Aurelia Butler

(Reuters) -The Dallas Fed will hold a town hall next week to solicit public input into its search for a successor to Robert Kaplan, who left his post as the bank’s president last fall amid an outcry over his personal securities trading. Invitations to the January 13 virtual town hall went out by email on Tuesday morning, with a promise of questions to be answered “directly” by speakers including the Dallas Fed’s chair and deputy chair, who lead the search committee, and the CEO of the search firm retained to help them, Egon Zehnder. Kaplan and Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren both retired early last fall after reports surfaced that they had actively traded securities during much of the pandemic crisis in 2020 when the Fed was conducting massive market and economic rescue efforts. Both said they had violated no ethics guidelines, but the scandal prompted Fed Chair Jerome Powell to tighten rules around personal trading by Fed policymakers, and an inspector general’s probe into the trading is ongoing. The Boston Fed has no plans to hold a similar town hall, but it too has made efforts to makes its search more transparent than prior searches. It published a report last year after public outreach and tweaked its job description in response to calls for a stronger focus on diversity, community engagement, and credibility. Powell has pledged that the searches will cast a wide net in an effort to make Fed regional Fed presidents a more diverse group. Both Rosengren and Kaplan are white men; the remaining 10 Fed presidents include five white men, three white women and two men of color. More

(Reuters) – The Senate Banking Committee will consider the renomination of Jerome Powell for Federal Reserve chair on Jan. 11 at 10 a.m. Eastern (1500 GMT), the panel said on its website. The panel will hold a separate hearing to consider the nomination of Fed Governor Lael Brainard to be vice chair, Politico said earlier on Tuesday, citing a person familiar with the schedule. More

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Record numbers of U.S. workers leaving their jobs and a slowdown in hiring at front-line businesses may show that the latest COVID-19 wave is denting labor supply, possibly pushing the Federal Reserve further toward concluding that employment is nearing its practical limits.Hiring data tracked by business payroll managers Homebase and UKG showed employment edging down through December, coinciding with a record outbreak of coronavirus infections driven by the Omicron variant.Data from both firms showed larger seasonal dips this year than in 2020, with employment in Homebase’s sample of smaller businesses falling around 15% in the last days of 2021 compared to a roughly 10% drop last year.UKG saw shift work across a variety of industries fall 1.7% in December versus a 0.3% decline in the same period last year and a 0.8% drop in December 2019.”The data shows a strong downward shift starting in mid-December,” wrote Dave Gilbertson, vice president at UKG.At the same time, new government data for November showed workers walking away from jobs in record numbers, particularly from lower-paid and often front-line service-sector positions where health risks are considered more acute and work-from-home options less available.With job openings still near record levels and consumer demand holding up despite the wave of infections, economists say it could mean more pressure on companies to raise wages – and more pressure on the Fed to declare that its goal of “maximum employment” was close to being met, if not exceeded already.Meeting that goal is one of the U.S. central bank’s precursors to raising interest rates, and policymakers at the Fed’s Dec. 14-15 meeting indicated they felt that key benchmark was close. Minutes of that meeting are scheduled to be released on Wednesday, providing more details of a session where the Fed began a more concerted fight against inflation that is running at nearly three times its targeted rate of 2% a year and laid the groundwork for an interest rate increase as early as March.In an essay published on the website Medium, Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari, prominent among Fed officials who have wanted to delay interest rate increases in hopes of encouraging more job growth, said that as of last month’s meeting he had penciled in two rate hikes for 2022 in part because of doubts about how many people will be willing to return to work soon.”Wages are now climbing rapidly across various income categories,” Kashkari wrote in explaining the sharp change in his policy outlook. “The labor market has not fully recovered from the COVID-19 shock … But how long it is going to take for all prior workers to return is unclear. For now, at least, it appears demand for workers exceeds the supply.”The U.S. Labor Department is due to release its December employment report on Friday.WAGE GROWTHHow the wave of Omicron infections influences the economy and the Fed remains in flux. Some analysts have trimmed their economic growth forecasts for 2022 as a result of the latest turn in the pandemic – but not by much given the scale of infections now eclipsing prior outbreaks.So far, the new variant appears less dangerous – fatalities and hospitalizations are not increasing as much as the case count – and data on air travel through December, for example, did not show consumers racing to self-isolate.As of the end of November there were more than 1.5 open jobs for each person who declared themselves unemployed, another record that reflects a labor market where wage growth seems primed to continue as workers either quit for better conditions, higher pay, or to avoid getting sick. “Lots of quits means stronger worker bargaining power which will likely feed into strong wage gains,” said Nick Bunker, economic research director for the Indeed Hiring Lab, an arm of the web-based job and recruiting site. “Wage growth was very strong in 2021 … We might see more of the same in 2022.” More

