation, firms are better off cooperating by implicitly colluding and both charging $400. But we wouldn’t expect implicit collision here because during Prime Days, Amazon is publicly announcing that it will charge the lower price. In that case, Amazon’s competitors have an incentive to also charge a lower price, which they did. (Walmart, as we mentioned, decided to charge a price that was even below Amazon’s Prime Day price.)

So, can you get good deals during Amazon’s Prime Days? Yes, not only on their site, but on competitors’ sites as well.

Solved Problem: A Half-Price Sale on U.S. Treasury Bonds?

Supports: Money, Banking, and the Financial System, Chapter 3.

Image generated by ChatGPT of the U.S. Treasury building in Washington, DC

In a recent book review in the Wall Street Journal, financial analyst James Grant wrote: “The Treasury may indeed pay off every claim in freshly printed dollars. But 30-year Treasurys issued at the sub-2% yields prevailing in 2020 change hands today for less than 45 cents on the dollar.”

To illustrate Grant’s point: On May 15, 2020, the U. S. Treasury issued a 30-year bond with a $12.50 coupon and a face value, or par value, of $1,000. On October 6, the market price of the bond was $424.25. If you buy this bond today, you will receive a payment of $1,000 from the U.S. Treasury on May 15, 2050. The U.S. Treasury most recently issued 30-year bonds on August 17, 2026. Those 30-year bonds have a coupon of $51.25.

a. What does Grant mean by writing that 30-year Treasury bonds issued in 2020 “change hands today for less than 45 cents on the dollar”?

b. Why would anyone would be willing to sell you a bond for less than 50 percent of the amount the seller would receive by holding the bond to maturity?

Solving the Problem
Step 1: Review the chapter material. This problem is about why bond prices fluctuate, so you may want to review Money, Banking, and the Financial System, Chapter 3, “Interest Rates and Rates of Return,” particularly the section “What Happens to Bond Prices When Interest Rates Change?”

Step 2: Answer part a. by explaining what Grant meant by bonds changing hands at less than 45 cents on the dollar. By “changing hands” Grant is referring to buying and selling bonds in the bond market. By “less than 45 cents on the dollar,” Grant means that bonds with a face value of $1,000 are selling for less than $450.

Step 3: Answer part b. by explaining why someone would be willing to sell you a bond for only $450 even though the bond has a face value of $1,000. In the bond market, as bonds are bought and sold, bonds of the same characteristics should have the same yield, as measured by the yield to maturity on the bonds. The 30-year bonds the Treasury issued in August of this year currently have a yield to maturity of about of about 5.31%. (The yield to maturity on these bonds is greater than the bonds coupon rate of 5.125% because the prices of the bonds are currently less than $1,000.) As an investor, you would only be willing to buy the 30-year bonds the Treasury issued in 2020 with a coupon rate of 1.25% if the price of the bonds will result in your receiving a yield to maturity of 5.31%.

The expression that links the price of a coupon bond, P, to the yield to maturity on the bond, i, is:

Keeping mind that the coupon, C, on a bond is fixed once the bond is issued, an increase in the yield to maturity must cause a decline in price of the bond. Because the gap in coupon rates between Treasury bonds issued in 2020 and in 2026 is so large, the 2020 bonds must have much lower prices in order to have the same yield to maturity.

Extra credit. The U.S. Treasury only started regularly issuing coupon bonds in the 1970s as the federal government began to run substantial budget deficits nearly every year. Prior to that, individuals rarely bought Treasury bonds with the exception of the tens of billions of “war bonds” the Treasury issued to raise funds during World War I and World War II.

Image from the American Museum of Natural History

As the following figure shows, since the 1970s, the yields on 30-year Treasury bonds have changed dramatically over time, from more than 15% in 1981 to less than 2% in 2020. These variations in yields reflect the higher or lower coupon rates the Treasury needs to offer investors as a result of fluctuations in inflation and in other factors that affect the demand for bonds.

Is It Fine to Bring an Iced Coffee to a Job Interview? Jadrian Wooten Provides an Economic Analysis

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There’s a vigorous debate on social media over whether it’s acceptable for a job candidate to bring an iced coffee to an interview. In his always interesting “Monday Morning Economist” Substack, Jadrian Wooten provides an economic analysis based on the signaling theory of Nobel laureate Michael Spence of New York University and Stanford. 

Photo of Michael Spence from gsb.stanford.edu

Signaling can be important in markets affected by the problem of asymmetric information, which occurs when one party to an economic attraction has less information than the other party. As we discuss in Microeconomics, Chapter 7, George Akerlof—who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in the same year as Spence—provided a classic early analysis of asymmetric information in the used car market. The seller of a used car will know whether a failure to maintain the car by, for instance, regularly changing its oil, has caused the car’s engine to suffer damage that even an auto mechanic may have difficulty detecting.

