The Fed Gooses the Capital Markets

By: Francis Cianfrocca (Diary)  |  August 10th at 08:34 AM  | 

If you were watching capital markets closely yesterday, you saw a phenomenon that has rarely been seen before. I certainly never have. And it was linked to the Federal Reserve’s policy statement, released about 2:15pm Eastern time. This was an extraordinary statement, containing several rarely-seen features. The first one, of course, was the commitment by the Fed to keep policy interest rates at or near | Read More »

Jobs Report Surprises on the Downside

By: Francis Cianfrocca (Diary)  |  July 8th at 09:39 AM  | 

Noted briefly: the BLS report on June employment conditions was sharply disappointing. Non-farm payrolls rose by only 18,000 jobs. This is far below the +200,000 jobs we were seeing monthly earlier this year. It undershot the expectations of private economists, some of whom were expecting at least +50,000. And it varies from the considerably more-optimistic ADP report issued earlier this week. The June number has | Read More »