Scott Sumner now has a monthly post – The Dual Mandate Watch – to “keep track”. Commenter Ben J wrote:
Scott, you should think about creating a visual aid that can illustrate how far away we are from achieving the dual mandate. I would think a distribution type diagram, with all the time spent under the targets (inflation and employment/population or number unemployed over NAIRU or whatever) displayed as a big fat tail. Or, if you want to make it more striking, something that includes the cumulative losses in output.
The NGDP off its level trend doesn’t resonate with people. It’s abstract for them; even if the concept is relatively simple. A visual aid of how far the Fed really is off track would be good.
You get all the data from FRED right? Maybe we can start putting something together that we can put on our walls…
Below a panel with a first pass attempt at illustrating the “distance to the dual mandate”.
Sumner doesn’t do chart. But Nunes does, and in spades!