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Asymmetric information in a market can lead to adverse selection in which one party to a transaction—in this case, a car seller—takes advantage of knowing more than the other party—in this case, a car buyer. For example, suppose you intend to buy a car, and you contact people who have listed cars on Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist. You have no good way of determining whether a car listed has been well maintained, a “creampuff,” or poorly maintained, a “lemon.” If you had full information on the car you would offer to pay $25,000 to buy a creampuff, but only $15,000 to buy a lemon. Because of this uncertainty, you might offer to pay $20,000 for a car of unknown quality. Your offer seems reasonable to you, given your uncertainty about the quality of the car. However, a seller who knows the quality of the car will be reluctant to accept your offer if the car is a creampuff, but happy to accept your offer if the car is a lemon. The result is that cars offered for sale are more likely to be lemons than creampuffs. Or, in other words, because of asymmetric information, the market has adversely selected the cars that will be offered for sale.

Asymmetric information also exists in the job market. When you apply for a job, you know much more about how hard you will work and how developed your relevant skills are than does the company you are applying to. Suppose that the company would pay you a salary of $60,000 per year if the company was sure that you would turn out to be a hard worker, but only $40,000 if the company believed that you would turn out be a slacker. Because of this uncertainty, the company might offer a starting salary of $50,000. That salary would be attractive to slackers but unattractive to hard workers. As a result, the company might find that most of the people applying to work for them are slackers.

Michael Spence argues that in markets in which asymmetric information is important, economic agents will have an incentive to signal that the good or service they are selling is of higher quality than buyers might otherwise think. For example, a firm selling used cars may invest in making their dealership clean and attractive or by offering warranties on the cars they sell. The firms are attempting to signal buyers that the cars they are selling are creampuffs rather than lemons.

One strong signal you can send to employers when you apply for jobs is that you have earned a college degree. There has been a long debate among economists over whether a college degree indicates to potential employers that you have accumulated knowledge and skills in college—in other words, your human capital is higher than for non-college graduates—or whether a college degree is mainly a signal to potential employers that you are likely to be a hard worker because you have completed a task as difficult as obtaining a college degree.

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The sheepskin effect is often raised by economists arguing that for potential employers your having college degree is more about signaling than about the human capital you have accumulated in college. If you complete three years of college but drop out in your fourth year before earning your degree, you have likely learned almost as much, and have nearly the same level of human capital, as someone who has taken the few additional classes needed to earn a degree. In the job market, though, you are likely to earn significantly less than someone who has a college degree. This result makes it seem that a college degree is primarily a signal to employers that you have the characteristics of a good employee. Note: The sheepskin effect gets its name from the fact that years ago college diplomas were often printed on material derived from animal skins.

This older blog post by Noah Smith, including the responses from Bryan Kaplan of George Mason University, covers the main points raised in the debate over whether the value of a college degree is mainly the signal it sends to potential employers.

So, what signal are you sending when you bring an iced coffee to a job interview? Jadrian Wooten’s Substack post explains.

Solved Problem: Why Do Bond Prices and Bond Yields Move Inversely?

Supports: Money, Banking, and the Financial System, Chapter 3, and Microeconomics, Chapter 8, Appendix.

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A recent article in the Wall Street Journal was titled “A Primer on Why Bond Prices Fall When Yields Rise.” A student reading the title of the article asks, “How can that be right? Investors would prefer to own bonds that have higher yields, so when the yields on bonds rise, investors should demand more of them. When the demand for something goes up, the price increases. Therefore, bond yields and bond prices should go up (or down) together.” Briefly explain the error in this student’s reasoning.

Solving the Problem
Step 1: Review the chapter material. This problem is about the relationship between bond yields and bond prices, so you may want to review Money, Banking, and the Financial System, Chapter 3 (for a complete discussion) or Microeconomics, Chapter 8, Appendix (for a brief discussion).

Step 2: Solve the problem by explaining what is wrong with the argument that if bond yields increase, so will bond prices, and if bond yields decrease, so will bond prices. In solving the problem, we should first consider the sometimes confusing number of “interest rates” on a coupon bonds. Coupon bonds pay interest in the form of coupons, which are usually quoted on an annual basis although typically paid twice per year. For example, Apple may issue a bond that pays a coupon of $47.50. The coupon rate on this bond is quoted per $1,000 of face value, or par value, which in this case would be 4.750%.

Bonds, like other financial assets such as shares of stock, are bought and sold in financial markets. A key point is that in financial markets, bonds with similar characteristics—including the same level of default risk, the same liquidity, and the same tax treatment of the bonds’ coupons—should provide investors with the same expected return. If this condition didn’t hold—for instance, if a bond issued by Apple was expected to provide a higher return than comparable bonds—then investors would increase their demand for the Apple bond, forcing up its price until its yield fell by enough to make its expected return the same as on other comparable bonds.

