US Federal Reserve

After last week's relatively quiet economic calendar and focus on Central Banks, when we finally heard from both Chair Yellen and Mario Draghi on Friday, attention this week turns back to data. In a relatively busy data week ahead - particularly for the US - focus will likely be on Friday's NFP, Q2 GDP revision on Wednesday, ISM manufacturing reports on Friday and inflation prints from the Eurozone.

Key events across the globe:

Authored by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,

The Jackson Hole gathering of central bankers and other economics big shots is over. They all still like themselves very much.

Apart from a pesky inflation problem that none of them can get a grip on, they publicly maintain that they’re doing great, and they’re saving the planet (doing God’s work is already taken).

Authored by Lakshman Achuthan and Anirvan Banerj via Bloomberg.com,

Two things bear most of the blame: external shocks and economic volatility.

The U.S. managed to avoid recession after the financial crisis, but Japan has succumbed to three contractions since 2009. Economic volatility is a key reason for this divergence, and that tells us a great deal about the risk of future U.S. recessions.

The 2017 edition of the  Jackson Hole symposium is officially over, and while central bankers disappointed markets by not providing any insight into their views on monetary policy (assuming they have any) they instead focused on market stability, and patted themselves on the back for creating a fake "risk-free environment" (which they justify by the record low VIX, even if ignoring the record high cost of crash insurance).

There is no end to the list of 'real world' problems underlying cuirrent equity market price levels and velocities (slumping 'hard' economic data, record high valuations, global thermonuclear war, Washington uncertainty, Fed balance sheet normalization to name a few). However, as former fund manager Richard Breslow points out, "equities continue to have friends in high places." In other words, there's a lot more to fight than just 'The Fed'.

Via Bloomberg,