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Ex-Fed New York President Dudley says the Fed is fighting the last war on inflation

  
  Analysis
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Says excess dovishness at the Federal Open Market Committee increases the risk of a major policy error at the Fed.

Bill Dudley is a past resident of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (2009 to 2018) and is now at Princeton University’s Center for Economic Policy Studies.
Says Fed officials:
  • anticipate that inflation will fall back close to 2% in 2022 … even as supply chain disruptions, energy costs and rising rents threaten to make the current price surge bigger and longer lasting than expected. 
  • And they expect inflation to keep decelerating in 2023 and 2024
  • if inflation proves more persistent than anticipated and even accelerates as the economy pushes beyond full employment, they’ll have to tighten much more aggressively than they expect. 
  • The result could more resemble what happened from 2004 to 2006 – when the Fed raised its short-term interest-rate target by 4.25 percentage points, to 5.25% from 1%, with quarter-percentage-point increases in 17 consecutive policy-making meetings – than what they currently have pencilled in. 
Here is the link to the Bloomberg piece (may be gated)  for much more.
Dudley, Yellen and Fischer, all since departed from the Fed:
Says excess dovishness at the Federal Open Market Committee increases the risk of a major policy error at the Fed. 

US weekly oil inventories -4985K vs +2150K expected

  
  Analysis
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Weekly US petroleum inventory data:

  • Prior was -745K
  • Cushing -5587K
  • Gasoline +2830K
  • Distillates +3832K
  • Production estimate 11.5 mbpd vs 11.6 mbpd
API data from yesterday:

  • Crude -4800K
  • Cushing -5000K
  • Gasoline -651K
  • Distillates +5100K

Eurozone April final services PMI 12.0 vs 11.7 prelim

  
Analysis, Economy
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Latest data released by Markit – 6 May 2020

  • Composite PMI 13.6 vs 13.5 prelim
The preliminary release can be found here. A tad better than initial estimates but again, it doesn’t take away the fact that the euro area economy saw a record contraction in business activity during the month of April. A summary to wrap your head around:
Markit notes that:

“The extent of the euro area economic downturn was laid bare by record downturns in every country surveyed in April, with output falling at unprecedented rates across the region’s manufacturing and services sectors.

“With a large part of the region’s economy shut down while COVID-19 infections spiked higher, the economic data for April were inevitably going to be bad, but the scale of the decline is still shocking. The survey data are indicative of GDP falling at a quarterly rate of around 7.5%, far surpassing the worst decline seen in the global financial crisis. Jobs are also being lost at a rate never previously seen.

“Hopefully, with coronavirus curves flattening and governments making moves to ease lockdown restrictions, many sectors should start to see output and demand pick up. The process will be only very gradual, however, as governments juggle between reviving economies and preventing a second wave of infections. Most companies will inevitably need to work at levels well below full capacity and sectors such as retail, travel, tourism and recreation – already the hardest hit – will continue to be badly affected by social distancing.

“While the rate of decline may ease in coming months, we do not expect to see any material signs of recovery until the second half of the year, and it is likely to be several years before the output lost due to the 

US weekly EIA energy inventories +9281K vs +3000K expected

  
Analysis, Crude
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Weekly US oil inventory data from the EIA:

  • Prior was +2927K
  • Gasoline -2562K vs -1500K exp
  • Distillates -3823K vs -2500K exp
  • Cushing +1276K
  • Refinery utilization -2.6%
The headlines aren’t as bad as they look because the API numbers from late yesterday were so bearish. The drop in refinery runs and draws in products takes the sting out of the report:
  • Crude +10500K
  • Cushing +1600K
  • Gasoline -934K
  • Distillates -2900K
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