The price of a bond can fluctuate depending on how its coupon rate compares to the coupon rates on newly issued bonds, changes in investors’ expectations of future inflation, changes in investors’ expectations of the default risk of the bond, and other factors. For example, an article in the Wall Street Journal reported that, “Lenders on Monday demanded higher yields on bonds from a new data-center project in El Paso, Texas, leased by Meta compared with a similar project last year.” According to the article, the reason for the higher yields was that investors had raised their estimates of the default risk on bonds issued to fund data centers. Investors needed higher yields on bonds to compensate them for the higher default risk.

An image created by ChatGPT of Meta’s data-center complex under construction in El Paso, Texas.

What happens to the prices of existing bonds when newly issued bonds have higher coupon rates? Keeping in mind that, because the coupon rate on a bond is fixed and won’t change after the bond has been issued, the only way that the yield on a bond can change is if the price of the bond declines. By “yield” we are here referring to the yield to maturity, which is the best way of calculating the yield on a bond and which is ordinarily what economists and investors mean when they refer to the interest rate on a bond.

Formally, the yield to maturity is defined as the interest rate that makes the present value of the payments from the bond equal to the bond’s current price. In the following expression, where C is the coupon on the bond, FV is the face value of the bond, and n is the number of years until the bond matures, i is the yield to maturity.

The arithmetic of this expressions shows that if the yield to maturity increases, because, for example, the coupon rate on similar newly issued bonds are higher than the coupon rate on this bond, the price of the bond must decline. The economics of this expression is that an increase in the yield to maturity reduces the present value of a bond’s coupon payments and face value.

The reverse happens if the yield to maturity on a bond falls: The price of the bond will rise as a matter of arithmetic. As a matter of economics, a lower yield to maturity increases the present value of a bond’s coupon payments and face value.

So, although the student’s assertion seems logical, the economics of bond prices shows that the prices and yields on bonds move inversely.

Unexpectedly Weak September Jobs Report

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This morning (October 2), the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released its “Employment Situation” report (often called the “jobs report”) for September. The August jobs report had showed an unexpectedly large increase in employment, while the September report shows an unexpectedly small increase in employment.

The jobs report has two estimates of the change in employment during the month: one estimate from the establishment survey, often referred to as the payroll survey, and one from the household survey. As we discuss in Macroeconomics, Chapter 9, Section 9.1 (Economics, Chapter 19, Section 19.1), many economists and Federal Reserve policymakers believe that employment data from the establishment survey provide a more accurate indicator of the state of the labor market than do the household survey’s employment and unemployment data. (The groups included in the employment estimates from the two surveys are somewhat different, as we discuss in this post.)

The BLS is housed in the Suitland Federal Center in Maryland. (Image created by ChatGPT)

According to the establishment survey, there was a net increase of only 29,000 nonfarm jobs during September. Economists surveyed by the Wall Street Journal had forecast an increase of 90,000 jobs. Economists surveyed by FactSet had forecast a net increase of 95,000 jobs. The BLS revised downward its previous estimates of employment in July and August by a combined 60,000 jobs. The estimate of the net employment change in July was revised from an increase of 21,000 to a decrease of 10,000. (The BLS notes that: “Monthly revisions result from additional reports received from businesses and government agencies since the last published estimates and from the recalculation of seasonal factors.”)

The following figure from the jobs report shows the net change in nonfarm payroll employment for each month in the last two years. The figure shows that since peaking in March with a net increase of 214,000 jobs, job growth slowed markedly over the following four months, then strongly rebounding in August, before returning to slower growth in September. In 2026, monthly net employment growth has averaged 68,000. That is much higher than the 2025 average monthly employment growth of only 10,000, but well below the 2024 average monthly employment growth of 122,000.

The unemployment rate, which is calculated from data in the household survey, was 4.2 percent in September, up slightly from 4.1 percent in August. The estimated size of the labor force, the number of workers employed, and the number of workers unemployed all increased in September. The following figure shows that the unemployment rate has been remarkably stable over the past year and a half, staying between 4.0 percent and 4.4 percent in each month since June 2024. The Federal Open Market Committee’s most recent estimate of the natural rate of unemployment—the normal rate of unemployment over the long run—is 4.2 percent. So, currently the unemployment rate is equal to that estimate of the natural rate. (We discuss the natural rate of unemployment in Macroeconomics, Chapter 9 and Economics, Chapter 19.)

As the following figure shows, the monthly net change in jobs from the household survey moves much more erratically than does the net change in jobs from the establishment survey. As measured by the household survey, there was a net increase of 406,000 jobs in August, far larger than the net increase in employment shown in the establishment survey. Since January, the household survey has shown a net increase in jobs in only three months, with a total net decrease of 840,000 jobs over the period. In contrast, the establishment survey has shown a net increase of 612,000 jobs over the same period. (Note that because of last year’s shutdown of the federal government, there are no data for October or November.)

