Below are comments about the Federal Reserve Beige Book released Wednesday, June 3 by John Canally, Chief Economic Strategist for LPL Financial.
Federal Reserve Beige Book Comments
- Barometer +92 in Mar vs +47 in Apr. Highest reading since Dec ’14, pre Q1 distortions (Port, weather, etc)
- Weather (16 in Jun vs 71 in Apr), oil (32 vs 46) and ports (16 vs 16) faded as concerns.
- … while dollar/strong dollar (30 vs 31) remained as a key concern
- 112 mentions of “inflation words” – labor market type words (wage/skilled/shortage/widespread/rising vs 106 in April and 98 in 2014 and jusrt 80 in ’11-13
- Takeaway is that slack in economy is pushing up wages and prices
- Comment on wages prices:
- June: “Wages rose slightly. Prices were stable or ticked up” ….
- April “Districts noted modest upward pressure on wages and overall prices”
