Kugler resigned from the Fed this summer after it became clear that prohibited stock trading activities (she said they were done by her husband without her knowledge) were far more widespread than initially reported www.wsj.com/economy/cent...

Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic said he would retire when his current five-year term expires at the end of next February, avoiding a possibly messy internal row over his reappointment www.wsj.com/economy/cent...

ADP said it is “actively working with the Fed” to enhance unspecified processes that would allow it resume sharing aggregated microdata. ADP suspended its long-running Fed collaboration following a speech that gave a generalized readout of Fed-curated realtime ADP data. www.wsj.com/economy/cent...

New at the Fed’s Jackson Hole event this year: Greater nervousness about the future of the institution amid Trump’s effort to take another board seat “This should be seen for what it is: a blatant shakedown and an attempt to strong-arm policymakers into lowering rates.” www.wsj.com/economy/cent...

At a speech in New York two weeks ago, Fed governor Chris Waller publicly laid out the case to cut. He told at least one associate that, ahead of his remarks, he indicated privately to Fed Chair Jay Powell that he would dissent at this week’s meeting. www.wsj.com/economy/cent...

Kevin Hassett, one of Trump’s closest economic advisers, is emerging as a serious contender to be the next Fed chair. Hassett’s rise threatens the other Kevin—former Fed governor Kevin Warsh—who has angled for the position ever since Trump passed him over for it eight years ago.

NEW: President Trump’s exasperation over the Federal Reserve’s take-it-slow approach to cutting interest rates is prompting him to consider accelerating when he will announce his pick to succeed Chair Jerome Powell, whose term runs for another 11 months www.wsj.com/economy/cent...

Powell kicks off testimony to lawmakers facing an emerging rift over how long to stay on hold on rate cuts and unusually harsh presidential criticism The message in his prepared remarks is very even handed. No change from last week’s presser www.wsj.com/economy/cent...

One way Trump's pressure campaign on the Fed is different from the first term: Potentially more disagreement on the Fed board Two Fed officials appointed by Trump have become the first to speak out in favor of lowering rates after having supported last week’s decision to hold them steady

Fed governor Chris Waller continues to stake out the most dovish position of FOMC voters "I’m all in favor of saying maybe we should start thinking about cutting the policy rate at the next meeting, because we don’t want to wait till the job market tanks before we start cutting the policy rate.”

The US economy, which weathered false recession alarms in 2023 and 2024, is entering another uncomfortable summer “Where this goes all depends on what Trump decides to do next and candidly even Trump doesn’t know what Trump will do next. So it’s almost impossible to see where this thing is heading”

The Senate confirmed Fed governor Miki Bowman as vice chair of bank supervision on a 48-46 vote Party-line votes for Fed posts used to be rare but are becoming more common (Michael Barr was confirmed on a 66-28 vote in 2022; Randy Quarles was confirmed on a 65-32 vote in 2017)

The BLS, which produces the CPI, told economists this week that a hiring freeze led the agency to cut back on the number of businesses where it checks prices. Response rates for one data set increased in the April CPI as fewer businesses were surveyed www.wsj.com/economy/cpi-...

In a 2016 speech, Fischer succinctly summarized the evolution of modern macroeconomics He began with the economist returning to his alma mater after 50 years who discovers the exam questions are still the same. “Ah yes,” he's told, “but all the answers are different.” www.wsj.com/economy/cent...

The Supreme Court granted President Trump’s emergency request to fire federal commissioners in the face of a law prohibiting their arbitrary removal, but in an unusual move went out of its way to signal that the Federal Reserve was off limits from White House control. www.wsj.com/us-news/law/...

This guy is unreal. They had already tied the game down three in the 9th. The crowd behind him—this looks like a home game lol. And the way he’s enjoying the moment as much as the fans in the park. Goosebumps, as Vin Scully would have said.

Not only did the broadcast capture the future pope during a World Series game but with TWO OUT IN THE NINTH. I have never missed Vin Scully more. As a devout Catholic he would be beside himself and telling the best stories about nuns and baseball that any of us have ever heard.

Fed Chair Jay Powell used some version of the word "wait" ("waiting," "await") 22 times at the press conference. Half of those were "wait and see" re: what to do with interest rates www.wsj.com/economy/cent...

Fed leaves rates unchanged “The committee … judges that the risks of higher unemployment and higher inflation have risen.”

The Fed's dilemma: Navigate a recession or manage a period of stagflation. The result: “This is not going to be a cycle where the Fed pre-emptively cuts because there’s a forecast of a slowdown. They’re going to actually need to see it in the tangible data." www.wsj.com/economy/cent...

The May FOMC: Taking it one meeting at a time www.cnbc.com/video/2025/0...

The index of aggregate weekly payrolls is a good monthly proxy for nominal income growth and correlates well with nominal GDP growth. It was up 5.3% on the year in April and has held in a range over the last year that is back to where it was from 2018-19

Labor market flows of people who weren't in the labor force (not working or looking for work) and became employed have rebounded recently, coinciding with the Fed's rate cuts last fall.

