Treasury Bill Rates in the 1970s and 1980s

As is widely recognized, real interest rates in the early 1980s were at peaks not witnessed since the late 1920s. Less well perceived is the sharp decline in real interest rates since 1984. By 1986-88, real interest rates were back at their average levels of the previous quarter century. This paper seeks to identify the underlying determinants of the major movements in real six-month Treasury bill rates. The rise in real interest rates between the middle 1970s and early 1980s, not surprisingly, results from a variety of factors. First, rates were unusually low in the middle 1970s owing to the first OPEC shock, which lowered investment demand and increased world saving by transferring wealth from the high-consuming developed countries to OPEC. Second, tight money, high inflation, and heightened nuclear fear all contributed to real rates becoming unusually high in the early 1980s. The eventual decline of OPEC surpluses following the second OPEC shock prolonged the period of high real rates. The decline in real rates to more normal levels in the 1986-88 period is also due to multiple factors: lower inflation, declining marginal tax rates, and easy monetary policy.

Private Saving in the United States: 1950-85

The official personal and private saving statistics contain a number of conceptual measurement errors. In this paper we develop and analyze personal and private saving measures adjusted for the difference between income tax payments and actual liabilities, saving via net purchases of government pension assets (including social security) and consumer durables, and that part of after-tax interest income attributable to inflation. We find that the adjusted personal and private saving rates in recent years are only slightly below their post-1950 averages, not at all time lows as reported in the official NIPA statistics. Furthermore, over the past 35 years, personal saving has been more volatile and corporate saving less volatile than the official measures. Also, the inflation premium corrections remove the negative correlation between personal and corporate saving. That is, the often observed negative correlation between the official measures of personal and corporate saving is due solely to measurement errors in the two series. Finally, the decrease in federal government saving in the 1980s is the continuation of a 30-year trend, not a one-time aberration.

Interest Rates in the Reagan Years

The Reagan Administration entered office in 1981 with one of the clearest and moat ambitious agendas in recent times. The new administration advanced five economic/budgetary goals to rebuild America economically and militarily: (1) reduce inflation, (2) deregulate the economy, (3) cut taxes, (4) increase military spending and (5) reduce nondefense spending sufficiently to balance the budget. Achieving, or not achieving, these economic/budgetary goals likely had a significant impact on interest rates. Six specific hypotheses are investigated in this paper. During the first Reagan term, the battle to lower inflation acted to maintain the high real interest rates carried over from the Carter years and, while the increase in structural deficits did not raise real rates much, the reduction in private saving due to the unwinding of the second OPEC shock and an aggressive foreign policy that heightened fear of nuclear war raised real interest rates to levels not seen since the late 1920s. Moreover, the increased volatility of interest rates during this protracted battle with inflation raised yields on callable fixed-rate mortgages by over a percentage point relative to the already inflated yields on noncallable Treasuries. By the end of Reagan's second term, inflation, marginal tax rates, nuclear fear, and interest rate volatility were all down. As a result, nominal Treasury rates have plunged (real bill rates since 1986 are below their average values for the previous quarter century), and yields on callable securities have receded to more normal levels relative to noncallable Treasuries. Yields on tax-exempt securities are one and a quarter percentage points higher relative to Treasuries than in the pre-Reagan years, and yields on fixed-rate mortgages are up by a half percentage point. These constitute an intended eduction in the previous financial subsidies to state and local and household capital formation, respectively.

Household Saving: An Econometric Investigation

Household or personal saving is recomputed to include net purchases of consumer durables, net contributions to government life insurance and pension reserves, and an adjustment for the inflation premium component in interest income. These adjustments raise the measured household saving rate by nearly 5 percentage points in the 1965-75 period but result in an extremely sharp 7 percentage point decline in the rate between 1975 and the early 1980s. A model of household saving behavior is then presented and estimated using annual data from the 1952-82 period. While saving responds to numerous influences, major swings in the adjusted saving rate -- a significant decline in the 1950s and rebound in the early 1960s, as well as the decline since 1975 -- are largely explained by two variables: the wealth/income ratio and the growth rate of real income.

