When looking at the bond market or eurodollar futures, both tugged by JPY, I don’t think it was just the payroll report that pushed new levels of anti-reflation today. Instead, there is too much that is consistent with a weak payroll report, and by that I mean a string of them. Yesterday, for example, automakers released their sales estimates for the very important month of May. Memorial Day looms large on their calendar and can often set the tone for the summer season.
Instead, it was another largely negative month. If GDP and all its constituents suggested weakness in just Q1 (transitory as always) as Janet Yellen’s FOMC still believes, then auto sales are perhaps the most salient counterpoint that such “headwinds” persist even this far nearly halfway into 2017. We are right back in 2014 again, where such mysterious inconsistencies abound at least in the mainstream:
May’s results sealed the first three-month stretch since 2014 during which the monthly sales pace fell short of 17 million. The lack of consumer demand even amid readily available financing, low gasoline prices and strong job growth belies underlying weakness within the market.
“Strong job growth” wasn’t true then, and now in 2017 it is more and more difficult to even suggest it. The labor market has slowed to a considerable degree over these last three years (from what starting point isn’t yet known for sure, but I have little doubt it wasn’t ever nearly as good as was claimed and estimated) which is now consistent with everything including persistently weak auto sales. Therefore, markets are getting out of the “reflation” mood, not that they were very far into it at any time.
The real point is to ask what do we have to show for it all? Four QE’s, trillions in bank reserves, six years of ZIRP and still near zero and nothing like normalcy; what did we get out of it? I asked that very question all the way back in March 2012.
