US Federal Reserve

After a poor March jobs report, followed by an April scorcher, the May payrolls report due at 8:30am on Friday will be the tiebreaker, not only for the current state of the economy where both soft and hard data have been deteriorating in recent weeks, but perhaps also for the June rate hike decision, which as the Fed noted in its May FOMC minutes, may not take place without "evidence" that the recent "transitory weakness" in the economy is over. Here are the consensus expectations for tomorrow's report:

Over the past year, as OPEC developed the unpleasant habit of jawboning the price of oil higher on nothing but flashing red headlines, targeting headline scanning algos, many compared the oil-producing cartel to another familiar institution whose core mandate is higher asset prices: the Federal Reserve. However, the similarities are not enough, and according to Goldman's chief energy analyst Jeffrey Currie, OPEC should learn from the U.S. Federal Reserve and do more to explain its long-term oil-output policies instead of just focusing on short-term goals.

When the Fed released last month's Beige Book, as part of the explanation why employers are having an increasingly more difficult time finding jobs, it presented the following disturbing anecdote from a Boston Fed respondent:

One month ago we reported that according to Beacon Policy Advisors, a new name had emerged as potential replacement to Janet Yellen as head of the Federal Reserve: that of former Goldman COO and current Trump National Economic Council advisor Gary Cohn.

"The buzz among those who claim Cohn confides in them is that he would like to eventually replace" Yellen, assuming Trump decides to move in a different direction when the chair's term ends in early February, Beacon Policy Advisors said in a daily report for clients in late April.

Authored by Thorstein Polleit via The Mises Institute,

The US bond market trades at a quite high valuation. For instance, the 10-year US Treasury bond presents a price earnings (PE) ratio of 43. In other words: It takes 43 years for the investor to recoup the bond’s purchase price through coupon payments; the bond market’s PE ratio even went up to 68 in June 2012 and July 2016, respectively.