Wednesday, August 12
Consumer Price Index Release
Thursday, August 13
Producer Price Index Release
Initial Jobless Claims
Hammack Speaks To Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce
Friday, August 14
GDPNow update
Survey of Professional Forecasters
Surveys of Consumers Release
Job openings… Demand for workers stalled in June. The Bureau of Labor Statistics counted 7.4 million openings in its Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, and hires held at 5.3 million, both essentially unchanged from May. Separations totaled 5.4 million — 3.2 million quits and 1.8 million layoffs and discharges. The bureau also took 57,000 off its May count, which now stands at 7.5 million.
Payrolls… Employers cut 23,000 jobs over the month, against an average gain of 34,000 a month over the prior year, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics took a combined 103,000 off what it had reported for May and June. Unemployment held at 4.1 percent, so the softening showed up elsewhere: participation fell to 61.4 percent, down 0.7 point since January, and the share of adults holding a job fell to 58.9 percent, down 0.5 point.
Fed independence… President Trump is trying again to remove Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors. His deputy chief of staff, Dan Scavino, wrote to Cook that the president is weighing whether to dismiss her, and gave her until August 26 to respond. The White House says she listed two homes as her primary residence when she applied for mortgages in 2021, the year before she came to the Fed. The charge traces back to a criminal referral that William Pulte, who runs the Federal Housing Finance Agency, sent last August. Cook says she did nothing of the kind, and financial records reported since then appear to cut against the White House. Her lawyers plan to fight.
The letter leans on the Supreme Court’s June decision in Trump v. Cook, which split 5 to 4 and stopped the first attempt because the president had moved without giving Cook notice or a chance to answer. Chief Justice Roberts wrote that she is owed a chance to make her case, not a hearing or a trial. The same opinion turned down the government’s claim that the bar for cause sits very low, said the Fed’s design calls for “a substantial threshold for ‘cause,’” and warned that letting any alleged misstep suffice would hand a president a ready pretext to swap out a governor who votes the wrong way.
What the majority did not decide is how much cause is enough, or whether conduct from before a governor took office can count at all. The district judge said it cannot.
The Fed Is Expected to Hold Rates. The Rules Say It Shouldn’t - Matthew Schaffer
Standing Still as Inflation Runs Hot - Bryan Cutsinger
One Month of Falling Prices Won’t Restore Price Stability - Bryan Cutsinger
Warsh Wants the Federal Reserve to Rethink the Rules - Thomas L. Hogan
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