The Chicago Fed hosted the 34th Annual Economic Outlook Symposium (EOS) virtually on December 4. Chief economists and senior executives from the banking, auto, steel, and machinery industries provided their perspectives on the economy and the long road to recovery from the pandemic. This blog post summarizes the morning sessions, which focused on participants’ economic outlooks for 2021 and b... Read More
The Chicago Fed hosted the 34th Annual Economic Outlook Symposium (EOS) virtually on December 4. This blog post summarizes the two afternoon panels. First, representatives of auto, steel, and oil discussed their respective industry outlooks. And second, panelists focused on the impact of Covid-19 on their economic sectors: transportation, commercial real estate, state governments, and nonprof... Read More
Two themes were repeated by the featured speaker and three panelists at the Chicago Fed’s December 1 virtual conference on changes in our food system: Covid-19 has had an impact on how we shop and eat now and perhaps into the future. However, regardless of the pandemic, new consumer expectations are affecting the entire agricultural ecosystem. Disruptions caused by Covid-19 have al... Read More
The Chicago Fed hosted the Seventh Annual Summit on Regional Competitiveness during the week of November 16, 2020. The virtual event kicked off with a conversation about the impact of Covid-19 on the economy between Anna Paulson, director of economic research at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, and Austan Goolsbee, the Robert P. Gwinn Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago Bo... Read More
In this blog post, we investigate changes in margin at CCPs during the market stress of 2020:Q1 to show how reactive CCP funding demands were to the increase in market volatility. “Save for a rainy day.” This famous old idiom is often used to encourage people to save money in good times in order to better manage through future, unforeseen difficult times. After the global Financial ... Read More
Can Wisconsin Rapids reinvent itself once again? This was the central question raised at the November 18 Project Hometown virtual panel moderated by Steven Kuehl, senior advisor on community and economic development at the Chicago Fed. The paper mill in Wisconsin Rapids closed indefinitely on July 31 after 116 years of continuous operation, explained Kuehl. “The pandemic precipitated a sudden a... Read More
Leaders from government, business, the health sector, and the philanthropic community held a virtual discussion on November 12th on the economic, social, and public health challenges facing Detroit and Michigan as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. Charlie Evans, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, was the moderator of the community forum. This forum is part of the Chicago Fed’s... Read More
Innovation has been an essential driver of economic growth in Chicago. However, the benefits of that innovation have not been experienced equally across the city’s diverse population. The sustained health and economic crises caused by the Covid-19 pandemic have served as a poignant illustration of the disparities that exist between Chicago’s haves and have-nots. On October 19, Project Hometow... Read More
The severe and prolonged economic consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic have stressed the earnings of tens of millions of households. The pandemic has also widened the racial disparities in health and economic outcomes for Black and Latinx families. And the existing social safety net has not provided sufficient cash and in-kind transfers to support families dealing with the impacts of surgin... Read More
After the third straight “wettest May on record” for Chicago, if you’re a Chicagoan you may be wondering if your home is at risk for serious flooding. One way to figure this out might be to look at the flood maps provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the federal agency in charge of national disaster preparedness and relief. FEMA flood maps say that only 0.3% of proper... Read More
