Today, the Federal Government's office in D.C. will be closed due to weather: we note this because supposedly someone would notice a difference. Not the sequester, no matter how hard the administration would like to blame it for today's shutdown, but the weather is to blame. Stone McCarthy explains what this means for today's economic reports. "The Office of Personal Management announced Wednesday, March 6 that federal government offices in the Washington, DC area would be closed due to weather. As a result, the usual lockup procedures for the release of economic data will be suspended. The only economic report of note set for release by the federal government on Wednesday is the data for factory orders in January. It will be published on the Census Bureau website at 10:00 ET as scheduled. The Federal Reserve's Beige Book is scheduled for release at 14:00 ET on Wednesday, and we anticipate it will be available on that website at the announced time."
Remember - never let a one day weather crisis go to waste, because it now means that we have a perfectly valid reason for the BLS and DOL to "estimate" better than expected claims and non-farm payrolls for March over the next 4 weeks.
Because otherwise the government may be forced to show what the real economic data underpinning the record DJIA is.... and that would be very bad.