- I don’t know if I am a finalist for the position or not
- There was nothing political about the interview
- “It was all serious economics”
- There have been shutdowns before, there is a lot of private sector data to rely on
- Pieces of data are all telling the same story now, that the labour market is not doing great
- ADP data is consistent with where BLS data was heading, that is towards negative jobs growth
- CPI data will help a lot in the coming meeting
- Tariffs effect on inflation is a one-time change and can be looked through
- If inflation goes up and comes back down, it should not influence monetary policy
That’s arguably the first confirmation that we are getting of how the official labour market data from the BLS might have looked if released. Waller is definitely tilting more dovishly with his remarks overall, so it’s not clear cut to say that non-farm payrolls would have been that abysmal but we’ll see in due time. I mean, he has to play the game if he wants to be Fed chair so..
In any case, he is almost certainly in the final shortlist as seen here. As for the CPI report mention, just be wary that the BLS is working on it and the Fed might get a glimpse of that data. However, it will likely be delayed past the original release date of 15 October.
