National Data

So after posting the market data blog a few days ago I have been looking up more information that I thought some people might find just as interesting. It seems like it is rather hard to find all the big numbers for our nation on one site, so as a result you have to go to a few pages.

To find information on GDP, unemployment, inflation, and a few other economic indicators it turns out WSJ.com comes through again. In fact a link on the same page as the market data one I posted earlier will take you straight to the numbers. For conveinance sake, I will post a link to this as well on the right hand side of the blog for future use.

It turns out the national debt and budget are much are harder to find on one website and you have to do a fair amount of digging around. If you look under the U.S. Treasury website where they are supposed to post it, you will find the national debt under a link entitled MSPD, or monthly statements of public debt. You will then learn the national debt is currently at 9.1 trillion dollars and probably decide you do not really want to look that number up again. If you are so inclined, however, you can go here and choose which month to look over.

I would also like to use this post to point out for those readers who are unaware that The New York Times online paper is now totally free. There are no member only areas anymore and it is a very fast and easy way to get the news without finding a real paper.

Voter Registration

With the California primaries coming up I thought it might be nice to write a short blurb about voter registration. You can go to this link on the California Secretary of State website to register to vote. It is also important to know that the primaries are a “modified” closed primary meaning you can only vote for a party you are registered to unless you decline to state and the party says it is ok to vote in their primary.

I would also like to point out that the only way to change anything you disagree with is through elections and that whether or not what you vote for passes, you should not complain if you do not voice your opinion at the polls. As the linked site informs you must have your voter registration postmarked no later than January 22 if you wish to vote in the primaries.

Market Data

After writing my last post on the Fed I thought it might also be helpful to include some current market data for the economy. So included in my links section on the right side of the page is one called Market Data. This link leads to the Wall Street Journal’s market data center where you can easily look up several different and important current market indicators.

Some of the most important listed are the current DJ Industrials, S&P 500, Treasury Bills, futures for commodities such as oil, currency exchange rates, and of course the federal funds rate from my last post along with the prime rate. These are not even close to the only data listed on this page and I hope you will find some of it useful for decision making.

The Fed

I have recently been reading Alan Greenspan’s book The Age of Turbulence and I am pretty fascinated with the way the Fed works as a result (that and I am an econ major, hence me reading the book to begin with). With that in mind I have set out to better understand what it is the Fed does and how it does it.

The Fed is the central bank for the United States and is in charge of monetary policy with the main goal of controlling inflation. With that in mind they have used varying methods to try to stabilize the economy over the years. The most effective way of keeping inflation in check has been to control interests rates, since a lower interest rate means more spending and a higher one means less spending. More spending drives prices up and causes inflation to ensue.

The most important interest rate is the federal funds rate which is the rate that banks loan money to each other. The Fed sets a target federal funds rate and then tries to keep it there by performing what are called open market operations. These are when the Fed buys US Treasuries in order to alter the amount of money in the economy. When there is more money in the economy it is easier to access, which results in lower interest rates. When there is less money in the economy it is harder to get and this causes banks to raise their interest rates.

Knowing the federal funds rate is important to know for a number of reasons. First, it is an economic indicator and once you get the feel for it you can tell what the Fed believes the economy is doing. All businesses pay close attention to the Fed meetings to see if they will raise or lower the funds rate as an indicator of whether the economy is going into a recession or boom. Also, it is used as the base for many other important interest rates including the prime rate, which is the standard rate used by banks to make many loans and often the underlying rate used in variable rate credit cards.