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The "Scariest Spreadsheet In Fed Possession" Just Revealed A Very Scary Number For Q2 GDP
Earlier today, Goldman initiated its Q2 GDP tracking at 3.0%.
A few hours later, the Atlanta Fed, whose "preposterous" below-consensus forecast we first flagged in early March, and which nailed the Q1 GDP to within 0.1% of the final print, came out with its own first Q2 GDP tracking estimate. The number: a recession-worthy 0.9%.
And cue panic as the entire Wall Street sell side scrambles to converge with the forecasting superstar Atlanta Fed, which unless sees a dramatic pick up in its own estimate, means that the US is looking at a 0.5% GDP for the first half, and anything less than 4% average GDP growth in the second half will lead to the weakest US growth in 2015 since 2011!
So for all those weathermen "economists" who scramble to do actual math in their GDP calculation instead of merely goalseeking meaningless numbers, we would like to remind you that we showed precisely how to recreate the Atlanta Fed number almost two months ago in "The Scariest Spreadsheet In Fed Possession Revealed."
Most ignored it, and most were massively wrong.
Something tells us this time everyone will be poring for hours over the Atlanta Fed GDPNow model.
This is how the Fed bank presents its GDP predicting spreadsheet:
Is GDPNow an official forecast of the Atlanta Fed or the Bank’s president?
No, it is not an official forecast of the Atlanta Fed, its president, the Federal Reserve System, or the FOMC.
Is any judgment used to adjust the forecasts?
No. Once the GDPNow model begins forecasting GDP growth for a particular quarter, the code will not be adjusted until after the “advance” estimate. If we improve the model over time, we will roll out changes right after the “advance” estimate so that forecasts for the subsequent quarter use a fixed methodology for their entire evolution.
When will forecasts of GDP growth in a particular quarter start being made?
About 90 days before the “advance” estimate for GDP growth for the quarter is released. GDPNow forecasts begin the weekday after the BEA’s “advance” estimate of GDP growth for the previous quarter is released. For example, the advance estimate of real GDP growth in the fourth quarter of 2013 was released on January 30, 2014. The GDPNow forecasts for real GDP growth in the first quarter of 2014 were tracked from January 31, 2014, until the day before the “advance” estimate released on April 30, 2014.
How frequently is the GDPNow forecast updated?
The model forecast is updated five or six times a month on weekdays, with at least one following six data releases: Manufacturing ISM Report on Business, U.S. International Trade in Goods and Services (FT900), Monthly Retail Trade Report, New Residential Construction, Advance Report on Durable Goods Manufacturers, and Personal Income and Outlays. Other data releases, such as Wholesale Trade and Existing-Home Sales, are incorporated in the model as well and their impact on the model’s forecast will be shown on the weekday after one of the six data releases. The proprietary forecasts from Blue Chip Economic Indicators and Blue Chip Financial Forecasts shown in the chart are available from Aspen Publishers.
Where can I read about the methods and source data used in the model?
A detailed description is given in a working paper describing the model. To summarize, the BEA’s NIPA Handbook provides very detailed documentation on both the source data and methods used for estimating the subcomponents of GDP. The late Nobel Prize–winning economist Lawrence Klein pioneered many of the “bridge equation” methods used for making short-run forecasts of GDP growth using this source data; a 1989 paper he coauthored with E. Sojo describes the approach. Ben Herzon, an economist at Macroeconomic Advisers, provides a bird’s-eye view illustrating how to use a bridge equation approach in practice to improve GDP forecasts in this 2013 presentation. The econometric techniques used in our GDPNow model were heavily adapted from the GDP nowcasting models described in a 1996 Minneapolis Fed Quarterly Review article by Preston J. Miller and Daniel M. Chin and a 2008 paper by the Board’s David Small and economists Domenico Giannone and Lucrezia Reichlin.
Where can I find alternative forecasts of GDP growth?
