Thursday’s Economic Calendar
- Chain Store Sales
7:00 BoE Announcement
7:45 ECB Announcement
8:15 ADP Jobs Report
8:30 Initial Jobless Claims
10:30 EIA Natural Gas Inventory
11:00 EIA Petroleum Inventories
11:00 White House Budget Talks
4:30 PM Money Supply
4:30 PM Fed Balance Sheet
Private-sector employment increased by 157,000 from May to June on a seasonally adjusted basis, according to the latest Automatic Data Processing, Inc. (ADP(R)) released today. The ADP National Employment Report, created by Automatic Data Processing, Inc. (ADP(R)), in partnership with Macroeconomic Advisers, LLC, is derived from actual payroll data and measures the change in total nonfarm private employment each month. The estimated advance in employment from April to May was revised down, but only slightly, to 36,000 from the initially reported 38,000.
In the week ending July 2, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 418,000, a decrease of 14,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 432,000. The 4-week moving average was 424,750, a decrease of 3,000 from the previous week’s revised average of 427,750.
Some International Monetary Fund officials — including executive directors on the Fund’s board — fear the Greece loan program will ultimately prove unsustainable.
Despite those concerns, the IMF board is expected to approve the next tranche of loans to Greece to stem the sovereign debt crisis from spilling over into the rest of the euro zone. The IMF’s new managing director, Christine Lagarde, the former French finance minister who helped to negotiate financing for Greece, said the sovereign debt crisis was her top priority and the board would consider the loan Friday.
Paulo Nogueira Batista, the IMF representative for Brazil and eight other South American and Caribbean countries, said that although he voted to approve the package last year, “Our chair was very skeptical about the sustainability of the program from the very beginning,” he said in an interview.
“We expressed serious concerns since the first meeting about Greece,” he said, adding, “That’s intensified… it’s only gotten worse.”
The European Central Bank delivered its second rate hike in three months on Thursday, as expected, lifting its refi rate to 1.5% from 1.25% as investors seek clues on the pace of further moves and the central bank’s response to the euro zone’s ongoing debt crisis.
Bonus Squeeze