In Q1 of 2013 Jeremy Stein made a speech on credit market overheating that slipped by most people in the market: http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/stein20130207a.htm. This speech turned out to be the canary in the coal mine portending the taper tantrum later on in the spring. For those who don't remember, Jeremy spent a great deal of time […]

Janet started out her press conference by saying: "this change in our guidance does not indicate any change in the committee's policy intentions as set forth in recent statements. Rather, the changes meant to clarify how the committee anticipates policy evolving after the unemployment rate declines below 6.5%" Policy intentions were unchanged? Really? The median […]

Earlier this week I sent out a commentary entitled "Because I'm Happy" where I discussed a few takeaways from our recent Global Macro Speaker Series event with Larry Summers. Of course, as with everything I write, this represented my interpretations, my inferences and my conjectures associated with the discussion. Larry asked me to state that […]

I, like most of you, have been bombarded with emails on the Russian military movement into the Ukraine. And I, like most of you, am not an expert on this subject. Thus, it is surprising to me how many folks have sent me such confident analysis on the inner workings of Ukrainian/Russian relations. All of […]

A valentine's poem for the lovers: Roses are red Violets are blue Janet's a dove Buy more spoo Last week was certainly a week for the lovers. Q's broke to new cyclical highs, spoos moved to within just a few points of all time record highs, and Friday was St. Valentine's day! It was all […]

Janet highlights - " Too many Americans remain unemployed, inflation remains below our longer-run objective, and the work of making the financial system more robust has not yet been completed" "...the recovery in the labor market is far from complete. The unemployment rate is still well above levels that Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) participants […]

As promised here are the word counts from previous Humprey-Hawkins/Semi-Annual Monetary Policy Reports. Word Counts - Feb, July 2014 - 1,468, 2013 - 2,298, 2,093 2012 - 2,135, 1,848 2011 - 2,587, 2,722 2010 - 2,842, 2,384 2009 - 2,657, 2,720 2008 - 2,538, 2,745 2007 - 2,730, 2,580 2006 - 2,651, 2,396 2005 - […]

While the establishment data confirms some Q1 softness in labor market conditions, the household survey tells a very different story. From U-3 to U-6, the numbers were very "frisky", with an amazing 500k+ increase in the workforce, and 600k+ increase in employment. The market should take some comfort from the household data especially as the […]

The first 23 days of 2014 were about as boring as any three-week period in recent memory. By the close of business on Thursday the 23rd of January, the year-to-date moves for most of the active developed asset markets were minuscule: Spoos -1% Q's +1% EURUSD unch USDJPY -60 pips EDZ6 +15bps CT10 -25bps The […]

The December payroll report does NOT suggest that labor market momentum is increasing. The modest 78k increase in payrolls, plus the 34k in positive revisions barely gets us half of what was expected. But the most concerning part of the report comes from the household survey where we saw another 347,000 people leave the labor […]