Return of the Dredded Orange Bar

At FRED on the morning of the 22nd...

Uh-oh, I've seen the orange bar before. It means change is a-brewing at FRED.

That can't be good.

Hey, I clicked the thing. Got this:

Yeah, okay. Answered a few questions, skipped a few questions. Got this:

No good. I'm not allowed to skip questions. Even if I don't have an answer, I should make something up. That's what they want.

Oh, yeah, that's how you get valid responses.

//

I can't wait to see how they fuck FRED up this time...

It's not a glitch. It's just FRED.

From the FRED blog I took their Bank Failures graph and added total (TCMDO) debt (red):

Thought it was odd that the red area was floating up above the horizontal axis. But whatever, it's not my graph. It's FRED.

I didn't want an area graph. Changed it to a line graph. Here's what I got:

The red line sank down and now starts below the x axis.

Weird. The numbers shouldn't change, when I change the style of the graph.

Damn! It wasn't me!

Unsaid at FRED

Reblogged from my economics blog

Let's draw a conclusion

At FRED Blog: How much money is the Fed printing?

To answer that question they look at currency in circulation. Two graphs.

First graph:

Graph #1: Quantity of Money, in Natural Log Values

Before 1960, flat. After 1960, straight-line increase.

The graph uses natural log values to show growth rates. As the FRED post says, "if the slope is the same for two years, the growth rate is the same." A more upward slope is faster growth. A less upward slope is slower growth.

The FRED post says the values are "indeed increasing, but there is no indication that it is accelerating". In other words: The line goes up, yes, but after the early 1960s it doesn't curve up.

Second graph:

Graph #2: Quantity of Money Relative to GDP

Graph #2 shows the same money as Graph #1 but shows it a different way. No "log" numbers. Instead, the graph compares the quantity of money to GDP. On Graph #2 we have downtrend to about 1985, and then uptrend: The currency component of M1 grew more slowly than GDP in the early years, and more quickly than GDP in the late years. I want to say the change occured around 1985.

Leave out the years before 1960 where Graph #1 has the flat trend. Look at the years since 1960, where #1 shows a straight-line uptrend.

From 1960 to 1985 the trend is down on Graph #2. After 1985 the trend is up. And yet, as the FRED Blog says, Graph #1 shows no acceleration.

Graph #1 shows that currency growth did not change. Graph #2 shows that either currency growth or GDP growth did change. We have to put the two facts together in our head: Either currency growth or GDP growth did change, but currency growth did not change. Therefore, GDP growth changed.

Voila.

To confirm, I took a quick look at the numbers.

During the 25 years from 1960 to 1985, currency in circulation increased by a factor of 5.6. During the 25 years from 1985 to 2010, currency in circulation increased by a factor of 5.5. Almost exactly the same. So, a straight line increase it is. As FRED said.

During the first 25 years GDP increased by a factor of 8.0. That's faster than currency growth, so the line on Graph #2 goes down between 1960 and 1985.

During the second 25 years GDP increased by a factor of 3.4. That's slower than currency growth, so the line on Graph #2 goes up between 1985 and 2010.

Currency growth was the same for the two periods, even though the "Great Inflation" is entirely contained in the earlier period. Currency growth was the same, but GDP growth was different. GDP growth was much faster in the early period, and much slower in the second.

Thickness of lines and the drawing sequence

Sometimes I get two lines that run together. For example I want to see that UNRATE produces exactly the same graph as UNEMPLOYED divided by the civilian labor force age 16 and over, CLF16OV. I was doing that. But I lost my focus when I got the graph that should have shown what I wanted to see. Should have shown, but didn't.

When two lines completely overlap, you can only see one of them. Of course. So what I like to do is make one of the lines thinner and the other thicker. With the old FRED it worked every time: I made the first line 3 or 4 pixels wide, and the second line 1 or 2 pixels wide, and right away I would get a two-color line that showed either similarity or difference, and either way it answered my question and set my mind at ease.

But that was the old FRED. The new FRED saves a step when it refreshes the graph. Evidently, if you change the thickness of one line, it only redraws that one line... or anyway, it redraws the changed line last.

With the old FRED, it would draw Data Series 1 first, and Data Series 2 second, and I could depend on it. And I did depend on it. With the new FRED, I'm not really sure what the hell it does, and I have to fuck with it to get the graph I want.

And then, after I get it looking the way I want, if I create a link to the graph and use the link to see the graph, it often comes up different from what I want, again -- perhaps because it's now creating the graph from scratch.

Can't be done!

Two different measures of M1 money. The blue line starts earlier than the red. But then around 1994 the blue line numbers go bad.

I want to show the blue line till maybe 1990 and after that show the red line. The new FRED won't let me do that. The start-date and end-date values are established for the whole graph, not separately for each line on the graph.

That's not my idea of an improvement to FRED.

I like it.

Went to FRED just now & selected a series to look at. The graph appeared, and below it, thumbnails of graphs I was looking at recently:

That's a nice touch.