A jam-packed June continues with Friday’s disappointing jobs report and Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen’s scheduled speech on the economy in Philadelphia Monday.
TheStreet’s Jim Cramer said the general assumption going into the report was that good or bad, the Fed was likely to hike interest rates this summer. That’s why Cramer, co-manager of the Action Alerts PLUS portfolio, had hoped to see a strong labor report connoting a strengthening economy on Friday.
Instead, he said, the report was anything but “good.” In fact, “bad” doesn’t do it justice. The 38,000 jobs added to the economy drastically missed economists’ expectations for 155,000 and was one of the worst results in years, he said.
What should the Fed do now? Nothing, Cramer said.
Yellen, he said, should say, “Hey listen, we can’t raise rates right now.” However, Cramer said he knows there will be those “hawks” who will push for a rate hike regardless. This is the “oxymoronic idea” that the Fed will put the economy into a recession to get it out of the funk that it’s in right now, he said.