For model forecasts from other Fed Banks, see the Minneapolis Mixed Frequency Vector Autoregression (MF-VAR) model, the Philadelphia Research Intertemporal Stochastic Model (PRISM), and the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland’s prediction model for GDP growth based on the slope of the yield curve. Moody’s Analytics and Now-Casting.com produce proprietary model short-run GDP forecasts. For survey-based forecasts, see the Philadelphia Fed’s quarterly Survey of Professional Forecasters, which includes forecasts of real GDP and its major subcomponents. The Wall Street Journal’s Economic Forecasting Survey occurs monthly but does not include forecasts of the subcomponents of GDP.
How accurate are the GDPNow forecasts? Are they more accurate than “professional” forecasts?
Since we started tracking GDP growth with versions of this model in 2011, the average absolute error of the model’s real-time forecast made just prior to the release of the “advance” (first) estimate of the annualized growth rate of real GDP is 0.68 percentage point. The root-mean-squared error of the forecasts has been 0.94 percentage point. These accuracy measures cover “advance” estimates for 2011Q3–2014Q1. We have made some improvements to the model from its earlier versions and the model forecasts have become more accurate over time (the complete track record is here). When back-testing with revised data, the root mean-squared error of the model’s out-of sample forecast with the same data coverage that an analyst would have just before the “advance” estimate is 1.15 percentage points for the 2000q1–2013q4 period. The figure below shows how the forecasts become more accurate as the interval between the date the forecast is made and the forthcoming GDP release date narrows.
Overall, these accuracy metrics do not give compelling evidence that the model is more accurate than professional forecasters. The model does appear to fare well compared to other conventional statistical models.
How are revisions to data not yet reflected in the latest GDP release handled?
In general, the model does not attempt to anticipate how data releases after the latest GDP report will affect the revisions made in the forthcoming GDP release. The exception is the “change in private inventories” subcomponent, where revisions to the prior quarter reading affect GDP growth in the current quarter. Users of the GDPNow forecast should generally use the forecasts of the change in “net exports” and the change in the “change in private inventories,” and not forecasts of the levels. Revisions to retail sales are used to anticipate revisions to real monthly expenditures in the “PCE control group” and revisions to housing starts are used to anticipate revisions in the monthly value of private residential construction spending put in place.
Do you share your code?
At this point, no. However, the Excel spreadsheet gives the numerical details—including the raw data and model parameters—of how the monthly data map into forecasts of the subcomponents of GDP
They may not share their code, but backing into how the Atlant Fed gets their GDP number is actually not difficult at all: the spreadsheet is even full of helpful guides so even the likes of Joe LaVorgna, Ethan Harris and Jan Hatzius can navigate it.
Just start here (link).
... And explore, because unlike every economist "model" on Wall Street, this one actually does work.
And if the Atlanta Fed it is again correct to within 0.1% of the final print, forget about a rate hike in June, September or ever because the time for the Fed to unleash the next QE has officially arrived.
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Those hillbillies in the south are right after all? Well shut my mouth...
Something weird about this. We are praising the Fed for providing us with an "accurate" GDP forecasting tool. Anyone else feeling the strain on their sanity? Because it's giving me a splitting headache.
Relax, it's not an official number. A couple more numbers like this and they'll make it disappear the same way M3 did.
Yeah, probably true. But why put it out there at all? Is this some kind of accident? Did somebody at the Fed start dropping large quantities of LSD in the coffee? And more to the point, how long before they regain their sanity and pull this back?
All I know is work is so slow I'm reduces to relying upon the goodwill of our fellow man and the forbearance of reptiles.
When do they finally admit we are not in a recovery?
Layoff / Closing List: http://www.dailyjobcuts.com
.
Tighten that policy Right NOW! The economy is boiling over, with millions job openings, shortages of skilled, unskilled, paraplegic, blind, deaf, and dumb folks, no quadriplegics even to do mattress testing. I tell ya' this shit about the going nowhere economy is for the birds and the crazy fuckers over at ZeroHedge, for crying out loud. Hurry, slam the brakes on NOW before it's too late!
Blaaaaahaha abahabahaggdgdheggggazzrrrrrthfuckmewithaspoon
They must have left out the hookers and blow...
"When do they finally admit that we are not in a recovery?"
