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China's Broad Economic Slowdown Raises Stimulus Expectations Bloomberg.comChina's economy slumps in August, casts doubt on growth target ReutersChina's August factory output, retail sales miss expectations Yahoo FinanceChina retail sales and factory output grow at slowest pace this year Financial TimesChina's Economy Shows Signs of Summer Slowdown The Wall Street Journal
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Disruption. It's coming for the U.S. dollar in the form of digital currency. Last week the Biden administration detailed a broad plan for adopting a central bank digital currency (CBDC) in the coming years. The Departments of Energy, Commerce, the Treasury, and other agencies weighed in on how to manage and regulate a CBDC.
The government is reacting in part to the explosive growth of digital currencies. About three out of ten U.S. adults currently invest in some form of cryptocurrency, or "crypto," like Bitcoin or Ethereum. These digital "coins" rely on a decentralized network of computers to verify financial transactions, cutting out third parties like banks or credit cards.
The good, the bad, and the ugly of crypto
Advocates of crypto point to its affordability, efficiency, and its ability to reach consumers with little or no access to traditional banking services. With just a mobile phone or a crypto ATM, consumers can easily send and receive digital currency, even across international borders.
On the other hand, crypto is still largely unregulated and volatile. Investors in Bitcoin, for example, saw returns of over 70% in 2021, but the currency is down almost 60% year to date. And if you send your payment to the wrong account (called a "digital wallet") there may be no way to retrieve it. Crypto has also been used for money laundering, fraud, and to fund terrorism. Several
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Stocks jumped out of the gate Friday after the release of the August jobs report. But enthusiasm from the few investors that stuck around ahead of the long holiday weekend didn't last, with all three indexes ending in the red.
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The Labor Department this morning said the U.S. added 315,000 new jobs in August, well below July's 526,000. Also in the jobs report: the unemployment rate edged up to 3.7% from 3.5%; the labor participation rate, or the number of people actively seeking work, improved to 62.4% from 62.1%; and average hourly earnings - a key measure of labor cost inflation - was up 5.2% year-over-year, same as it was in July.
"Friday's jobs data provided some moderate relief, with payrolls almost landing precisely on consensus at 315,000 in August," says Douglas Porter, chief economist at BMO Capital Markets." While no doubt a solid advance - and completely inconsistent with recession chatter - other aspects of the report sent some calming signals." Porter points to steady wage growth, an increasing labor force and the rising unemployment rate that suggest "the extreme tightness in the job market may be beginning to moderate - almost exactly what the Fed doctor ordered."
Still, the major indexes, after being up more than 1% each around lunchtime, swung lower in afternoon trading after news reports indicated Russian energy giant Gazprom will indefinitely suspend operations of a natural-gas pipeline to Germany.
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By the close, the Nasdaq Composite was down 1
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