Daily Pulse: Fed Chair Yellen in the Hot Seat, Signs of Strength in the Labor Market, Finally — Some Presidential Voting
Primary Teaser: The polls don’t close until 8 pm, but early exit polling of New Hampshire's first-in-the-nation primary indicated that “substantial” numbers of independents — four out of 10 — turned out to cast ballots in both parties. Nearly half on the Republican side said they were looking for an “outsider,” about ? among Democrats. And 46% of the Republican voters said they had decided for whom to vote in only the “last three days.” About 20% of Democrats were late deciders. Turnout was reportedly very high. (Update: Bernie Sanders won handily against Hillary Clinton in yesterday's New Hampshire primary. He captured 60% of votes to Clinton's 38.4%. On the Republican side, Donald Trump won a solid 35.1%, with John Kasich coming in second at 15.9%.)
Smoke Screen: SCOTUS has halted implementation of President Obama’s Clean Power Plan, his “most ambitious effort to combat climate change,” Bloomberg reports. Challenges to the ruling take place on June 2, although if passed, the plan wouldn’t require plants to begin cutting emissions until 2022.
ZIRP is so 2015: Fed chair Janet Yellen appears before Congress for the next two days, and she’s sure to be asked about NIRP — Negative Interest Rate Policy. Japan shocked the world by adopting negative rates two weeks ago and now the Fed, which only just shed Z(ero)IRP, is telling US banks to prepare for that possibility in this year’s stress tests. “A source familiar with the tests told CNBC.com that the scenario is purely hypothetical and not a forecast,” reports Jeff Cox at CNBC . Still …
Seller’s Market: US job openings in December, strong evidence of strength in the labor market despite a slowdown in economic growth, Lucia Mutikani reports for Reuters. The hiring rate was unchanged, an indication employers are having trouble filling positions. "If the labor market is tightening, can the economy really be faltering?" said Naroff Economic Advisors in Holland Joel Naroff.
President Obama proposed a $4.1 trillion fiscal 2017 budget. Some Republican leaders dissed the administration’s blueprint, and it surely contains provisions that truly are DOA. But as The Wall Street Journal’s Nick Timiraos reports, it does include some proposals which “could ultimately yield bipartisan agreement, including $1 billion on cancer research and $1 billion to fund treatment for the painkiller-abuse epidemic.”
Twitter created a “Trust & Safety Council” of some 40 outside groups to come up with strategies to battle abuse and harassment while protecting free speech.
There were a record 98 “unprovoked” shark attacks last year, but the number of fatalities – six — was “on par with the worldwide annual average.”
Cover Art: Voters cast ballots at a polling station inside Broken Gound Elementary School in Concord, New Hampshire, U.S., on Tuesday, Feb. 9, 2016. Voters in New Hampshire took to the polls today in the nation's first primary in the U.S. presidential race.
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Consumer Services Professional
9 年What else she can goes for? Unemployment report skew under 5% unemployed consider full employed for the benefit of 2% inflation less is valid no need to alarm congress. It would be nice if all companies give employees 2% paid increase annually guarantee. The reality of Main Street and the cocoon world the government friction has been going half a century far too long.
Engineering Manager at Red Hawk Fire & Security
9 年Note that there were 36 cases of shark attacks on human "provokers", go figure! And this figure does not include over-valued, ill-prepared or amateurish funding appeals on Shark Tank!
Director of Economic Research
9 年The problem with the labor turnover data cited in Lucia's article is it's from December. (Not a criticism of Lucia, one of my favorite reporters of the economy!). It's possible that strength has persisted into February (the stock market <> the economy) but I think some caution is warranted.