George Schils Business Blog - BZ Bread

Here are some links to find various data on the national debt and related items.

• The GAO (possibly an oxymormoronic name) provides much data. Some specific links are given below.
• GAO Schedules of Federal Debt.
• Federal debt links.
• The national debt to the penny is given here.
• Summary schedules of federal debt.
• Outstanding debt over the date range from 2000 to 2008, given annually.
• Budget for fiscal year 2009 report (pdf).
• Monthly government public debt statement.
• Lastly see the many references at the end of this wiki page on the national debt.
• See this article on the public debt from 1861 to 1975.

Other national debt links:

• Not enough digits in the debt clock.
• National debt graph since the Great Depression.
• National debt FAQ by the Treasury.

Case Shiller (part of Standard and Poors) provides nice housing data. Case Shiller home price index reports are found here. This pdf document has some nice graphs of recent housing price trends.

The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight offers an interesting and alternative set of housing data.

This report contains a number of analysis which show an increase in house prices from December to January.

The latest Case Shiller home price index shows a slowing of the rate of decrease of home prices. Up until this month the rate of decrease has been increasing, and just this month, the rate of decrease has started to slow.

Year to year percentage increases from Feb, 2008 through Feb. 2009 is given in the short table below.

-13.54 Feb, 2008
-15.27
-16.25
-16.85
-16.95
-17.4
-17.67
-18.51
-19.11
-19.14
-19.21
-19.43
-18.84 Feb, 2009

Home price values are still decreasing but this change in the sign of the derivative of the derivative may be an encouraging sign. But it's too soon to know for sure if this is a true inflexion point or just a glitch in the data.

The last time a positive second derivative occurred was in Nov., 2005.

The second derivative could be called the "price acceleration". Just because you have lightly touched the brakes in a car, it does not mean that you are not going fast. Or, just because you touched the accelerator while going slowly does not mean that your speed is high. The point where you move your foot from the brake to the gas pedal (or vice versa) is an "inflection point", and it does not indicate your speed, but is still an important point to note.

The Case Shiller "composite-10" index was used in this analysis.

The median price of a home as reflected by the Bloomberg index is on the rise.

Cpi data shows another decline from year to year for June. From June 2008 to June 2009, the CPI showed a -1.43% increase. Similarly year to year monthly decreases have occurred for the last four months (Mar, Apr, May, Jun). It appears that the rate of decrease is increasing.

The table below shows this data. The second row is monthly data for year 2008, the third row is monthly data for year 2009, and the fourth row is the year to year percentage increase for that month.

Jan     Feb     Mar     Apr     May     Jun
632.3   634.14  639.64  643.52  648.93  655.47
632.49  635.64  637.18  638.77  640.62  646.12
0.03    0.24    -0.38   -0.74   -1.28   -1.43

Data is from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and series CUUR0000AA0 is used. Data here is normalized so that 1967=100.

The BLS report for June is given here.

Analysis of cpi from data released on August 14, 2009 shows another year over year decline. The months March through July of 2009 have showed decreases in the cpi from the same month a year ago. It appears that the rate of decline is increasing.

From July 2008 to July 2009, the cpi showed a 2.1% drop.

The percentage increases for the last seven months are tabulated below. Decreases are seen for the last five months.

Jan. 2008 - Jan. 2009        0.030049   
Feb. 2008 - Feb. 2009        0.236226   
Mar. 2008 - Mar. 2009        -0.38366   
Apr. 2008 - Apr. 2009        -0.7372    
May. 2008 - May. 2009        -1.28164   
Jun. 2008 - Jun. 2009        -1.42691   
Jul. 2008 - Jul. 2009        -2.09724

Data is from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and series CUUR0000AA0 is used. Data here is normalized so that 1967=100.

Analysis of cpi from data released on September 16, 2009 shows that the cpi increased by 0.2% from July to August, but that the cpi is lower by 1.5% from the same month (August 2008) a year ago. The data is given below.

12 month percent change

Year Jan Feb Mar  Apr  May  Jun  Jul  Aug
2009 0.0 0.2 -0.4 -0.7 -1.3 -1.4 -2.1 -1.5 

1 month percent change

Year Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul  Aug 
2009 0.4 0.5 0.2 0.2 0.3 0.9 -0.2 0.2 

Data is from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and series CUUR0000AA0 is used. Data here is normalized so that 1967=100.

Analysis of cpi from data released on December 16, 2009 shows that the cpi increased by 0.1% from October to November. The cpi is higher by 1.8% from the same month (November 2008) a year ago. The data is given below. For the first time since February, the cpi is higher compared to the same month a year ago.

12 month percent change

May     Jun     Jul     Aug    Sep    Oct    Nov
-1.28   -1.43   -2.10   -1.48  -1.29  -0.18  1.84

1 month percent change

May     Jun     Jul     Aug    Sep    Oct    Nov
0.289   0.859   -0.159  0.224  0.062  0.096  0.071

Data is from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and series CUUR0000AA0 is used. Data here is normalized so that 1967=100.