Besides the upcoming FOMC meeting on May 2-3, and French & Italian politics - the decisive runoff round of the French election takes place this Sunday - this week's releases are dominated by US payrolls expected to come around 170k. The busy release calendar continues with Norges bank and RBA meetings as well as global manufacturing PMIs.
Markets will again zero in on the U.S. this week, and not just because of Donald Trump in Bloomberg's opinion. The Federal Reserve meeting and nonfarm payrolls may set a clear direction for dollar and yields for the next few months. U.S. GDP data on Friday showed the largest negative contribution from net exports since 2010. This will give the president ammunition for his Twitter feed because it confirms his view on the evils of globalization. So prepare. Beyond Trump’s rhetoric, it’s going to be a big week for orthodox economic developments in the United States.
Via Jon Rappaport's blog,
Trevor Timm of the Electronic Freedom Frontier dug up a very interesting nugget. It was embedded in the heralded December 2013 White House task force report on spying and snooping.
Under Recommendations, #31, section 2, he found this:
“Governments should not use their offensive cyber capabilities to change the amounts held in financial accounts or otherwise manipulate financial systems.”
Timm quite rightly wondered: why were these warnings in the report?
When the main economic event this week hits this Friday at 8:30 am EDT, when the BLS releases the May payrolls report, Wall Street consensus wil be expecting a 160,000 print, a number which will have a big impact on market expectations for a Fed rate hike at the June or July FOMC meeting. However, consensus may be disappointed for one reason: the Verizon strike could chop off as much as 35,000 workers from the headline payrolls print.
Submitted by Pam Martens and Russ Martens via WallStreetOnParade.com,