In terms of policy, Thursday’s announcement should be something of a damp squib. Although supposedly no longer offering forward guidance, the February statement made it clear that the ECB intends to raise its key interest [...]

Note: The following was written before the news of the failure of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB). This is the sort of exogenous event that throws the near-term outlook for monetary policy into uncertainty. The question [...]

Fed Chair Jerome Powell is scheduled to deliver the semiannual monetary policy testimony – by old habit often called the Humphrey-Hawkins testimony – at 10:00 EST on Tuesday before the Senate Banking Committee and on [...]

A lot of the focus in the March 6 week will be on Fed Chair Jerome Powell and the semiannual monetary policy testimony. He will appear before the Senate Banking Committee on Tuesday at 10:00 [...]

While the week beginning February 27 includes the first Friday of the month on March 3, that day isn’t an Employment Friday. The employment situation for February won’t be released until Friday, March 10. The [...]

The February 20 week is shortened by the Presidents Day observance on Monday. Stock and bond markets will be closed in the US.At this writing the dates of Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s semiannual monetary policy [...]

Fed Vice Chair Lael Brainard is leaving the Board of Governors as of February 20. After that, she will be joining the Biden Administration’s National Economic Council as Director. This makes her the top economic [...]

It is sometimes hard to parse out what Fed policymakers mean when they talk about non-housing services inflation. The CPI report has a special aggregate of the CPI for services less rent of shelter. It [...]

There are two reports in the February 13 week that will be closely examined for hints about the direction of monetary policy and the state of the US economy.First is the January consumer price index [...]

The BLS annual revisions to the CPI seasonal adjustment factors released on February 10 go back 5 years. The revisions don’t change the overall picture for the CPI performance in the last few years. Most [...]