Thursday, May 27, 2010

Initial Jobless Claims: Survey 455 Actual 460 Prior 471 Revised 474

After last week’s data, which surprised on the upside, this was a bit of relief that jobless claims
didn’t continue a sharp move up…at least for me.

“NY is almost out of cash” – WSJ oped – says won’t be able to make June 1 school payments
(on June 1, NY State due to send $3.8B worth of aid to local school districts). WSJ
Debt markets – companies sold $6B of corp debt on Wed, the most in 5 weeks; GS sold $1.25B
of 10yr notes although had to offer 280bp+ TSYs vs. a similar sale 2 months ago at +175bp. FT
Fed’s Lacker says his support waning for “extended period” - “A couple weeks ago I was still
comfortable with that language. Decreasingly so,” he said. “That’s where I am now, just sort of
marginally comfortable with that language.” Bloomberg
Geneva - The International Air Transport Association (IATA) announced int’l scheduled air
traffic results for April 2010. Passenger demand slumped by 2.4% as a result of massive flight
cancellations centered in Europe during the six days in April following the eruptions of an
Icelandic volcano. “The ash crisis knocked back the global recovery - impacting carriers in all
regions. Last month, we were within 1% of pre-crisis traffic levels in 2008. In April, that was
pushed back to 7%,” – IATA
BAC, C – both banks disclosed in recent filings that each had incorrectly used repo transactions
over the last three years; each at times incorrectly classified some short-term repurchase
agreements as sales when they should have been labeled “borrowings”; C and BoA said the
amounts of money in question represented small amounts for each; each said it wasn’t attempting
to mislead investors. WSJ – forgive me if I doubt those statements.
President Barack Obama plans to announce at a midday news conference Thursday that a
moratorium on new deepwater oil drilling permits will be continued for six months while a
presidential commission investigates, a White House aide said.

Based on these two charts alone, we can expect some more finger pointing and tougher rhetoric.