MainStreet Macro

The Federal Reserve last week took another aggressive whack at too-high inflation, raising its benchmark interest rate by three-fourths of a percentage point. It’s the third time in a row the Fed has taken such a big step, and indications are it won’t be the last. Central bank policymakers have telegraphed that they plan to raise the federal funds rate a by a combined 1.25 per percentage points in their last two meetings of 2022.

Last week, consumer inflation data told us two things. First, thanks to falling energy prices, overall inflation edged down, to 8.3 percent in August from 8.5 percent in July. Second, other components of inflation accelerated, namely housing, food, and medical care. But if we strip out the two most volatile components of the index – food and energy — we get a troubling picture: Inflation went up, not down, from the previous month.

If you’ve been following equity markets these days, you’ll notice they’ve had a pretty bumpy ride. The S&P 500, a key index for measuring the financial health of the country’s largest companies, is down 17 percent from its December peak. While stock valuations in theory are based on corporate and economic fundamentals such as sales, ...

Private employment topped its pre-pandemic high for the first time last month. ADP’s newly relaunched National Employment Report showed gains, and Friday’s government jobs report found that total employment was 240,000 higher than its February 2020 peak.

Job growth is one of the most important indicators of the economy’s health. Pay and earnings data is important to Main Street for both workers and businesses. 

To meet those demands for robust information, the ADP Research Institute is relaunching the ADP National Employment Report (NER). Using fine-grained, high-frequency data, the new report will capture intelligence ...

Every year at this time, the Federal Reserve holds its high-profile annual conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Some 120 central bankers, finance leaders, and academics gather to discuss wonky but important global issues. The highlight of the event is a Friday morning speech given by the head of the Federal Reserve – Jay Powell. It’s the only public part of the conference.

Main Street received good news last week. Not only did we see a slight cool-down to our national summer heat wave, we learned that inflation dipped, to 8.5 percent over the last 12 months ending in July from 9.1 percent for the same period in June.