Household borrowing in November increased for the first time since the start of the pandemic, according to official data, pointing to a possible strengthening of the economy prior to the spread of the Omicron coronavirus variant.Consumer credit data from the Bank of England showed a rise of £1.2bn in net borrowing in the penultimate month of 2021, pushing total credit up 0.4 per cent on the same month the previous year, marking the first increase in the annual rate since March 2020, when coronavirus hit the UK. This was above the £800m in net borrowing forecast by economists polled by Reuters with credit card spending, which made up the bulk of figure, the strongest since July 2020.The resumption in household borrowing was hailed as a signal of growing economic momentum in November, after a lacklustre performance the previous month. “The healthy rise in consumer credit in November adds to evidence that economic activity strengthened in the middle of Q4,” said Bethany Beckett, UK economist at Capital Economics. The BoE data showed that the level of households savings fell in November with £4.5bn deposited with banks and building societies. This is less than half the monthly average of £11.2bn in the 12 months to October 2021. It is also below pre-pandemic levels: in the 12 months to February 2020 the average saving level was £5.5bn.But some economists cautioned that rising inflation was likely to be driving the rebound in consumer credit. In November, UK consumer prices rose to a decade high of 5.1 per cent.“This downshift [in savings] appears to reflect households’ attempt to sustain real consumption while inflation is soaring, rather than a rapidly strengthening recovery,” said Samuel Tombs, chief UK economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics.Thomas Pugh, economist at RSM UK, said that combined with stronger retail sales data for November — which rose 1.4 per cent — the latest BoE data suggest that consumer spending was “strong” in November. But he agreed that the inflationary pressures meant the rise in household borrowing “may not translate as neatly into real GDP growth”.Beckett said she estimated that GDP growth reached 0.5 per cent in November, up from October’s 0.1 per cent rise with her forecast for the final quarter an expansion of 0.6 per cent. This is well below the 1.1 per cent rise in GDP in the third quarter.But she said the economic uptick would have taken a hit in December as the Omicron variant began to spread rapidly. High-frequency data, such as retail footfall, bookings in restaurants and sandwich bar transactions, suggest the economy contracted last month as the surge in infections put consumers off going out, with many being forced to self-isolate. Beckett said she expected the UK economy to shrink by 0.8 per cent in December and that the outlook would remain “muddied by the prospect of huge numbers of people self-isolating simultaneously”.Tombs said the impact of the new coronavirus variant meant household savings were likely to “remain elevated at least until March, when Omicron should be on the retreat”. More

The firm, an investor in Airbnb Inc, Uber Technologies (NYSE:UBER) Inc and Spotify Technology SA (NYSE:SPOT), said on Tuesday it planned to sell about 28.3 million shares priced between $28 and $31 apiece in the offering.TPG would raise about $877.6 million at the top end of the range. Its existing investors plan to sell roughly 5.59 million shares, the proceeds from which will not go to the firm.The buyout giant, among the last major players in the industry to remain in a closely held partnership, has made its approach to go public several years after rivals such as Apollo Global Management (NYSE:APO) Inc, KKR & Co (NYSE:KKR) Inc and Blackstone (NYSE:BX) Inc floated their shares.Founded as Texas Pacific Group in 1992 by David Bonderman and Jim Coulter, TPG made its first investment in 1993 in the then bankrupt Continental Airlines.It now has around $109 billion in assets under management spread across companies in sectors from retail to healthcare. The Fort Worth, Texas-based firm’s move to go public comes amid a record surge in IPOs and merger and acquisition activity, which have fueled sharp rallies in shares of rivals.That boom has boosted earnings at TPG, with net income for the nine months to September jumping more than fivefold to $1.7 billion, its filing showed. Its revenue surged to $3.89 billion, from $564.4 million a year earlier.J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS), Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS), TPG Capital BD LLC and BofA Securities are the lead underwriters for TPG’s offering. It expects to list on the Nasdaq under the symbol “TPG.” More