Reuters Insider - Inside the News: Bernanke More Hopeful on U.S. Recovery
13/06/2016 11:04
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Source: Thomson Reuters
Description: Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke remains
hopeful the U.S. economic recovery is well under
way as he faces the Senate Budget Committee.
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Transcript (May be auto-generated)
Time to go Inside the News at 11AM. US stocks have managed to move into positive
territory while bonds are mixed with the 30-year down about half a point in
price following the release of the December employment report. Gold and silver
have rallied reversing early losses. The Labor Department said the economy
created 103,000 jobs which is far below expectations. That was based on the
establishment survey. Now the household survey indicated job gains of about
triple that figure which helped drop the unemployment rate to 9.4%. Analysts say
the establishment survey may not pick up the small business hiring to the same
degree as the household survey. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is facing the new
Congress for the first time today. He updated his economic view before the
Senate Budget Committee. More recently however, we have seen increased evidence
that a self-sustaining recovery in consumer and business spending may be taking
hold. Let's turn to Reuters Fed Correspondent Pedro da Costa in Washington. Now
Pedro, does that mean an early end to QE2? Hi Fred. I highly doubt it actually.
I certainly didn't get that much from the Chairman. Of course, when the markets
look at a Bernanke testimony, all they wanna know is will they cut the bond
program short or will they buy more or will they leave it pat. And Bernanke
didn't quite go there in the testimony. The furthest he went really was in
offering his economic assessment from which people can derive his policy views.
Now, there was a modestly more upbeat tone to the testimony. Back in his 60
Minutes interview last month, he was asked about whether the recovery was
self-sustainable and he said that we are right on the line. And this time he
said there is evidence that we actually were in a self-sustainable recovery. So
there's an improvement there but almost in the same breadth, he focused on the
high unemployment rate, the very low level of inflation and really just how long
it's going to take for our economy to fully heal. So I would say that he showed
no particular inclination towards cutting the bond program short and it'll take
a few months before the Fed starts to reconsider what to do next. They're in a
wait and see mode at the moment. Okay. Thanks a lot Pedro.
Now in today's Hot Stocks, shares of Perry Ellis are changing hands about twice
its average daily volume over the past 30 days. The company announced plans to
buy the Rafaella Apparel Group from Cerberus Capital in a $70 million deal as it
hopes to bolster its presence in the women's apparel market. Shares are rising
more than 14%. And Local.com is trading about 1.5 times its average daily
volume. The search provider lowered its fourth quarter outlook hurt by decline
in revenue from key customer Yahoo!. Its shares are down more than 20%. Well
coming up at 11:35AM Eastern, US President Obama reacts to the December jobs
report and announces new members of his economic team. And at noon, we analyze
whether talk of a Facebook IPO could spark a wave of early offerings. I'm Fred
Katayama. This is Reuters Insider