The household survey has another important labor market indicator: the employment-population ratio for prime age workers—those workers aged 25 to 54. In September, the ratio was 80.7 percent, up from 80.4 in August. The prime-age population ratio can show volatility from month to month but has remained above 80 percent every month since December 2022.

The rapid adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) by many firms has led to forecasts of substantial layoffs of workers in information systems. The following figure shows net employment changes in the BLS employment category of “computing infrastructure providers, data processing, web hosting, and related services.” Employment in this sector has been declining during most months since the beginning of 2023. In September, there was a net decrease of 1,600 jobs.

The establishment survey also includes data on average hourly earnings (AHE). As we noted in earlier posts, many economists and policymakers believe the employment cost index (ECI) is a better measure of wage pressures in the economy than is AHE. AHE does have the important advantage of being available monthly, whereas the ECI is only available quarterly. The following figure shows the percentage change in AHE from the same month in the previous year. AHE increased 3.0 percent in September, down from 3.1 percent in August. That was the smallest increase since May 2021. The rate of increase in AHE has been below 4.0 percent each month since August 2025, indicating that cost pressure from wage increases has not been a significant source of price inflation during the past year. Over this same period, wage increases have struggled to keep up with price increases, resulting in a decline in real wages.

With inflation having been above the Federal Reserve’s 2 percent annual target every month since March 2021, the Fed’s policymaking Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) raised its target range for the federal funds rate at its September meeting. At that time, many analysts expected that the committee would raise its target again at its next meeting on October 27–28.

Trading in the federal funds futures market this morning indicates that investors no longer believe that the committee will increase its federal funds target at its October meeting. A week ago, trading in the federal funds futures market indicated that investors assigned a 64.2 percent to a rate increase at that meeting, while this morning the probability had declined to 21.6 percent. Investors still expect that the committee will increase its target for the federal funds rate at its meeting on December 8–9, although the probability has declined from 92.6 percent a week ago to 85.1 percent today.

New BEA Data Releases Show Higher Growth and Lower Inflation than Expected

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The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) released two reports this morning (September 30). One report indicated that economic growth was higher in the second quarter of 2026 than the BEA had previously estimated. The other report indicated that inflation as measured by the percentage increase in personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index was lower than expected.

The BEA’s latest estimate is that real GDP increased at an annual rate of 2.2 percent in the second quarter (April, May, and June) of 2026. That is a sharp upward revision of the BEA’s previous estimate that real GDP had increased at an annual rate of 1.5 percent in the second quarter. The following figure from the report shows that upward revisions of investment, consumer spending, and government spending account for the upward revision of real GDP growth. The figure shows the BEA’s advance (original estimate) and two subsequent revised estimates. The BEA revises its estimates of real GDP growth as over time as it collects more complete and accurate data on growth in the components of GDP.

As we’ve discussed in previous blog posts, to better gauge the state of the economy, Federal Reserve policymakers often prefer to strip out the effects of imports, inventory investment, and government expenditures—which can be volatile—by looking at real final sales to private domestic purchasers, which includes only spending by U.S. households and firms on domestic production. As the following figure shows, real final sales to domestic purchasers increased at an annual rate of 4.6 percent in the second quarter, revised upward from 4.4 percent. The growth rate in real final sales to domestic purchasers was more than twice the growth rate of real GDP, as well as much higher than the U.S. economy’s expected long-run annual real growth rate of 1.8 percent. So estimated growth in real final sales to domestic purchasers indicates that the U.S. economy is expanding more rapidly than is indicated by estimated growth in real GDP. Typically, growth in real final sales to domestic purchasers is steadier than growth in real GDP and is likely a better indicator of the underlying growth rate in the economy.

The BEA’s “Personal Income and Outlays” report this morning included monthly data on the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index. The Fed relies on annual changes in the PCE price index to evaluate whether it’s meeting its 2 percent annual inflation target. As we noted in an earlier blog post, Fed Chair Kevin Warsh indicated in his press conference following the July meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) that the committee intended to continue using the PCE price index as its gauge of inflation, although that decision would be revisited early next year. Some analysts have interpreted Warsh’s statement that the decision would be revisited next year as an indication that he favored moving to a measure that would show lower rates of inflation than those shown by the PCE.

The following figure shows headline PCE inflation (the blue line) and core PCE inflation (the red line)—which excludes energy and food prices—for the period since January 2019, with inflation measured as the percentage change in the PCE from the same month in the previous year. In August, headline PCE inflation was 3.4 percent, unchanged from July. Core PCE inflation in August was 3.0 percent, also unchanged from July. Headline and core PCE inflation were both lower than forecast by economists surveyed by FactSet. Both headline PCE inflation and core PCE inflation remain well above the Fed’s 2 percent annual inflation target.