No government agency or business association spokesperson is ever going to speak of the truth of how bad things are in the present, unless they have no choice because incontrovertible proof has already been released to the masses that would otherwise and obviously demonstrate their insincerity.
As long as "official datum" as published by the various governmental and quasi-governmental agencies/bodies allow governmental and business association spokespeople to understate the severity of our real economic crisis, they will, whether Democrats, Republicans or the chief economist for The National Association of Realtors.
No governmental employee (and especially no politician) will voluntarily relay how dire things may be (again, given a backdrop of "official" statistical datum that is inaccurate and relatively misleading they can fall back on) because they wouldn't want to upset the apple cart, cause further distress or even panic amongst the populace or within the "markets," and no business association spokesperson, whose very jobs entail, at least in significant part, a public confidence-building role, will do anything to further dampen the confidence that ... hope remains amongst potential consumers of their products (e.g. would a spokesperson for the NAR really come out and say that existing homes are selling quickly because inventory is being artificially constrained by GSEs and federal reserve policy and also due to federal reserve monetary policy that has a huge % of listed homes being purchased by investors for cash in an attempt to produce yields in a yield-starved economy - BECAUSE of federal reserve monetary policy? What impact would that have on the confidence of conventional, prospective existing home purchasers, who might then realize there is no true present price discovery and that another leg down is more than possible?).
In other words, they lie because our economy is dependent, in quite a large degree, on an illusion that is often referred to as the "confidence fairy."
If those people who still have the means to purchase a particular service or good feel confident about the security of their own jobs and the current & likely future state of the economy, they're more apt to go ahead and dig themselves into more debt or pay cash to purchase that service or good, regardless of the accuracy (and realism) of their "confidence level."
Conversely, if they don't feel confident about the security of their own employment situation and/or the current and likely future state of the economy, they're more apt to refrain from purchasing that good or service, and save instead, in preparation for what may lay ahead.
And this is why, without exception, throughout history, the masses do not understand there is a crisis until well after it has already begun, and they've already committed to many purchases, indebtedness and other forms of dis-saving, that they wouldn't have committed to had they known accurate information sooner.
Hence, the "confidence fairy," which governmental employees, politicians and business spokespeople all actively perpetuate in their own methods and by various tactices, is a serial and mass killer of efficient markets and rational economic behavior (as it severely distorts essential economic information that is relied upon by economic and market participants).
http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2012/12/it-explains-alot-confidence-fai...
*NOT my blog. But my excepted quote.
+1 for the clarity of the thoughts.
Are you sure?
Psst, Knucks: There is no spoon - sorry.
Yeah! Feel that 'Recovery' on your face. Do you like it when I trickle 'Recovery' on your face? Look me in the eyes while I shoot 'Recovery' all over them.
So yeah, this is interesting http://www.nwitimes.com/business/local/u-s-steel-ceo-layoff-notices-nationwide-rise-to/article_2545ab4b-393d-5462-a4e3-d5f6885f7e93.html
hahahaha
"When do they finally admit we are not in a recovery?"
Never. We know they've been talking about 'green shoots' for 4-5 years...with a crap story like that persisting, and Krugman talking about Trillion $ coins and aliens, stuff that makes The Star green with envy, who knows how long they can keep this sucker going. Reality will catch up - kind of like when gals have one botox treatment too many. It aint gunna be pretty.
And as to GDP being .9 or 4% - we all know how accurate and unmanipulated that measure is...please.
The scariest spreadsheet the FED keeps is the one that shows if you create money out of thin air and loan it out bearing interest, you and your banks will end up with all the money.
My guess is it was a tool to pre-release figures to help guide the market, and because they'd put all the weights out there, were forced into a corner when it turned against them.
So they'll say the tool doesn't work anymore and the weights are off, and pull it so it's only for internal use exactly the same as they did with M3. I doubt it'll make it to the fall without being pulled or a major model weighting change.
And all you 'Tards complaining about "The Government" .. Who's Ya Daddy with the Wad that spends it way to GDP
(OMG - I just supported state sanctioned theft)
Seems like a great excuse for another round of QE.
I have found that a Crown Royal on the rocks does a lot to help the insanity headache.
