US Federal Reserve

Authored by Mark St.Cyr,

I was on the phone the other day with a friend, who is also my accountant. We’ve been friends going on 30 years. Once in a while our discussions will veer off into what is commonly known as “shop talk” where we find we’ve suddenly gone from “just gabbing” to a multi-hour intense conversation about markets, the economy, and more. This past one was a little more of “the exception” rather than just the average swing into the generic.

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.

With the US closed for Memorial Day and UK markets offline due to a bank holiday, overnight volumes have been weaker than normal on little newsflow. The main story remains the stronger USD following Yellen's hawkish Friday speech, which not only led to the lowest Yuan fixing since February 2011...

... but pushed the USDJPY almost as high as 111.50 overnight before paring gains, however it was enough to send the Nikkei 1.4% higher.

Everybody was looking forward to hear what Janet Yellen had to say last week, as people were waiting for a cue about what the Federal Reserve might do next month and later this year. Will the Fed keep the interest rates stable? Or will we indeed see three additional rate hikes to push the benchmark interest rate towards 1.25%?

Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,

There are limits on what the Fed can do when this bubble bursts, as it inevitably will, as surely as night follows day.

It's no secret that virtually every pension fund is dead man walking, doomed by central banks' imposition of low yields on safe investments, i.e. Zero Interest Rate Policy (ZIRP).