00:00Data coming in, the latest jobless claims. Let's go over to Bloomberg's Mike McKee, who has the numbers. Mike?
00:06Well, no help for the we-need-to-cut-immediately crowd at the Federal Reserve.
00:11Jobless claims come in at 216,000 after a revised 222 the prior week, suggesting we're still in that low-hire but very low-fire environment.
00:22We're not seeing people being added to the unemployment rolls at a high rate at all.
00:28In fact, they're going down. On a continuing claims basis, 1,960,000.
00:33That's up slightly from 1,953,000, the revised number for the prior week.
00:40So jobless claims still showing a reasonably strong labor market, if not for getting jobs, at least for not losing them.
00:50Durable goods orders come in half a percent. That is exactly as anticipated.
00:55These are September numbers. Capital goods shipments orders non-defense XAR, the core group that we look at to simulate business spending, up nine-tenths of a percent.
01:07That's three times as much as was expected and up from four-tenths in the month of August.
01:13So a strong business spending in a report for the month of September.
01:19We'll have to see exactly what categories those fell in.
01:23But at this point, we're still seeing some strength in the overall economy.
01:29Mike, Danny, I've been talking about Fed independence, and it does seem like the president is just chipping away at that pretty consistently.
01:38However, maybe previous presidents have done so in their own way.
01:43Does the market care?
01:46I don't think the market cares at this point because they still see the same cast of characters are at the Fed and nothing has really changed.
01:56They're concerned a little bit with the idea that the Fed is divided, but that's happened before.
02:01The real question is going to be when the president finally nominates a new chair and whether the market thinks that person is going to do the bidding of the president or do the bidding of the economy.
02:13That'll be when we really start to see the questions about independence flare up.
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