The following figure shows headline PCE inflation and core PCE inflation calculated by compounding the current month’s rate over an entire year. (Often referred to as 1-month inflation.) Measured this way, headline PCE inflation increased from 0.6 in July to 3.8 percent in August. Core PCE inflation increased from 1.5 percent in July to 3.0 percent in August. In contrast with the 12-month inflation rates, the 1-month inflation rates show noticeable acceleration in inflation during August. Of course, it’s important not to overinterpret the data from a single month.

Fed policymakers believe that inflation in non-market services can skew PCE inflation. Non-market services are services whose prices the BEA imputes rather than measures directly. For instance, the BEA assumes that prices of financial services—such as brokerage fees—vary with the prices of financial assets. So that if stock prices rise, the prices of financial services included in the PCE price index also rise. Former Fed Chair Jerome Powell has argued that these imputed prices “don’t really tell us much about … tightness in the economy. They don’t really reflect that.” The following figure shows 12-month headline inflation (the blue line) and 12-month core inflation (the red line) for market-based PCE. (The BEA explains the market-based PCE measure here.)

Headline market-based PCE inflation was 3.5 percent in August, up slightly from 3.4 percent July. Core market-based PCE inflation was 3.0 percent in August, up from 2.9 percent in July. So, both market-based measures show inflation in August remaining well above the Fed’s 2 percent target.

Fed Chair Kevin Warsh argued in testimony at his confirmation hearing before the Senate that the Fed should stop relying on headline PCE inflation: “The measures [of inflation] I prefer are looking at things that are called trimmed averages. We take out all of the tail-risks, all of the one-off items, and we ask ourselves whether the generalized change in prices is having second-order effects on the economy.” 

Trimmed-mean PCE inflation drops the 31 percent of goods and services with the highest inflation rates and the 24 percent of goods and services with the lowest inflation rates. A closely related measure, median PCE inflation, is calculated by listing the inflation rate in each individual good or service included in the PCE and identifying the inflation rate of the good or service that is in the middle of the list—that is, the inflation rate in the price of the good or service that has an equal number of higher and lower inflation rates. 

The following figure shows 12-month headline PCE inflation the (blue line), core PCE inflation (the red line) and trimmed-mean PCE inflation (the green line). Trimmed-mean PCE inflation in August was 2.2 percent, well below both headline and core PCE inflation.

The following figure from the website of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland shows headline PCE inflation (the green line), core PCE inflation (the blue line), and median PCE inflation (the brown line). In August, median PCE inflation was 2.6 percent, which was down from 2.7 percent in July. So Warsh has a point that these two measures of inflation, which are less affected by particularly high or low rates of inflation in some goods and services, indicate that inflation has been running below the Fed’s currently preferred measure. But these measures also show inflation still running well above the Fed’s 2 percent annual inflation target.

Today’s macro data releases appear to have caused of investors who buy and sell federal funds futures contracts to believe that the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) is now less likely to raise its target for the federal funds rate at the committee’s next meeting on October 27–28. Trading on the federal funds futures market this afternoon implies that the probability of a target rate increase at that meeting is 39.3 percent, down from a probability of 50.9 percent yesterday.

What’s Going on in the Bond Market?

Image created by ChatGPT

As the following figure show, as of yesterday, the yield on the 30-year U.S. Treasury bond is the highest it’s been since 2004, before the Global Financial Crisis.

The following figure (created by ChatGPT using data from this Treasury website) shows that Treasury bonds at all maturities have risen this year. Recall that the maturity of a bond is the amount of time until the seller of the bond repays the principal to the buyer of the bond. Formally, a Treasury security with a maturity of 1 year or less is a Treasury bill, a Treasury security with with a maturity of 2 years to 10 years is a Treasury note, and a Treasury security with of more than 10 years is a Treasury bond. For simplicity, in this post we’ll usually refer to all Treasury securities as bonds. We’ll refer interchangeably to the interest rate on a bond and the yield on the bond. Formally, the relevant interest rate in this post is the yield to maturity. (We discuss the bond market in Money, Banking, and the Financial System, Chapters 3-5. A new edition is available now.)

Rising yields on Treasury securities have a substantial effect on the economy. On most days, nearly all of the buying and selling in the Treasury bond market is of existing bonds that the U.S. Treasury may have issued decades earlier. Because the federal government has been running large budget deficits, the Treasury has to issue billions of new Treasury bonds each year. Investors will only buy newly issued Treasury bonds if their yields are competitive with the yields on existing bonds. As a result, interest payments have been a rising fraction of total federal spending, which contributes to the federal budget deficit.

Firms that grant mortgage loans typically adjust the interest rates they charge as the yield on the 10-year Treasury changes. The difference between the interest rate on mortgages and the interest rate on the 10-year Treasury is called the mortgage spread. The following figure shows the close relationship between movements in the mortgage interest rate (the blue line) and movements in the interest rate on 10-year Treasurys (the red line). The recent increase in the yields on 10-year Treasurys has caused an increase in the mortgage interest rate.

