Over the past few years, the Federal Reserve's use of unconventional monetary policy tools has led it to hold a large portfolio of securities. The asset purchases are intended to put downward pressure on longer-term interest rates, but also affect the Federal Reserve's balance sheet and income. We begin with a primer on the Federal Reserve's balance sheet and income statement. Then, we present a framework for projecting Federal Reserve assets and liabilities and income through time. The projections are based on public economic forecasts and announced Federal Open Market Committee policy principles. The projections imply that for the next several years, the Federal Reserve's balance sheet remains large by historical standards, and earnings remain high. Using the FOMC's stated exit strategy principles and the Blue Chip financial forecasts of the federal funds rate, the projections have the Federal Reserve's portfolio beginning to contract in 2015. The portfolio returns to a more normal size in early 2018 or 2019, and returns to a more normal composition a year thereafter. The projections imply that Federal Reserve remittances to the Treasury will likely decline for a time, and in some cases fall to zero. Once the portfolio is normalized, however, earnings are projected to return to their long-run trend. On net over the entire period of unconventional monetary policy actions, cumulative earnings are higher than what they likely would have been without the Federal Reserve asset purchase programs. To illustrate the interest rate sensitivity of the portfolio and earnings, we consider scenarios where interest rates are 100 basis points higher or 100 basis points lower than in the baseline projections. With higher interest rates, earnings tend to fall a bit more and remittances to the Treasury stop for a longer period than in our baseline projections, while with lower interest rates earnings are a bit larger and remittances continue throughout the projection period. With either interest rate path, earnings follow the same general contour as in the baseline analysis.

The economic shocks brought about by the Great Recession triggered drastic reactions by policy makers and private agents alike. Such dramatic economic consequences have lead economics agents to acknowledge the need for new tools to monitor economic developments in real time, and learn early detection methods to foresee downturns and recoveries Short-term Forecasting for Empirical Economists seeks to close the gap between research and applied short-term forecasting. The authors review some of the key theoretical results and empirical findings in the recent literature on short-term forecasting, and translate these findings into economically meaningful techniques to facilitate their widespread application to compute short-term forecasts in economics, and to monitor the ongoing business cycle developments in real time. Short-term Forecasting for Empirical Economists is divided into five sections. Section 1 outlines what forecasting frameworks are surveyed and why. Section 2 introduces the notation and main characteristics of the data for short term forecasting. Section 3 reviews the main models used for this purpose and addresses the role of the number of series in factor models. Section 4 illustrates the forecasting performance of the different models reviewed in Section 3 through an empirical application. Finally, section 5 reviews the main results and proposes some lines for further research.

Over the next twenty years, the world as we know it is going to change in innumerable ways: it is like the whole thing is a giant chessboard, except that the pieces are not just getting shifted around a board. Instead, they are flipping through the air, and changing their patterns and colors and landing looking completely different than they did before. All of the economic pieces are morphing into something else. In Economorphics, you are offered a guidebook to these changes and the ways that you can make them work for you. Did you know that we are in the midst of a new wave of mobility, the likes of which we have not seen in a century? Do you know what the demographic window is - or when it will open and shut in your market? There is a growing middle class in much of the developing world - what does that mean to you if you live in the developed one? And what about interest rates - what do the long term trends say for investors? In clear, entertaining prose, Nazareth outlines the biggest trends that will shape the next two decades. You need a strategic plan - whether for your business, your portfolio, your career or your life. The starting point is understanding the Economorphics - so make sure you do, and take control of your future.

Why the crisis in which America finds itself demands a new "operating system" In this third volume of his award-winning American Crisis series, James Gustave Speth makes his boldest and most ambitious contribution yet. He looks unsparingly at the sea of troubles in which the United States now finds itself, charts a course through the discouragement and despair commonly felt today, and envisions what he calls America the Possible, an attractive and plausible future that we can still realize. The book identifies a dozen features of the American political economy-the country's basic operating system-where transformative change is essential. It spells out the specific changes that are needed to move toward a new political economy-one in which the true priority is to sustain people and planet. Supported by a compelling "theory of change" that explains how system change can come to America, the book also presents a vision of political, social, and economic life in a renewed America. Speth envisions a future that will be well worth fighting for. In short, this is a book about the American future and the strong possibility that we yet have it in ourselves to use our freedom and our democracy in powerful ways to create something fine, a reborn America, for our children and grandchildren.