Dalmore King Alexander Blended Scotch, mmmmmmmmmmm....
Mine's Black Grouse, but yeah, you guys have the right idea.
I don't drink so mine would be a prostste massage.
Well knukles, lemme have a couple of nice neat Del Maguey Vidas then we can talk.
Mezcal, Scotch's Mexican lawn service!
pods
Call me a traditionalist, but I'll go with a Glenlivit 12 when I can get it locally (small town) or a Glenfiddich 12. If I'm feeling really, really down, I'll go for a Glenfiddich 18 and not consider the pricetag.
Always neat, with a glass of ice water on the side...
Don't waste your that sheet ... go straight to Lagavullin. You'll never go back.
Receiving a good blow job usually helps mine.
I spend a lot of time digging through data from BLS, CBO, Fed, etc. etc.
What I find is the raw data collected by these folks is generally pretty good but it's the data output that is really bad. Output is completely massage, managed, run through goal seeked formula's and adjustments.
So, I generally believe the raw data but why the Atlanta Fed is giving an output that is good is interesting. Division in the ranks???
They are giving the accurate Calcualtion to Justify MOAR QE?
But that would take the Fed AND the BEA working together because the "truthful" forecast would have to line up roughly with the "truthful" actual number. And we all know these guys would never collude like that.
Entry level data massager who hasn't yet been trusted to be told to massage the data.
Don't worry. He'll either be anointed with an extra $100K/annum raise of be found dead in the Okefenokee swamp.
Exactly. In the empire of lies, who decided it was a good idea to tell the truth all of a sudden? Wicked weird.
St. Louis Fed does pretty well also. Must be that Southern branch water...
derived from a bunch of manipulated numbers, so nothing new here. it's not like anyone really believes inventories grew to an all time record just in time to save GDP from collapsing.
We are being played again. The reality is much worse than what the Atlanta Fed is indicating.
Check this legitimate ways to mak? money from home, working on your own time and being your own boss... Join the many successful people who have already used the system. Only reliable internet connection needed, no prior experience neccessary, that's why where are here. Start here... www.globe-report.com
Witness the Power of our recovery world and tremble...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=ZXQR-cPXlmY
A small gift from the South to the most racial Fed in history....payback is a bitch.
one thing is clear. atlanta sucks at lying.
Without Obamacare, that would be a red number gentlemand and everybody would be all depressed and stuff.
So what do you say to Buba in the white house?
"So what do you say to Buba in the white house?"
Fetch my slippers?
Nothing, same as always?
I've got a gun and I'm calling the cops?
Jump own, turn around, pick a bail of cotton?
I could do this all day. The possibilites are literally endless.
How come he hasn't yet come out for interspecies marriage?
I mean .....
You know ....
It’s thursday... you had your first beer... and that was the first thing that popped up in your mind?
I need a beer...
You mean limp bizkit and he did it all for the wookie?
And you can take that Wookie and shove it up yo
YEAH !
shove it up yo
YEAH !
shove it up yo
YEAH !
limpbizkit My Way!
not to mention the numbers are all fudged. Keep living the dream....
Yes, forget about the rates rising. Don't, however, forget about negative rates and illegal cash.
Unleash the Yellen!
she's getting her tips frosted
Lo spit L
Anyone that has looked at any un-doctored numbers in the past quarter could plainly see 2008 collapse 2.0 was happening in real time. Plenty of us here have commented on it, so the scary number is hardly a suprise.
The bigger story here is that everyone but the Fed has a high number, meaning they're putting in exactly zero real-world inputs into their models. More than likely the model they use is (what the fed tells them)*(1+.02*RANDOM()).
Umm time to redefine GDP. Certainly QE isn't the problem.
nothin that hookers and blow can't fix
Qe Qe QE I need more QE
Kneel and Bow to the Crown.
http://presscore.ca/two-constitutions-in-the-united-states-1st-was-illeg...
If they used a different color to highlight the cell, the psychological impact might be different.
Which as I just said in previous post.
