2 min readInflation & Employment Readings on consumer inflation this week remained tame overall with wide variance around the average for certain components. CPI for September was up just 1.4% year-over-year and Core CPI was up 1.7% year-over-year. Weekly Initial Jobless Claims remain high at nearly 900,000 in the week ended October 10. Surging COVID-19 infection rates…
2 min readFed officials are committed to the current level of rates until inflation exceeds 2% Several Fed officials spoke in late September on the timing of future interest rate hikes in relation to the inflation target of 2%. Chicago Fed President Evans reversed his earlier position that the Fed could start raising rates before inflation reaches…
2 min readFOMC Meeting The Federal Reserve left interest rates unchanged at yesterday’s meeting on monetary policy, and in the statement accompanying the meeting, the Fed commented that “Economic activity and employment have picked up in recent months but remain well below their levels at the beginning of the year.” And while “Overall financial conditions have improved…
2 min readFOMC Minutes Released The minutes from the FOMC’s July 28-29 meeting were released today. In the committee’s discussion about how to continue to support the flow of credit to consumers, they deemed “it would be appropriate over coming months for the Federal Reserve to increase its holdings of Treasury securities and agency residential mortgage-backed securities…
1 min readCOVID-19 infection rates have fallen dramatically in most industrialized nations, but new cases in the U.S. and in developing countries have surged to record levels in the last few weeks. Despite the serious setbacks, lawmakers in the U.S. continue to grapple with how to most appropriately implement mask requirements to slow the spread of the…
2 min readStates across the U.S. set multiple single day records for new COVID-19 cases this past week. On June 27th, Florida reported 9,500 new cases, breaking its own record for daily new cases, which it set just a day earlier. Driven primarily by Southern and Southwestern states, the surge has forced legislatures to act. Florida has…
2 min readFOMC Meeting The Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee met last week and Chair Jerome Powell spelled out a bleak outlook for the U.S. economy. The Fed’s year-end median expectation for the unemployment rate is 9.3%, with 2020 GDP growth projected at negative 6.50% and core PCE inflation at 1.0%. At the press conference following the…
2 min readProtesting Police Brutality Nationwide protests continued for the seventh day and night following the killing of George Floyd while in the custody of Minneapolis police. President Trump has considered invoking the Insurrection Act of 1807, which would allow the deployment of active-duty military personnel in response to civil unrest. The law was last used in…
2 min readApril Unemployment Report Shows Record Job Losses The April unemployment report released on May 1st reflected a loss of over 20 million jobs, and an unemployment rate over 14%. The number of newly unemployed in April wiped out the last decade of job gains, and the unemployment rate easily beat the previous 10.8% high recorded…
2 min readFOMC Meeting The Federal Reserve has taken extraordinary steps over the past six weeks to shield the economy from the massive fallout of the virus pandemic, including emergency interest rate cuts, massive bond purchases and the opening of multiple lending facilities to provide liquidity and backstops to the fixed income markets. Following their regularly scheduled…