Economic projections inadvertently posted to the public | Hacker News Reader

Economic projections inadvertently posted to the public

federalreserve.gov

33 pointsrandomname231 comments

Ugh, "glitch."

This trend of publicly addressing every tech mishap as a "glitch" needs to end.

It's like reporting every death as "because of boo boo."

Edit: the linked press release does not say glitch, and the word "glitch" has been removed from the title of this story. But, it's still a problem in general.

People dumb. People don't understand technical terms. People fear boo boo.

The link doesn't include the word "glitch" anywhere. It was added by the HN submitter.

Edit: looks like the HN title was updated to remove the term as I wrote this.

It was probably a glitch in the website that you didn't see it.

Would you support redefining glitch to be specifically only the class of errors that "cosmic ray event" falls under?

Has someone calculated the rate of data decay due to cosmic ray events?

Some facts here: http://ccm.net/faq/1678-myth-cosmic-rays-cause-errors

sure thing: http://lwn.net/Articles/219983/

Yes, exactly this.

Everything else should get a better explanation. Misconfigurations and faulty programming aren't "glitches."

Nothing too interesting to see in the leaked data, just internal forecasts on GDP, unemployment, & interest rates.

The only substantial information the Fed could accidentally divulge today would be exactly when they plan to raise the benchmark interest rate (The Federal Funds Rate), which has been near 0 for the past 6 years. It was originally scheduled to be raised when unemployment fell below 6.5% (happened in April 2013). Otherwise, unless the Fed has some other crazy plan (another wave of QE) there's not much more that they have control of over the moment.

Not really. This is the official FED forecast. They base interest rates decisions on this. (Interest rates for some people, not your credit cards)

This could give people front running the actual rate change an advantage.

Lot's of Wall Street is based on insider info. Of course, they market themselves as "insightful, active" traders.

"...a set of illustrative economic projections based only on publicly available information...The projections that were inadvertently released are staff projections that do not incorporate policymakers' views, including their views on monetary policy. Policymaker views were set forth in the monetary policy statement and projection materials released on June 17 and in the minutes of the June FOMC meeting and the Summary of Economic Projections published on July 8."

I mentioned that the Fed failed to raise the FRR after hitting their unemployment metric to illustrate the lack of credibility/hard action the Fed takes on forecasts. They are always reassessing the economic situation, and their announcements/forecasts are specifically engineered to give away as little guidance as possible, so as not to jolt markets.

So until they make a major announcement of affirmative action - 'we are raising rates now', rather than the boilerplate template they've been using for the past 6 years [1], there's really no reason for investors to take action.

[1] 6/17/15 Monetary Policy Statement - To support continued progress toward maximum employment and price stability, the Committee today reaffirmed its view that the current 0 to 1/4 percent target range for the federal funds rate remains appropriate. In determining how long to maintain this target range, the Committee will assess progress--both realized and expected--toward its objectives of maximum employment and 2 percent inflation. This assessment will take into account a wide range of information, including measures of labor market conditions, indicators of inflation pressures and inflation expectations, and readings on financial and international developments. The Committee anticipates that it will be appropriate to raise the target range for the federal funds rate when it has seen further improvement in the labor market and is reasonably confident that inflation will move back to its 2 percent objective over the medium term.

The scare quotes are probably unnecessary.

I'm guessing people would jump to the conclusion that it was done intentionaly to aid HFT firms.

1) The leaked files weren't released to the typical location for computerized feeds that funds automatically consume

2) The leaked files weren't in an easy to consume format for machines to read

3) This is my opinion There wasn't too much that was actionable that was released.

Nothing to see here, people posting files to websites by accident happens all the time. Heck google released their earnings 42 minutes early one day when the markets were still open.

> Nothing to see here, people posting files to websites by accident happens all the time.

What is interesting is that the Federal Reserve did not tell everybody "that is confidential information and you should delete it from your computer," but instead said "since we already made this public, we might as well make it easy to find." That is a very admirable response.

> The data subdirectory contains a database named LONGBASE, which is in EViews format and contains actual observations on all FRB/US variables from 1968q1 to 2015q1 and projected observations on all variables from 2015q2 to roughly 100 years in the future.

Included. 4.5 megabytes. 2.7 compressed.

> This document lists the roughly 375 equations in the FRB/US macroeconomic model.

Included.

> Another file contained computer code used to generate a table displaying staff economic projections.

Link, please?

Apparently http://www.federalreserve.gov/econresdata/frbus/files/frbus_... (thanks @ihsw!)

Lines 48 through 57 of example1.prg:

    ' Turn off zero bound and policy thresholds; hold policymaker's
    ' perceived equilibrium real interest rate constant
      smpl @all
      dmptrsh = 0
      rffmin = -9999
      drstar = 0
    
    ' Set fiscal policy
      smpl @all
      call set_fp("dfpsrp")

What language is this?

Google says that PRG files belong to FoxPro (or tools with similar lineage).

I dunno.

Uh, suppose this code takes numeric tabular data as input and produces forecasts.

Forecasts which are, by policy, kept secret until certain release dates.

...Is the input data available before the forecast release dates?

Maybe this code isn't secret. The included PDF documentation (!) links to a public document that describes the algorithms implemented by some of the sub-routines (also included).

Looks like something called EViews:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EViews

http://www.eviews.com/online_help/helpintro.html#page/EViews...

ftp://ftp.rau.am/EViews%20Enterprise%20Edition%207.0.0.1/Example%20Files/Sample%20Programs/model/taylor1.prg

EURUSD did go up a bit since the statement (~ 2 hours ago), nothing substantial though.

Ref: http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=EURUSD=X

I love how people always argue that "The Fed isn't a government agency" but yet they have a .gov domain. Hmmm... I think they are (or should be treated as) a government agency, and as they aren't doing anything defense related, they should be totally transparent. IOW, there shouldn't be any confidential / private information to be accidentally leaked in the first place.

I mean, if there's stuff they are holding back from the public, you have to ask "Who does have access to it?" And if you believe the answer is "nobody but the Fed board and staff" then I think you are very gullible. I'd bet a dollar to a doughnut that certain well-connected, influential (and rich) insiders are getting access to any "private/confidential" stuff they're working on.

http://federalreserve.gov is the website of the "board of governors of the Federal Reserve System" (who are appointed by the President). Individual Federal Reserve banks have websites like https://www.clevelandfed.org/ or http://www.newyorkfed.org/ or http://www.frbsf.org/

Yeah I know. But I still stand by my assertion that in every practical sense, the Fed should be treated as a govt. agency and should be pretty much completely transparent.

How many government agencies can you name that are even moderately transparent?

Very few, but what's your point? Do you think we should stop demanding and fighting for transparency just because we don't have it now?

The data is usually released with a 5 year lag, along with meeting minutes. That's a rather high level of transparency, and a lagged release is not unreasonable.

I'm all for greater government transparency, but I don't think it's a problem here. Meanwhile, good luck trying to get the NSA to even commit to a 50 year release process.

anyone have a link to the leaked forecast?

Can't tell if you're serious or riffing on the meme of HN users not actually reading the article.

Here you go, straight from the horse's mouth.

http://www.federalreserve.gov/econresdata/frbus/files/frbus_...

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