Many investors hold both Treasury bonds and bonds issued by corporations. If the yields on Treasury bonds rise, to attract investors the yields on corporate bonds also have to rise. The following figure shows that there is a close relationship between the yield on 10-year Treasurys and the yield on corporate bonds. The interest rate on corporate bonds is higher than the interest rate on Treasurys for two key reasons: First, corporate bonds have a higher default risk, which is the risk that a bond issuer will fail to make payments of interest or principal. Second., corporate bonds are less liquid than Treasurys, which means that because the market for Treasurys is much larger than the market for any corporate bond, an investor can more easily sell a Treasury bond. Investors need to be compensated with a higher interest rate on corporate bonds for the greater default risk and lower liquidity of these bonds.

What’s caused the increases in interest rates? Several factors are involved. First, in part because of rising oil prices resulting from conflict in the Middle East, since the middle of 2026 there has been an increase in the inflation rate that investors in bond markets expect to prevail over the next few years. Inflation reduces the purchasing power of the payments investors receive from owning a bond. The Fisher effect refers to the argument by Irving Fisher, who was an economist at Yale University, that the nominal interest rate on a bond will rise point-for-point with changes in the expected inflation rate. (Recall from Macroeconomics, Chapter 9 (Economics, Chapter 19) that the nominal interest rate is the stated interest rate on a bond. We can approximate the real interest rate by subtracting the expected inflation rate from the nominal interest rate.) The following figure from Chapter 4 of Money, Banking, and the Financial System, illustrates the Fisher effect.

A higher expected inflation rate increases the quantity of bonds supplied at any given bond price because inflation reduces the real value of the payments that bond issuers have to make. In the figure, the supply curve for bonds shifts to the right from S1 to S2. A higher expected inflation rate decreases the quantity of bonds demand at any given bond price because inflation reduces the real value of the payments that bond buyers receive. The demand curve for bonds shift to the left from D1 to D2. Note that because the equilibrium price of bonds declines from P1 to P2, the interest rate—which moves inversely with the price—increases. In practice, economists have found that various real-world frictions result in nominal interest rates not always increasing or decreasing by exactly the amount of a change in expected inflation. But the basic point holds that changes in the expected inflation rate lead to changes in the interest rates on bonds.

The second reason that interest rates have been rising is related to the first reason. As we discuss in this blog post, because the inflation rate has been running persistently higher than the Federal Reserve’s 2 percent annual target, at its September meeting the Fed’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) raised its target for the federal funds rate. Investors in the federal funds futures market expect that the committee will raise its federal funds rate target further in coming meetings. The following figure shows that the interest rate on 1-year Treasury bills tracks closely movements in the federal funds rate.

Changes in expected future short-term interest rates, such as the expected interest rate on the 1-year Treasury bill one year from now, can affect longer-term interest rates. For example, someone who wants to invest in Treasurys for two years could either buy a 2-year Treasury or buy a 1-year Treasury today and another 1-year Treasury in a year. We would expect that buying and selling in the bond market would make the return from these two ways of investing equal—a process called arbitrage. If investors expect that the FOMC will raise its target for the federal funds rate in the future, the expected interest on the 1-year Treasury bill a year from now will increase, which will also increase the interest rate today on a 2-year Treasury. The same process will also cause interest rates on longer-maturity bonds to increase.

Third, the supply of bonds has been increasing rapidly. As we’ve seen, high federal government budget deficits will cause the Treasury to issue close to $2 trillion in bonds this year. In addition, technology firms, such as as Meta, Alphabet (the parent company of Google), Amazon, and Oracle, have been increasing their bond sales to obtain the funds to build out the infrastructure, such as data centers, necessary to power the AI build out. According to data from the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, through August of 2026, corporate bond issuance was nearly 30 percent greater than in 2025.

(Note that most other high income countries, including Japan, Canada, and the countries of Western Europe, have also been running large government budget deficits and issuing large quantities of bonds. Because investors can buy and sell bonds across countries, higher interest rates in one country can put upward pressure on interest rates in other countries.)

As the following figure shows, an increase in the supply of bonds, holding other factors that can affect the demand or supply of bonds constant, causes the price of bonds to fall and, therefore, the interest rate on bonds to rise.

Following the Global Financial Crisis of 2007–2009, low inflation rates and a federal funds rate close to zero resulted in low interest rates on most bonds. For example, the 10-year Treasury note was below 4 percent—and typically below 3 percent—from late 2008 to late 2022. Some economists believed that interest rates would remain low for the foreseeable future. But the sharp increase in inflation rates that began in the spring of 2021, following the Covid pandemic, continuing high federal budget deficits, and tech firms demand for funds to build data centers and other AI infrastructure has led to the highest interest rates in more than 20 years. Whether these high interest rates will persist depends primarily on future inflation rates and future federal budget deficits.