Q1 was a 0.2 GDP which was stuffed up inventory channels from -2.6 actual GDP ... I'm changing my figures here a bit because to get from negative 2.6 to a positive .2 thwt would be a total of 2.8 excess inventory into Q2
Q2 est GDP 0.9 minus excess inventory which leaves us still with borrowed GDP of 1.9% GDP for Q 3 to eat up inventory to begin growth or not if in retraction.
even .5% growth is bullshit.
gdp itself is bullshit - as ZH articles have, time to time, noted.
Here's a prediction.... war on Iran, war in E. Ukraine [real war] meant to act as a black hole to tear Russia apart, and the rapid devaluation of the dollar that will hide deflation before rapid inflation.
just remember who said it, fellow babies.
May I use this spreadsheet for some PhD thesis?
Go ahead. Bernanke did.
I said yesterday that the existential threat ( by the SCO ) to the US$
was going to drive US interest rates higher regardless of what happens to
the US economy.
This ( highly doctored at that ! ) GDP figure is just a sampler.
This came after that 6 month bull in the US$... which now seems
a bit "peaked".
Oh, and today I see a former Bank of Canada governor
flogging higher rates for Canada. I did mention that the
US$ reserve followers ( slaves ) might beat Uncle Sam to the punch
as well ... yes I did.
From now on, the competition to keep the US$ as the reserve
currency will drive everything.
Growth is over-rated!
One might well argue rationally that QE comes next. But the Elite have deliberately mined the global economy with derivatives, and the interest rate rise to come is the detonator!
"All we need is the right major crisis, and the nations will accept the New World Order." - David Rockefeller
Add to a global bankruptcy, a pre-designed WW3 and the conquest of the West, who are the only peoples who could give substantive resistance, then they have the people of the world on a plate. That is the plan.
Well except for China, Tommy. Dominus Vobiscum.
Based on the growth of printed lucre and on DC US expenditures on killing, I would bet GDP is up double digits in Zion.
Liberty is a demand. Tyranny is submission.
Fuck the Fed and their fraudulent markets!
Death to the moneychangers!
NO INCOME
NO DEMAND
NO INCOME
NO DEMAND
NO INCOME
NO DEMAND
But debt!
They said so!
Here's your excuse for not hiking rates. Tomorrow Sasquatcherlakota comes out with bullish headlines.
That was a fantastic article Tyler. I can't wait to go through all the links this w/e. I've had so many questions about how(.gov) info. is compiled, and this will offer great insight. :-)
I hope the NSA stazi doesn't kill all the links before I get to enjoy them.
That whole page will be gone, soon.
I thought the scariest spreadsheet in Fed possession would be their honest to goodness balance sheet listing assets and liabilities???
It looks like this America is BK...
http://econimica.blogspot.com/2015/02/fundamentally-flawed-chapter-31-why.html
Fed's real leverage must be insane.
So we just select the very best of all the predictions and go with that...right?
Stocks must rise...or we will have our final great day of reckoning.....and that one is going to hurt...a lot.
Ha Ma! Doze Yakeez kaint p'dicked nuttin. Day iz stooopid. - Cleetus
Green shoots!
What do GDP figures and the Rule of Law have in common?
They are written in pencil and are both just made up as we go along.
The Governments plan to fix the economy by stealing eveyone's money, giving it to the bankers, throwing millions of new people in prison and attacking Houston with the US Military - is never going to work
you mean the fed might actually be forced to allow investors to lose money and companies to declare bankruptcy with out a bailout? this is shocking news indeed.
If these are the numbers that are making it to us, just imagine how low the real numbers are.
Tylers-----
how long has this GDP Now been around and whats its track record??
The Atlanta Fed claim that the margin of error is at least plus or minus one per cent, with the error narrowing as the date of the data release approaches. This early in the game the error is more like plus or minus two per cent.
They claim that the performance of their model is comparable to that of professional forecasting firms.
Check their FAQ for more:
https://www.frbatlanta.org/cqer/researchcq/gdpnow.cfm
A brilliant piece of work, which reveals why Zerohedge puts the tame and compliant Financial media to shame.
The analysts mentioned and their ilk are all fakes; continually bullish so that they can do IPOs, M&A etc.....
We don't need a growth model, we need a sustainable model.