Weekly Commentary

Fed Week. It's a far more interesting Federal Reserve Interest Rate Decision Week than most.  With such strong US economic growth in the third quarter — a long-signaled 4.9%— and inflation coming in (also as expected) at approximately 3.7% in

At least fourteen representatives of the Federal Reserve (Board members or Fed Presidents) gave speeches last week, with several of them giving multiple speeches. Only one speech was really noteworthy: Federal Reserve Chairman Powell’s speech on

Everything has the feel of being on a knife-edge at the moment. And yet— not really. US economic growth is strong. Europe has not suffered the economic devastation that was expected a short year and a half ago and China is, maybe, bottoming out. At

The United States is a remarkable economy. Despite the challenges of altered supply chains, pressured profit margins, tight labor markets and sharply higher interest rates, the US continues to grow, producing eye-popping employment numbers in

If it had just been about the economic data, last week would have been a mostly good week. By the time Friday rolled around and the much-anticipated PCE (Personal Consumption Expenditures) Price Index came in a bit better than expected — coupled with

On September 14, the ECB (European Central Bank) hiked interest rates for the 10th time — and signaled fairly clearly that despite inflation in excess of 5%, the cycle of monetary tightening was done. On September 20th, the FOMC (Federal Reserve Open

The biggest conundrum of the week may not be what the Fed will do on Wednesday but why the UAW strike is getting more headline space than the imminent government shutdown on Sept. 30. A slightly flippant answer is that the UAW strike is something not

A large amount of economic data will be released this week that will shed important light on the state of the US economy in August. None of the data is more important than the inflation numbers on Wednesday (Consumer Price Index) and Thursday

While it is unlikely that anyone in the US was thinking much about last week’s employment and inflation numbers — important as they were —across the long holiday weekend, in Europe it was a different story. Christine Lagarde, head of the ECB, has

It will be another week of watching interest rates and possibly participating in one of the many betting pools regarding exactly when in 2024 the Federal Reserve will actually cut rates (my advice: save your money). Chairman Powell’s Jackson Hole