Treasury bill rates in the 1970s and 1980s

As is widely recognized, real interest rates in the early 1980s were at peaks not witnessed since the late 1920s. Less well perceived is the sharp decline in real interest rates in the middle 1980s to their average levels of the previous quarter century. This paper seeks to identify the underlying determinants of the major movements in real six-month Treasury bill rates. The primary innovation is the development of a new monetary policy proxy that explains much of the real rate movement in the 1980s.Treasury bills

Physical Properties of Complex C Halo Clouds

Observations from the Galactic Arecibo L-Band Feed Array HI (GALFA-HI) Survey of the tail of Complex C are presented and the halo clouds associated with this complex cataloged. The properties of the Complex C clouds are compared to clouds cataloged at the tail of the Magellanic Stream to provide insight into the origin and destruction mechanism of Complex C. Magellanic Stream and Complex C clouds show similarities in their mass distributions (slope = -0.7 and -0.6, respectively) and have a common linewidth of 20 - 30 km/s (indicative of a warm component), which may indicate a common origin and/or physical process breaking down the clouds. The clouds cataloged at the tail of Complex C extend over a mass range of 10^1.1 to 10^4.8 solar masses, sizes of 10^1.2 to 10^2.6 pc, and have a median volume density of 0.065 cm^(-3) and median pressure of (P/k) = 580 K cm^{-3}. We do not see a prominent two-phase structure in Complex C, possibly due to its low metallicity and inefficient cooling compared to other halo clouds. From assuming the Complex C clouds are in pressure equilibrium with a hot halo medium, we find a median halo density of 5.8 x 10^(-4) cm^(-3), which given a constant distance of 10 kpc, is at a z-height of ~3 kpc. Using the same argument for the Stream results in a median halo density of 8.4 x 10^(-5) x (60kpc/d) cm^(-3). These densities are consistent with previous observational constraints and cosmological simulations. We also assess the derived cloud and halo properties with three dimensional grid simulations of halo HI clouds and find the temperature is generally consistent within a factor of 1.5 and the volume densities, pressures and halo densities are consistent within a factor of 3.Comment: Accepted for publication in AJ. 54 pages, including 6 tables and 16 figure

Measurement of optical to electrical and electrical to optical delays with ps-level uncertainty

We present a new measurement principle to determine the absolute time delay of a waveform from an optical reference plane to an electrical reference plane and vice versa. We demonstrate a method based on this principle with 2 ps uncertainty. This method can be used to perform accurate time delay determinations of optical transceivers used in fibre-optic time-dissemination equipment. As a result the time scales in optical and electrical domain can be related to each other with the same uncertainty. We expect this method to break new grounds in high-accuracy time transfer and absolute calibration of time-transfer equipment

Electronic stability of silicon front-end hybrids

No description supplie

Polymorphisms of the acid sensing histidine kinase gene arsS in Helicobacter pylori populations from anatomically distinct gastric sites

Phase variation is frequently utilized by bacterial species to affect gene expression such that phenotypic variants are maintained within populations, ensuring survival as environmental or host conditions change. Unusual among Helicobacter pylori phase variable or contingency genes is arsS, encoding a sensory histidine kinase involved in the acid acclimation of the organism. The presence of a 3\u27 homopolymeric cytosine tract of variable length in arsS among Helicobacter pylori strains allows for the expression of various functional ArsS isoforms, differing in carboxy-terminal protein domains. In this study, we analyzed this 3\u27 arsS region via amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) and sequencing analyses for H. pylori populations from 3 different gastric sites of 12 patients. Our data indicate the presence of multiple arsS alleles within each population of H. pylori derived from the gastric antrum, cardia, or corpus of these patients. We also show that H. pylori, derived from the same anatomical site and patient, are predicted to express multiple ArsS isoforms in each population investigated. Furthermore, we identify a polymorphic deletion within arsS that generates another alternate ArsS C-terminal end. These findings suggest that four C-terminal variations of ArsS adds to the complexity of the ArsRS acid adaptation mechanism as a whole and may influence the ability of H. pylori to persist in the gastric niche for decades. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved