Jeanette Garretty

For central bankers, the world is now a fairly complicated puzzle. In China, the economic recovery appears to be slowing due to weaker-than-expected (desired?) consumer demand and problematic unemployment, challenging policy-makers to provide

The Fed Watch and the Debt-Ceiling Drama both continue this week, each with short term consequences for investors.  Fed Board members appear to be stepping towards a pause in interest rate hikes in June, although exactly why this is happening is not

Focus shifts this week to Europe, where data on economic strength in March and early April will provide context for remarks by ECB President Christine Lagarde and ECB board member Isabel Schnabel on Thursday and Friday. In the US, speeches by a wide

Following last week’s robust, significantly-higher-than-expected US employment numbers for April – and an unemployment rate that fell from 3.6% to 3.4% -- all eyes this week should be on the inflation numbers and any Federal Reserve commentary about

The surprising 1.1% first estimate of Q1 US growth, released last Friday, provides the context for scrutinizing the economic activity numbers for April being released this week -- and for evaluating the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) decision

A long-awaited first report this week on US economic growth in the first quarter will set the tone for investor focus in the next few months. At present, the issue is the real economy (consumption, business investment, government spending, etc.) and

Last week’s FOMC minutes (of the March 2023 meeting) served to shape the focus of investors on the possibility of a recession.  The Federal Reserve’s Research Dept. apparently is running with a forecast for a "mild recession” later in 2023, a

For a few weeks, the banking turmoil set off in early March has settled into an uneasy calm. This peace is likely to be disturbed soon, first by the release of consumer price and producer price indices for March and then by earnings announcements

The second quarter of 2023 begins with an interesting look back at the first quarter: substantially weakened numbers for US manufacturing activity, including employment, in the second half of the first quarter and a newly revised Atlanta Fed GDPNow

The Fed's decision to raise rates modestly and signal a possible tempering of monetary tightening going forward will no doubt be re-evaluated at the end of this week with the release of important inflation indicators for February.  All indications