Jobs day charts: acyclical vs cyclical hiring

So was it a soft landing? April labor market data shows continued resilience. March PCE inflation was 2.3%, 2.6% on core.

A whiff of stagflation in the April ISM purchasing managers' index survey of manufacturing firms Prices paid continues to accelerate while new orders and employment remains in contractionary territory. This wasn't the case in 2021, when all were in expansionary territory.

$EQR, one of the biggest apartment REITs, says they're unlikely to invest in Montgomery County, Maryland going forward in response to a recent rent control measure:

The ECI is the highest quality measure of wage and compensation growth we get, and along every dimension wage growth has cooled to levels we would have envied last decade.

You can tell a good story with the GDP numbers (strip out inventories, imports, and government spending and things look about the same as last year) or a bad one (real GDP was negative). But this doesn't tell us much we didn't already know: The economy was OK before the storm, but a storm is comin'

U.S. national home price growth is running around 4% and shows few signs of accelerating This is a key difference from 2021, when the Fed's "transitory" inflation forecast ran aground in part because housing markets were on fire. Prices in Tampa are flat to down.

Expectations of a negative headline Q1 GDP print (notwithstanding final sales that are expected to be decent) sent up the odds of a recession, defined as two quarters of negative growth, in Polymarket trading on Tuesday

Manufacturing businesses surveyed by the Dallas Fed this month reported intensifying price pressures and a large increase in economic uncertainty "The general business activity index fell 20 points to -35.8, its lowest reading since May 2020"

Univ of Michigan: "After the April 9 partial pause in tariff increases, inflation expectations ebbed but remained substantially elevated relative to March."

Trump says the Fed chair is a “major loser,” but the bigger loser from his fracas with the Fed could be whomever Trump chooses to succeed Jay Powell next year By bashing the Fed to influence policy, Trump creates a “shadow of suspicion” over his own potential nominee www.wsj.com/economy/cent...

The prospect of a clash between Trump and the Powell Fed has receded for now but it still seems likely to remain elevated going forward because the tariffs are likely to cause economic weakness that deepens the tradeoffs facing the central bank. The risk of a standoff “is uncomfortably high.”

White House lawyers had been tasked with reviewing options on removing the Fed chair up until Trump announced he had "no intention" — and never did — of sacking Powell. The president cooled his jets after advisers said it would cause more problems than it would solve www.wsj.com/economy/trum...

Trump put the country on notice that he will make the Fed a scapegoat for any economic fallout from his trade war and also delegitimize the institution if it doesn’t cut rates. www.wsj.com/economy/cent...

United Airlines says the outlook for the U.S. economy is bimodal — weak growth or recession — and it provides guidance under two different economic scenarios as a result

The share of respondents in the New York Fed's consumer survey who thought their household financial situation would improve over the next year surged after the election but has now completely given up those gains.

From the University of Michigan survey: Consumer expectations of future economic conditions among Republicans have dropped notably (though are above year-earlier levels). Independents are back to the low point of the Biden presidency.

Axios: Top Senate Democrats plan to unveil legislation that would provide an emergency $200 monthly increase in Social Security benefits through the end of the year to account for potential tariff related cost increases www.axios.com/2025/04/10/c...

What we learned from the March CPI: The economy was about as close to a soft landing earlier this year as anyone might have reasonably hoped for two years ago. Without tariffs, the market would have loved this report. www.wsj.com/livecoverage...

It may be regarded by policymakers as a report from a different world given what has happened to tariff policy recently But the March CPI report was exceptionally cool. Headline CPI fell -0.05%, and core CPI rose just 0.06% This lowered the 12-month rate for both measures to a 4-year low

Forecasters see the March CPI report as fairly tame—the calm before the (imported goods) storm. If these forecasters are right, then we will see the second-lowest headline CPI reading (2.5%) in four years, and the lowest core CPI reading (3.0%) in four years

The bond market led Trump to cave "He privately acknowledged that his trade policy could trigger a recession but said he wanted to be sure it didn’t cause a depression" www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

Days like today illustrate why the Fed is likely to sit tight. Their problem could eventually look like the soccer goalie who must decide whether to dive to the left and focus on inflation or to the right and address weaker growth as an opponent takes a penalty kick. www.wsj.com/economy/cent...

The S&P 500 was down another 5.97% today It lost 10.5% over the last two days, the worst two-day decline since March 12, 2020

The economy was in reasonably good shape, according to the March employment report, before "Liberation Day." Unemployment rate basically flat (up to 4.2% from 4.1% but mostly due to rounding: March was 4.15%, February was 4.14%). Job growth is running at around 180,000 per months over six months

JPMorgan's Michael Cembalest, March 12, 2025: "The stock market is unique – it cannot be indicted, arrested or deported; it cannot be intimidated, threatened or bullied; it has no gender, ethnicity or religion; it cannot be fired, furloughed or defunded..." privatebank.jpmorgan.com/content/dam/...