Thursday, April 19, 2012

From your friends at CIA...


ECONOMY :: CHINA UNITED STATES
GDP (purchasing power parity): $11.29 trillion (2011 est.) $15.04 trillion (2011 est.)
GDP (official exchange rate): $6.989 trillion $15.06 trillion (2011 est.)
GDP - real growth rate: 9.2% (2011) 1.5% (2011 est.)
Labor force: 816.2 million 153.4 million
Unemployment rate: 6.5% (2011 est.) 9.1% (2011 est.)
Budget: revenues: $1.646 trillion revenues: $2.264 trillion
Budget: expenditures: $1.729 trillion (2011 est.) expenditures: $3.604 trillion
Taxes and other revenues: 23.6% of GDP (2011 est.) 15% of GDP
Budget surplus (+) or deficit (-): -1.2% of GDP (2011 est.) -8.9% of GDP (2011 est.)
Public debt: 43.5% of GDP (2011) 69.4% of GDP (2011 est.)
Inflation rate (consumer prices): 5.4% (2011 est.) 3% (2011 est.)
Stock of narrow money: $4.599 trillion (31 December 2011 est.) $1.943 trillion (31 December 2011 est.)
Stock of broad money: $13.52 trillion (31 December 2011 est.) $12.14 trillion (31 December 2010 est.)
Stock of domestic credit: $10.72 trillion (31 December 2011 est.) $32.61 trillion (31 December 2009 est.)

From the CIA World Factbook.

Of course they provide two versions of GDP and don't tell me which one to use. I looked up PPP but that went nowhere. I went out with FIDO3 (now FIDO2) and decided to go with the "official exchange rate" version, as that is probably "official".

Eventually it occurred to me to see what numbers FRED uses. I typed China in the search box and found EXCHU, the (monthly) China / U.S. Foreign Exchange Rate. Over on the side FRED reported, among the Latest Observations, the value 6.3482 for the last month of 2011. (The CIA data are 2011 estimates. 6.3482 is close enough for me.)

And I found CHNGDPNADSMEI (nice, huh?), the Current Price Gross Domestic Product in China, reported in Billions of Chinese Yuans.

I divided that whole series by 6.3482 to convert it to dollars at the late-2011 exchange rate. (Only the late 2011 GDP value would be accurate, but that is all I need.) (Anyway, the China GDP series only goes thru 2010. I'm just looking at the last number and figuring it's close.)

Something over $6 trillion. That's the "official exchange rate" number, not the PPP number. Yeah, I'm going with that.

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