Unexpectedly Intriguing!
14 December 2017

The Federal Reserve did the completely expected yesterday and announced that it would increase the Federal Funds Rate, the interest rate that U.S. banks charge when loaning money to other banks overnight, by a quarter percent, raising its target range for the Federal Funds Rate to now be between 1.25% to 1.50%.

Using the FOMC's announcement to take a snapshot in time of the probability of recession in the United States, we find that through 13 December 2017, it has ticked slightly up from our last report to 0.40%.

Recession Probability Track - 2 January 2014 through 13 December 2017

With the Federal Funds Rate still effectively set at 1.16% (the midpoint of the FOMC's previous target range between 1.00% and 1.25%) and the slightly declining spread in the yields between the 10-year and 3-month constant maturity U.S. Treasuries, the probability of a recession occurring within the next 12 months dropped just a fraction of a percentage point to 0.40% from the 0.37% where we last estimated it.

As such, there is currently very little chance that the National Bureau of Economic Research will someday declare that a national recession began in the U.S. between now and 13 December 2018 according to Jonathan Wright's recession forecasting methods.

That doesn't mean however that all parts of the U.S. will be recession free. As we've seen in recent years, parts of the U.S. may indeed experience what we've described as a microrecession, where some degree of economic contraction has occurred, but which lacks the combination of scale, scope and duration needed for the NBER to recognize a recession at the national level.

Previously on Political Calculations



Labels:

About Political Calculations

Welcome to the blogosphere's toolchest! Here, unlike other blogs dedicated to analyzing current events, we create easy-to-use, simple tools to do the math related to them so you can get in on the action too! If you would like to learn more about these tools, or if you would like to contribute ideas to develop for this blog, please e-mail us at:

ironman at politicalcalculations

Thanks in advance!

Recent Posts

Indices, Futures, and Bonds

Closing values for previous trading day.

Most Popular Posts
Quick Index

Site Data

This site is primarily powered by:

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?

CSS Validation

Valid CSS!

RSS Site Feed

AddThis Feed Button

JavaScript

The tools on this site are built using JavaScript. If you would like to learn more, one of the best free resources on the web is available at W3Schools.com.

Other Cool Resources

Blog Roll

Market Links

Useful Election Data
Charities We Support
Shopping Guides
Recommended Reading
Recently Shopped

Seeking Alpha Certified

Archives