As Expected, the FOMC Raises Its Federal Funds Rate Target

Photo from federalreserve.gov

Today, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) met expectation by raising its target range for the federal funds rate by 0.25 percentage points (25 basis points) from the range of 3.50 percent to 3.75 percent that had prevailed since December 10 of last year. As of yesterday, trading in the federal funds rate futures market had implied a 93.5 percent probability of a 25 basis point increase. Financial markets had been convinced that a rate increase was coming since Fed Chair Kevin Warsh’s speech at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City’s economic policy symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming in late August. (We discussed Warsh’s speech in this blog post.) There had been some speculation in the business press that one or more committee members would dissent from a rate increase, but the vote turned out to be unanimous. Today was the first time the committee had increased the target range since July 2023.

The following figure shows for the period from 2001 through yesterday, the upper bound (the blue line) and the lower bound (the green line) for the FOMC’s target range for the federal funds rate, as well as the actual values for the federal funds rate (the red line). Before December 2008, the Fed announced a single numerical target for the federal funds rate, rather than a target range. Note that the Fed has been successful in keeping the value of the federal funds rate in its target range. (We discuss the monetary policy tools the FOMC uses to maintain the federal funds rate within its target range in Macroeconomics, Chapter 15, Section 15.2 (Economics, Chapter 25, Section 25.2).)

As with the policy statements issued following Warsh’s previous two FOMC meetings, today’s policy statement was short and did not include any discussion of the circumstances under which further target rate increases might occur—so-called forward guidance. We discuss forward guidance in Macroeconomics, Chapter 15 (Economics, Chapter 25).

After the meeting, the committee also released a “Summary of Economic Projections” (SEP)—as it typically does at its March, June, September, and December meetings. The SEP presents median values of the, typically, 19 committee members’ forecasts of key economic variables. In a press conference following the meeting, Warsh indicated that he didn’t submit forecasts, just as he hadn’t submitted forecasts for the SEP released after the June meeting. He indicated that the future of the SEP is one of the issues to be considered by his new committee on Fed communications.

The forecasts of key economic variables from the SEP are summarized in the following table, reproduced from the release. (Note that only 5 of the district bank presidents vote at FOMC meetings, although all 12 presidents participate in the discussions and prepare forecasts for the SEP.)

There are several aspects of these forecasts worth noting:

  1. Compared with the previous SEP in June, the committee members raised their forecast of real GDP growth in 2026 slightly from 2.2 percent to 2.3 percent. The committee members left unchanged their forecast of long-run growth in real GDP at 2.0 percent. The unchanged long-range forecast indicates that the committee members are not anticipating a large, sustained increase in economic growth caused by increased use of artificial intelligence (AI). Consistent with raising their forecast of real GDP growth in 2026, the committee lowered its forecast of the unemployment rate in the fourth quarter of 2026 from 4.3 percent to 4.1 percent. The committee members left their forecast of the long-run rate of unemployment, often called the natural rate of unemployment, unchanged at 4.2 percent. 
  2. Committee members raised their forecast of personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price inflation in 2026 to 3.7 percent from 3.6 percent in June. They left their forecast of inflation in 2027 unchanged at 2.3 percent and forecast that PCE inflation would not decline to the Fed’s 2.0 percent annual target until 2029.
  3. The committee’s forecasts of the federal funds rate at the end of each year from 2026 through 2028 were increased, indicating that the committee sees the federal funds rate as likely to be “higher for longer.” The forecast for the long-run federal funds rate was raised from 3.1 percent to 3.2 percent.

There is always much discussion in the business press and among investment analysts about the dot plot, shown below. Each dot in the plot represents the projection of an individual committee member. (The committee doesn’t disclose which member is associated with which dot.) Note that there are 18 dots, representing the 6 members of the Fed’s Board of Governors who provided forecasts and all 12 presidents of the Fed’s district banks.

The dots plotted on the far left of the figure represent the projections by the 18 members of the value of the federal funds rate at the end of 2026. The plots indicate that, at this point, 16 members of the committee (circled in red) forecast at least one additional 25 basis point increase in the target range for the federal funds rate before the end of the year, with only 2 members expecting that there will be no further increases this year. For 2027, four members (circled in red) expect that the target range will be cut during the year, with the rest expecting either that the rate increases made this year will be maintained or that there will be one additional 25 basis point increase. The dots plotted on the far right of the figure indicate that there is substantial disagreement among committee members as to what the long-run value of the federal funds rate—the so-called neutral rate—should be. Of course, the plots only represent the forecasts of the committee members and individual committee members are likely to adjust their forecasts as additional macroeconomic data become available in the coming months.

At his press conference following the meeting, Warsh resisted attempts by reporters to get him to expand on the circumstances under which the committee might implement further increases in the target range. He characterized today’s rate increase as removing “a dose of accommodation” from the economy, which reflected the committee’s belief that the economy was experiencing full employment with persistently high inflation. The closest he came to engaging in forward guidance was the statement that “We must be confident that underlying inflation is moving towards our objective. This has not been satisfied.”

