De onfeilbare Fed stond op het punt het eigen gelijk te ontkennen

“Labor market conditions are affected by a wide variety of factors outside a central bank’s control,” admitted Richmond Fed President Jeffrey Lacker a few hours after the employment report bounced around the world. Yet for years, the Fed has proclaimed that the heroic motivation for its selfless money-printing mania (QE) and bold zero-interest-rate policies (ZIRP) was the deep desire to improve the unemployment fiasco for average Americans.

So the employment report was mixed in the manner befitting these crazy times: 165,000 jobs were “created” in April. March was revised up from a super-lousy 88,000 to a still lousy 138,000; February was revised up from 268,000 to 332,000. The unemployment rate dropped to 7.5%, from 7.6%, the lowest since 2008 – and so we’re excited and go into the weekend celebrating. Stock markets certainly did. The Dow and the S&P 500 hit all-time highs. Exuberance about the report skittered around the world and propelled the German DAX to an all-time high as well. There’s nothing like a “better-than expected” though very lousy headline number to amplify the power of the money-printing machines.