Christopher Waller told an audience on Thursday that he is inclined to hold rates at the September meeting if August inflation confirms the recent disinflation, and that a modest acceleration could justify tightening instead. Two careful readers of that speech came away with opposite conclusions, an

The Dovish Option Is Doing Nothing. Christopher Waller, a Federal Reserve governor, said Thursday he is inclined to hold in September if August inflation confirms the disinflation, and that a modest acceleration could justify tightening instead. Two Fed watchers disagreed completely in public: Joseph Wang heard a hike signal, Warren P

Two layers of the AI stack reported within minutes of each other on Wednesday and both beat. Broadcom grew revenue 86 percent and guided the next quarter to 93, Hewlett Packard Enterprise more than doubled the operating margin on the business everyone calls a commodity, and the tape marked Broadcom

Schools and Hospitals Outhired the Whole Economy. Private payrolls grew 38,000, the smallest gain since January. Education and health services added 45,000 on their own, so every other sector combined shed workers. A hike is priced anyway: CME FedWatch has 66 percent odds on a quarter-point move on 16 September, while Kalshi and Polymarket sit at 4

The institutions that could act yesterday acted loudly and on the same day. Central Command began striking Revolutionary Guard targets inside Iran at noon Eastern, the second strike in three days. A sitting Federal Reserve governor conditioned a September hike on the inflation data. And yet not one

Seven Bond Markets Repriced on a Buyer Who Wasn't There. Japan's ten-year yield crossed 3.00 percent for the first time since 1996 and the UK gilt hit its highest since 2008. Vasu Menon of the bank OCBC gave Reuters the consensus reading: higher domestic yields pull Japanese money home. Masahiko Loo of State Street gave the harder one: Japan is gradually

Friday's benchmark revision says the American labor market was adding about eleven thousand jobs a month for a year rather than seventeen and a half thousand, and that the forecasters had been expecting the number to move the other way. Monday's tape says Brent settled at $90.39 and the ten-year at

Everyone Guessed Up. The Data Went Down.. The Bureau of Labor Statistics said on 28 August that employment for the year through March 2026 had been overstated by 79,000, against an expectation of plus 183,000. The data moved 79,000. The forecast moved 262,000, and the year's run rate falls from roughly 17,600 jobs a month to roughly 11,000.

Three times over this weekend the American government moved to buy control of a supply, and in each case the price is still being set by somebody who was not asked. The Pentagon is taking a third of a Venezuelan oil venture through warrants that cost almost nothing, because the oil majors would not

Penny Warrants and a Forty-Fold Tariff. The Wall Street Journal reported on 29 August that the Pentagon's Office of Strategic Capital plans a 35 percent stake in North American Blue Energy Partners through penny warrants, plus rights on 20 percent of production at cost. Its chief spokesperson then said that office does not take equity sta