Warsh was asked what had changed since the July meeting at which the committee had kept the target range unchanged. in reply, he indicated that the committee believed that since July the economy had strengthened, inflation had continued to above target, and “geopolitical” factors had contributed to higher prices.

Canadian Prime Minster Mark Carney, Meet Canadian Prime Minister R. B. Bennett

Image created by ChatGPT

The United States and Canada have a long history of friendly relations and, famously, share the longest undefended border in the world. Trade in goods and services has also linked the two countries with substantial economic benefits to both. By and large, trade flows reflect each country’s comparative advantage in producing goods and services. (We discuss the important role of comparative advantage in international trade in Microeconomics, Chapter 9 (Economics, Chapter 9 and Macroeconomics, Chapter 7).)

Image created by ChatGPT

The following figures show that in 2025, Canada was the leading market for U.S. exports and the second leading source of U.S. imports, behind only Mexico.

The two figures were prepared by ChatGPT using data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Beyond trade in final goods and services, a number of U.S. and Canadian firms rely on capital goods and intermediate goods produced in the other country. For instance, in 2025, U.S. automobile manufacturers imported auto parts worth $19.5 billion from Canada. In other words, the supply chains of these firms rely on Canadian-produced parts.

Image created by ChatGPT

Economic relations between the United States and Canada have not always been smooth, however. In particular, the substantial increases in U.S. tariff rates in 1930 and during the second Trump administration resulted in sharp reactions from the Canadian government.

In 1930, Congress passed and President Herbert Hoover signed into law the Smoot-Hawley Tariff. In retaliation, Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King and the Liberal Party significantly raised tariffs on U.S. imports. (We discussed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff in this blog post last year.) In the July 1930 Canadian elections, as the effects of the Great Depression began to be felt, Richard Bedford Bennett, the leader of the Conservative Party campaigned on using tariff increases to increase production and reduce unemployment. In a campaign speech, Bennett argued, “You have
been taught to mock at tariffs and applaud free trade. Tell me, when did free
trade fight for you? You say our tariffs are only for the manufacturers; I will
make them fight for you as well. I will use them to blast a way into the markets
that have been closed to you.”

Photo of Congressman Willis Hawley of Oregon and Senator Reed Smoot from the U.S. Library of Congress via the Wall Street Journal.

The Conservatives won an overwhelming victory in the 1930 election, and the Canadian Parliament passed legislation that raised Canadian tariff rates on U.S. imports to the highest levels in history. Bennett hoped that Canada could replace the decline in exports to the United States with an increase in exports to the United Kingdom. The following two figures, from an academic paper Tony published with his Lehigh colleague Judith MacDonald, indicate the unlikelihood of Bennett’s plan succeeding. For most of the twentieth century up to 1930 (with the exception of the World War I period), the share of Canadian exports that went to the United Kingdom had been declining, while the share that went to the United States had been increasing. In addition, in 1930, more than 60 percent of Canadian imports came from the United States as opposed to less than 20 percent coming from the United Kingdom.

For reasons of geography and the long-established trading relations between U.S. and Canadian firms, a major reorienting of Canada’s trade away from the United States and toward the United Kingdom wasn’t feasible. By 1935, near the end of his five-term, Bennett pivoted to attempting to negotiate a reciprocal trade agreement with the United States that would result in both countries reducing their tariffs on each other’s products. An agreement was reached in November 1935, but that was too late for Bennett who had been voted out of office in July.

The higher tariffs that the Trump administration has imposed on Canadian imports has placed Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney in a situation similar to that Bennett faced in 1930. Like Bennett, Carney has responded to the higher tariffs by increasing tariffs on imports from the United States. And like Bennett, Carney has tried to find new markets outside of the United States for Canadian exports. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal:

“Carney has instructed his special envoy to Europe to scope out the most ambitious possibilities short of full membership in the [European Union] or its common market, according to people familiar with the matter. The details are still being sketched by technical working groups for what the prime minister has told his aides will be the reorienting of an economy and a society that for half a century has been dominated by the U.S.”

ChatGPT generated this image of the European Parliament building in Brussels, Belgium.

Carney’s plan of shifting Canadian exports from the United States to the European Union (EU) faces obstacles similar to those faced by Bennett as he attempted to substitute markets in the United Kingdom for markets in the United States. As the following figures show, in 2025, more than 70 percent of Canadian exports of goods went to the United States, while less than 6 percent went to the EU. Similarly, about 45 percent of the Canadian imports of goods were from the United States, while less than 12 percent were from the EU.

It may well be that Carney’s negotiations with officials in the EU are an attempt to push the United States into agreeing to reduce tariffs on Canadian imports. As a practical matter, though, it seems unlikely that Canada can reorient its trading relationships from the United Sates to the EU to any significant degree.