As if any confirmation was needed, The Wall Street Journal's Fed whisperer Jon Hilsenrath [7]'reports':
Friday’s employment report clears the way for the Federal Reserve to raise short-term interest rates by a quarter-percentage point at its Dec. 15-16 policy meeting, ending seven years of near-zero interest rates.
Noting that anything over 200k would have done it..
Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen said in testimony to Congress on Thursday the economy needs to add fewer than 200,000 jobs [8]a month to keep the unemployment rate moving down and to draw discouraged workers back into the labor force. Payrolls increases averaged 218,000 on a monthly basis in the September-through-November stretch, more than enough to meet the Fed’s objectives. On this front, too, the labor market is on track as officials want and expect.
But,it's not all unicorns and ponies...
One slight stain in the report was a retreat in hourly average earnings from a 2.5% year-over-year increase in October to a 2.3% increase in November. Still, officials see signs that slack has diminished to the point in the labor market that wages will start rising more briskly.
So...
With the first move widely expected in financial markets, Fed officials are likely to go into the meeting debating how they can emphasize to the public that the central bank will proceed cautiously and gradually with subsequent rate increases in 2016.
In other words, The Fed is positioning this rate-hike as the most-dovish tightening of all-time...
