And speaking of the Philly Fed, here is a cool map of Coincident Indicators, broken down per state.
This is not a political breakdown per se — pink means negative growth, blue means expansion — but it obviously has huge implications for the coming election.
Someone (else) should do a correlation between Dem vs GOP states and compare that to Economically expanding versus contracting states.
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via Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia
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Excerpt:
"The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia has released the coincident indexes for the 50 states for April 2008. The indexes increased in 26 states for the month, decreased in 16, and were unchanged in the remaining eight (a onemonth diffusion index of 20).
For the past three months, the indexes increased in 25 states, decreased in 21, and were unchanged in the other four (a three month diffusion index of eight). For comparison purposes, the Philadelphia Fed has developed a similar coincident index for the entire United States. The Philadelphia Fed’s U.S. index increased 0.1 percent in April and 0.3 percent in the past three months."
This implies that half of the States in these here United States are experiencing significant economic weakness.
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Source:
State Coincident Indexes
Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, APRIL 2008
http://www.philadelphiafed.org/econ/indexes/coincident/2008/CoincidentIndexes0408.pdf
I don’t see a political coincidence.
I’d be curious to see the Hillary / Barack breakdown too.
I’m not familiar with this index but i’m guessing blue means good. Go Massachusetts :P
:( I should have read the top. this is what happens when you are drawn a lot to the picture. …You can delete these 2 comments if you want.
and Keep up the great Work Barry.
There doesn’t even seem to be any kind of correlation to the real-estate bubble.
Based on 2004 Election Results and a scale of -3 to 3. It adds up to:
States that voted for Democrats: +4
States that voted for Republicans: -2
Here is the data: http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pslwjWZDsOkAVrJa1EjchVg
Go Mass Go!!
BR – “Someone (else) should do a correlation between Dem vs GOP states and compare that to Economically expanding versus contracting states”.
I think that qualifies as one of the lousiest ideas I’ve heard from our (otherwise thoughtful) host. Is there any reason whatsoever to think that the politics of a state (defined how exactly?), even if there happened to be a correlation with this particular three month coincident index, is telling us anything useful?
More useful observations might be that it looks like energy and agricultural regions are doing relatively better (whocouldanode).
It might also be useful to do an animated series of 3mo maps to get a sense of how or if weakness and strength grows or shrinks regionally over time.
>There doesn’t even seem to be any kind of correlation to the real-estate bubble.
There is a little. The economies of nevada, arizona, and florida (and to lesser degree oregon and kansas) were heavily real estate-driven–full of people building, buying and selling houses to each other for the last 5 years.
Add in the further usual rusting of the rust belt and most of the chart is explained.
What is important about the map is that not every part of the country is going to hell in a hand basket. To listen to some, one would think the bread lines and soup kitchens are back.
In Texas, we actually have created jobs over the last year, have low unemployment, a budget SURPLUS and some parts are still seeing modest rises in home prices. My advice to the masses in utter despair is to move – to Texas!
You could also say that half of the states are experiencing economic growth.
I’m sorry, I’m an optimist.
:)
I would disagree regarding the correlation to the real estate market. Nevada and Florida are in the bottom 5 based on Y/Y change, while none of the top 5 based on Y/Y change were players in the real estate boom.
Commodities tell the real story of this map, just as they would on a global performance map. Texas, Wyoming, South Dakota, and Oklahoma make up 4 of the top 5 states.
The question I have been trying to answer is why has Rhode Island been the worst performing state since February? Any ideas?
Based on the political “red” state and “blue” state maps created in 2004 elections, 17 of the 30 red states on the Fed’s map show positive economic growth, for 56%, and 14 of the 20 blue states show positive or economic growth, for 70%. Bush administration tax and economic policy has apparently been better for the Dem states than the GOP states.
“This implies that half of the States in these here United States are experiencing significant economic weakness.”
This compares quite well with my recent post that 24 states are forecasting budget shortfalls for 2009 (June 08-May 09).
Update: 8 other states are on the verge of shortfall.
Texas is definitely not a politically blue state, at least not yet. So a direct color application doesn’t work.
Massachusetts definitely is not a politically red state, so an inverse color application doesn’t work either.
Pollitically, the map looks worse for the Republicans given the tendency of people to vote the economy with regards to the party in charge. Some of the worst areas are also swing states.
Massachusetts and Texas seem to be the fastest growing.
How about this new theory: states that are single party dictatorships have the best economies :)
It doesn’t matter which party as long as neither party spends money on elections. I live in Boston and haven’t seen one political ad yet.