Atlanta Fed

The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta has selected Raphael Bostic as its new president, replacing Dennis Lockhart after his retirement last month. 

Another day, another downgrade to US GDP: after yesterday the Atlanta Fed slashed its Q1 GDPNow estimate from 1.8% to 1.3% - with the forecast as high as 3% at the start of the year, and 2.5% as recently as the end of February - moments ago the Atlanta Fed has once again cut its US growth forecast, and now sees Q1 GDP of just 1.2%, on par with the disappointing 0.9% and 0.8% prints in Q4 2015 and Q1 2016.

Just three months after Atlanta Fed president Dennis Lockhart announced he would step down as president effective February 28, moments ago another (non-voting) FOMC member, the uber-hawkish president of the Richmond Fed, Jeffrey Lacker, 61, also decided to call it quits as well, and on Tuesday said he will retire as president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond on Oct. 1, after 28 years at the Richmond Bank.

While there was no unexpected overnight central bank announcement unlike yesterday's surprise by the RBA which unleashed volatility havoc in the FX market, which promptly spilled over into all asset classes, overnight stocks around the world saw another leg lower without a tangible catalyst, while EM currencies fell to a one-month low after two Fed presidents raised concern investors had become too complacent in their belief that U.S. interest rate raises will stay on hold.

Submitted by Pater Tenebrarum via Acting-Man.com,

Business under Pressure

A recent post by Mish points to the fact that many of the business-related data that have been released in recent months continue to point to growing weakness in many parts of the business sector. We show a few charts illustrating the situation below:

A long term chart of total business sales. The recent decline seems congruent with a recession, but many other indicators are not yet confirming a recession – click to enlarge.