Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell “seems to be surviving a lot of suggestions and hostile incoming fire,” DoubleLine Capital CEO and Chief Investment Officer Jeffrey Gundlach said Tuesday, warning that a loss of central bank independence would translate into inflationary policy.
The Trump administration has been goading “survivor Powell" to cut rates or resign, Gundlach noted during a webcast. The billionaire investor made several predictions, sharing his views on the economy, investments, consumer sentiment, housing and unemployment.
While people wonder about the spate of revisions in government employment data — he noted that 911,000 jobs from the year ended in March were just “revised out of existence” — the response rate on many surveys isn’t much different that it was years ago, Gundlach said.
“It's just that the first month, the response rates are very low, only about 40%. Once you have month two and month three where the surveys finally trickle in, we're still up to a 95% type of survey rate,” he said.
“I'm not sure there's anything nefarious about it, but there is a strange pattern that the revisions seem to be on the negative side virtually all the time; there’s maybe one exception in the past 15 years or so where the jobs data was actually adjusted higher,” Gundlach added, noting that those revisions will lead to cuts in the federal funds rate.
See the gallery for 12 predictions from Gundlach, with a few tips for investors and advisors.
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