This graph reminds me of what Jim said yesterday: The monetary base was purely a mechanism to maintain faith in banking. People have to believe they can withdraw their money in cash and the Fed's contributions to the monetary base are entirely driven by meeting that goal of maintaining public confidence in the banking system.
The disturbing part of that spike in September 2001 is that if you download the data you will see the date given for the "monthly observation date" of that spike is 9/01/01.
I didn't DL the data, but I used "biweekly" data and the spike seemed to come late, rather than early. I figured it was because an increase early in the two-week period looked like a late increase on the graph.
But I was just going with first impressions, and that's probably not a smart thing to do.
Yep. Here ya go. Two bi-weekly series, one seasonally adjusted and one not:
I figured it was just bad programming. I was looking at the monthly data which gives the observation date as the first of the month. The observation date for any month should be given as the end of the month.
This graph reminds me of what Jim said yesterday:
ReplyDeleteThe monetary base was purely a mechanism to maintain faith in banking. People have to believe they can withdraw their money in cash and the Fed's contributions to the monetary base are entirely driven by meeting that goal of maintaining public confidence in the banking system.
That spike sure looks like a confidence builder.
The disturbing part of that spike in September 2001 is that if you download the data you will see the date given for the "monthly observation date" of that spike is 9/01/01.
ReplyDeleteOh, stop!.... :)
ReplyDeleteI didn't DL the data, but I used "biweekly" data and the spike seemed to come late, rather than early. I figured it was because an increase early in the two-week period looked like a late increase on the graph.
But I was just going with first impressions, and that's probably not a smart thing to do.
Yep. Here ya go. Two bi-weekly series, one seasonally adjusted and one not:
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=sQ5
I figured it was just bad programming. I was looking at the monthly data which gives the observation date as the first of the month. The observation date for any month should be given as the end of the month.
ReplyDelete