Federal Reserve Economic Data

Celebrating Halloween is becoming more popular in some European countries. Wearing costumes can be fun anywhere, but there may be differences in the cost of giving away candy, depending on the country. Happily, FRED has consumer price inflation data for Europe that can help us go trick-and-treating around this question.

The treat

The FRED graph above shows the change in the harmonized index of consumer prices for sugar, jam, honey, chocolate, and confectionery for four European countries currently using the euro as their domestic currency. To make comparisons easier, we start the data in September 2015, when the index had a value close to 100 for all these countries. As of September 2025:

• Estonia (solid blue line) had the highest inflation for all things sweet: 101.6%
• Belgium and Luxembourg (dashed green and orange lines) had treat-price inflation rates closest to the Eurozone median value of 41.8%
• Ireland (solid purple line) had steady deflation between 2015 and mid-2022 and a cumulative 7.6% treat-price increase over the past decade.

The trick

Bulgaria is scheduled to join the euro area in January 2026. Beyond the convenience of using a single currency to shop for candy in nearby countries using the euro, using a common currency could also temper some recent inflationary pressure in Bulgaria. However, as shown above and discussed earlier in the FRED Blog, using the same currency in multiple countries does not mean the inflation rate will be the same everywhere.

How this graph was created: Search FRED for and select “Harmonized Index of Consumer Prices: Sugar, Jam, Honey, Chocolate and Confectionery for Estonia.” Click on the “Edit Graph” button and select the “Add Line” tab to search for “Harmonized Index of Consumer Prices: Sugar, Jam, Honey, Chocolate and Confectionery for Belgium.” Don’t forget to click on “Add data series.” Repeat the last two steps to search for and add the corresponding price index data for Luxembourg and Ireland.

Suggested by Diego Mendez-Carbajo.

There are many price indices for the US economy. Most people focus on the consumer price index (CPI) because it’s relevant to individual members of the economy. Another index, often misunderstood,* is the producer price index (PPI). In short, the CPI is what consumers pay and the PPI is what sellers receive.

You might think that what the producer gets would equal what the consumer pays, but our FRED graph above makes it clear that the CPI and PPI are different things.

1.  The difference between the two sets of prices includes shipping, taxes, retail costs, and retail margins. (The profit margin of the retailer acts like a cushion that absorbs some of the spikes and fluctuations in the PPI.)
2. The covered items are also different. The CPI includes consumer items such as rent, insurance, imports, and administrative fees that aren’t in the PPI. The PPI includes goods for export and goods not for household consumption, such as government purchases and investment by businesses, that aren’t in the CPI.
3. Finally, there’s a big category in the PPI that isn’t in the CPI: intermediate goods. These are sold to other business for further processing. In fact, the PPI allows us to make the distinction between final and intermediate demand; the latter can even be separated into the various stages of the production process, as shown in our FRED graph below.

How these graphs were created: First graph: Search FRED for “PPI.” Click on “Edit Graph,” open the “Add Line” tab, and search for and select “CPI.” Open the “Format” tab to select logarithmic scaling. (The period shown in the graph—CPI since 1947 and PPI since 1913—is so long that it makes sense to turn on the logarithmic scale so that similar percent increases early and late in the period appear similarly. Second graph: Go to the release table (find it in the notes of any of its series), check the series to display, and click on “Add to Graph.”   

*The PPI used to be called wholesale price index, but it incorporates all types of producer prices, so the name was changed.

Suggested by Christian Zimmermann.

FRED allows you to create complex data visualizations to help explain economic data. The FRED graph above shows one example, a “stacked area” graph, to show the evolution of the Federal Reserve’s total liabilities and its main components.

The graph clearly shows the impact on Fed liabilities from the monetary policy response to the COVID-19 pandemic:

• Early on, as the Fed implemented its quantitative easing (QE) program by buying Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities, bank reserves increased correspondingly.
• At the same time, the Treasury issued debt ahead of expenditures, leading to substantial accumulation of funds at the Treasury General Account (TGA). This account was slowly drained as the Treasury used the funds to make payments.
• Starting in the second quarter of 2021, the overnight reverse repo facility (ON RRP) was used extensively by certain financial institutions, such as money market mutual funds.

The graph also shows the next stage of Fed policy actions:

• The Fed tapered its pace of asset purchases from November 2021 to March 2022 and began the process of quantitative tightening in June 2022.
• The tightening led to the sustained shrinking of the Fed’s balance sheet. As expected, the decline in total liabilities was first supported by a decline in the usage of ON RRP and then by a decline in bank reserves.

The more recent data in the graph show the rebuilding of the TGA, following the increase of the debt ceiling in July 2025.

How this graph was created: From FRED, click on Browse Data By: / Release and scroll down to “H.4.1 Factors Affecting Reserve Balances” / “Table 5. Consolidated Statement of Condition of all Federal Reserve Banks.” Here, the assets and liabilities of the Fed are broken down by components.

From the “Edit Graph” panel, use the “Add Line” tab to search for and select “Federal Reserve Notes, net of F.R. Bank holdings” (currency in circulation), “Other deposits held by depository institutions” (bank reserves), “Reverse repurchase agreements” (sales of securities to eligible counterparties with an agreement to repurchase at a specified date), and “U.S. Treasury, General Account” (deposits of the U.S. Treasury at the Federal Reserve).

Note that the four categories listed above explain most but not all of the Fed’s liabilities, so those stacked areas would not add up to 100% total liabilities. We need to add a line that consists of the difference between total liabilities and the four components we have in the graph. To display the difference between the total and the components, use the “Add Line” tab to search for and select “Total Liabilities”; then go to “Customize data” and add the four components, one by one. In the formula, type a-b-c-d-e (where a is total liabilities and b to e are the individual components).

In the “Format” tab, use the arrows next to each area to order the components as you wish. Here, the first component (Federal Reserve notes) is at the bottom and the residual (total liabilities minus the components) is at the top. From the “Format” tab, select “Area” as the graph type and “Normal” as the stacking mode. The start date is January 1, 2019, and the graph is set to show the latest available data.

Suggested by Fernando Martin.