Data
An understanding of money and banking requires the development of an appreciation of the data used by central banks to support their attempts to manage an economy. Fortunately, because of the exponential growth of the Internet, this data is now available to the student of US banking. A number of sources for this data exist but one of the best overall sources is the FRED Collection maintained by the Research division of the Saint Louis Federal Reserve Bank. Students of the US economy need to become aware of this resource and its regular tracking of over 15,000 time series associated with the US economy.
Once students have reached the home page / index for FRED, they should click on Economic Data - FRED (at the top of the home page). That will take them to over twelve general topic areas for which economic time series are available. In this example the student should click on Consumer Price Indexes (CPI). The student should then click on CPIAUCSL. This provides access to seasonally adjusted data for the Consumer Price Index for all Urban Consumers. At this point the screen will show a graph of CPI data dating back to 1940. The graph also visually identifies the times when the economy was in recession. Students are able to adjust the graphic presentation in a number of ways.
When the students are ready, they can click on Download Data located at the top of the graph. This will allow students to download the underlying data to an Excel Worksheet. Notice that there are over eight different ways the CPI data can be provided. Students should experiment in downloading the data in different ways to become more familiar with the differences. They should also experiment with using the data to create Excel graphs. To better understand the various kinds of data the Saint Louis Federal Reserve makes available several publications which can be reviewed by clicking on the tab Publications at the top of the screen.
Students who are interested in understanding macroeconomic trends can start by studying the following basic time series:
| Category in FRED | Table ID | Table Name |
|---|---|---|
| Business / Fiscal | GFDEBTN | Government Debt: Total Public Debt |
| FODSP | Household Financial Obligations | |
| UMCSENT | University of Michigan - Consumer Sentiment | |
| Consumer Price Index | CPIAUCSL | Consumer Price Index |
| Employment & Population | POP | Total Population - All ages |
| CLF16OV | Civilian Labor Force | |
| UNRATE | Civilian Unemployment Rate | |
| Gross Domestic Product | GDP | Gross Domestic Product - 1 decimal |
| GDPDEF | GDP - Price Deflator | |
| PSAVERT | Personal Saving Rate | |
| Interest Rates | TB3MS | 3-Month Treasury Bill |
| Monetary Aggregates | M1 | M1 Money Stock |
| M2 | M2 Money Stock | |
| Producer Price Indexes | PPIACO | Producer Price Index |
| Reserves & Monetary | TRARR | Board of Governors - Total Reserves |
| US Financial Data | CURRCIR | Currency in Circulation |
Another excellent site for graphs and data is www.economagic.com.
A thoughtful review of these and related time series will introduce business students to the rich trove of data now generally available. As students become more familiar with such data they will begin to see how various data points can be related.
