Sunday, May 5, 2013

Unhinged?

Early on we predicted a slowing for H1, and lower interest rates; that is, a sub-read, most key releases. April NFP and the Feb/Mar revisions seemed to make us out to be unhinged.

Naturally it is easy to cherry pick, to fetch results which fit a bias.  In economics, it becomes an addiction for many, a drug to ease the pain of being wrong. Guarding against just that, let us state that the April NFP read does not indicate better times ahead, but is consistent with a slowing economy, thanks partly to the big drop in hours worked. We all know about this one – private hours were off 0.4% and manuf hours were off 0.2%; aggregate hours for all employees were off 0.4%.  Finally, an outdated seasonal added about 50M jobs.

Background: We have an administration hostile to job creation, actually hostile to free enterprise. You’ll find that out personally if you’re the fiftieth worker to be hired (sorry) or think you might receive credit at the I-Hop for working over thirty hours.

So past Friday’s celebration, prepare for this reality – a slowing into H2. One way to do that is to expect the recent, substantial losses in longer FI prices, to be reversed. The market crowd detected that such a “robust result” as that of Friday will persuade the Fed to reverse course sooner than expected. Fed commentary over the near term will do nothing to support that premise.


Robert Craven
 

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