* It's another week where the dollar remained relatively firmly bid; the dollar index closing just above 98

* Gold prices seem to have a lid on them; they closed down today about $7

* Gold's not really going down, but it's not really going up, either

* What are going up are bond yields, long-term bond yields are rising today to about a 4-month high

* 30-year Treasury yield to about 2.5%

* The 10-year just below 1.8

* This despite the fact that the economic news, during the week, on balance, was generally weaker than expected

* Obviously the numbers are worse because the Atlanta Fed reduced again their Q3 GDP estimate down to 1.9%

* This is the first time it has been below 2

* It is not half of what it was just over a month ago, when they were at 3.8

* I still think their estimate is too high

* I do think that Q3 is going to be a stronger quarter than Q4, which will probably be another 1% or below

* The last 3 quarters averaged 1%

* This is the weakest 3 consecutive quarters of this entire so-called recovery

* Yet now the Fed is supposedly raising rates?

* In fact, we got the JOLTS report on Wednesday, supposedly Janet Yellen's favorite indicator of the labor market

* Not only did we have a slight downward revision to the prior month, but we had a 7.3% collapse in August

* That was the biggest drop since December of last year

* Everything about that report was weak

* If this is Janet Yellen's favorite number, and if the Fed didn't raise rates in September because they wanted more data on the job market, and now they just got the JOLTS number, which was much worse than expected,

* Why is every Fed governor talking about rate hikes in interviews?

* Another one was out on CNBC, talking about how rate hikes would be appropriate

* Yes! It would have been appropriate to raise them a long time ago

* It would have been appropriate in June, in September, in March, in January, last year, 2 years ago, 3 years ago

* It would have been appropriate a long time ago to raise rates - they didn't do it

* You know what was inappropriate? Cutting them to zero

* That was not appropriate - they did it anyway

* The Fed is not about doing what's appropriate


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