Hello my friends, today is June 8th and this is Markets Weekly. So this past week was another good weekend markets. We had the S&P 500 close at another new all time high. Now personally, I'm neutral here, no particular reason, just not feeling it. But I do think that the highs for the market are not yet in for the year. So today I want to talk about three things. First, we have to talk about the new entrants into the global rate cutting cycle where both the Bank of Canada and the ECB cut rates last week. Let's talk about why they did so.
Secondly, the big data point in the past week was the non-forms payroll print that showed a surprising increase in jobs in the US. But underneath the surface though, it's a bit more mixed and many people are confused as to the state of the US labor market. Let's talk about why. And lastly, looking across the world, I'm noticing some pretty big moves in some emerging markets due to politics. So let's talk a little bit about what's happening in India and in Mexico.
Okay, starting with the global rate cutting cycle. So as we discussed a few weeks ago, the Swiss National Bank kicked off the developed market, a central bank cutting cycle by cutting rates as inflation was approaching their target. This past week, both the Bank of Canada and the ECB joined them by cutting rates 25 basis points. So let's first talk about the Bank of Canada and listen to what Governor Tif Maklim has to say. The governing council decided monetary policy no longer needs to be as restrictive and lowered the policy rate by 25 basis points to 4.75%.
So Governor Maklim is basically saying that he cut rates because he is becoming more confident that inflation is heading towards the 2% target. And in addition, make note that he's not saying that he's easing monetary policy in so much as that he's making it less restrictive. So he thinks policy is still slowing down growth and inflation just a little bit less. So now if you look at data in Canada, it becomes obvious why he cut rates.
So looking at this, looking at inflation data over the past few years, you'll note that in Canada inflation surge during the pandemic, and then it came down and over the past few months, it's come down steadily as and is now only slightly above target. Now monetary policy may be especially effective in Canada because of their mortgage interest rate channel. So in Canada, when you borrow a mortgage, you have to renew that loan every few years. And now that interest rates are higher, when someone who has a mortgage renews that loan, they get hit with much higher monthly payments and thus have less disposable income, less money to spend, reducing demand, and putting downward pressure on inflation.
In fact, the Fed recently did a study on the on the pass through of policy to mortgage interest in a few countries and noted that whereas in the US, of course, the Fed hiked a bunch and that really didn't do much to mortgage rates since in America, we have 30 year fixed rate mortgages, the pass through from the policy rate to mortgages in Canada was particularly high. So it seems like it would make sense for the make of Canada to be cutting rates given that context. Now let's look at the ECB and let's listen to what Madame Laguard said.
Then we decided to cut and we did so because overall our confidence in the path ahead because we have to be forward looking has been increasing over the last months. So Madame Laguard is basically saying that she feels more confident that inflation is heading towards 2% and so she's cutting rates a little bit. Later on in the discussion, she'll also elaborate that inflation has the rate of inflation has basically halved over the couple years and she's also feeling more confident in the ECB staff's forecast that inflation will get to 2% in a couple years. And so she's comfortable moderating the stance of policy. Now this is surprising to a lot of people because what stood out over the past few years was how poor central bank forecasts and private sector economists forecasts were in trying in the post pandemic inflation surge.
Again, over the past few years, basically they were all on team transitory and were completely wrong. But of course on FedGuy.com, it was very clear to me that inflation would not be transitory and that we were in a new regime and I wrote about that a couple years ago. Now right now though, Madame Lagard is looking at the recent forecast from the ECB staff and noting that they've been pretty much on point and feeling more confident and so she's cutting interest rates. Now that actually surprised a lot of people because at this most recent meeting, the ECB updated their inflation forecasts and actually revised them upward by 0.2%. So many people were wondering why did the ECB cut rates and at the same time revise their inflation forecast upwards. It seems to be contradictory.
Now I think the answer to this is found in later on in the Q&A session. Let's listen. More seriously, on the neutral rate, you know that I have refrained systematically from airing towards a particular number or identifying a neutral rate or a range around the neutral rate. I will simply say this, that if it has increased compared to where it was before COVID, we also know that we are far away from neutral rate now and by moving from 4% to 375% on the DFR, we are not close to the neutral rate. So we still have a way to go. So Madame Lagarde is basically saying that even though she's cutting rates, she still thinks that policy is restrictive by noting that policy while a little bit lower is still far above the neutral rate. So just like Governor Tifmaklim, she's simply moderating the stance of policy.
It's still restrictive but slightly less so as inflation has come down a lot and I suspect that is what the Fed will be saying when it cuts rates later on in the year and that's what I'll write about this week. Okay, moving on to the non-forms payroll print. So this Friday, we had the non-forms payroll print. Again, it was a huge market moving event. The headline print showed a tremendous amount of jobs created much higher than expectations and the market took it in a hawkish way. We had the bond market basically sell off across the curve. More and more people thinking that the Fed is just probably going to cut maybe once or one and a half times this year.
Now, as usual, when we look at the non-form payrolls print, we got to look at a few things in addition to the headline print. Now headline print, beat expectations, no question about it, knocked it out of the ballpark. But moving on, let's look at the average hourly earnings. Again, higher than expected. Let's look at the unemployment rate. Well, that's not as good. We saw the unemployment rate take up a little bit to 4%. And then let's move on to labor force participation. Also take a bit. So on the surface, it looks like a job, good jobs print, but there are also things that are not as good. Obviously, the unemployment rate ticked up and the labor force participation rate ticked down.
So the non-form payroll report is actually comprised of two separate surveys. One is the establishment survey where the government asks businesses and counts jobs. The other is the household survey where the government asks households and uses the responses from the survey to determine things like the unemployment rate. So a lot of confusion right now on the state of the U.S. labor market has to do with the fact that these two surveys are telling you two very different things. Now, when you look at job growth as portrayed in the establishment survey, which is what's reported as the headline print and in the NFP, you'll see that job growth has been really strong over the past few quarters. But if you look at the job growth as portrayed in the household survey, now the household survey is also recording job growth, you get a very different picture and that job growth has been much weaker.
So many people in the commentary and commentary had been looking at this and confused. Now, if people who are more downbeat on the economy would place more weight on the household survey and say that, well, the household survey is showing you know, job growth is weak, but people who are more bullish on the job market are floating towards the job growth in the establishment survey. Now, the gap between these surveys is wide and widening and it's not super clear what's been driving that. Now, some possibilities are just a lot of weird things that are happening with the data.
For example, as we know over the past few years, there's been tremendous amounts of migration and there's some work that suggests that the household survey is not properly accounting for this increase in migration and so that could be off. There are other people who point towards looking at the settlement survey and point towards the surge in part-time jobs. Again, in the establishment survey, a job is a job suggesting that the settlement survey is inflated because you have a whole lot of part-time job holders. Again, if you look at wages though, again, you have quantities and price, wages suggest upward pressure, upward demand for labor.
So right now, I think it's a very confusing what the state of the U.S. labor market is and I'm not sure if we're going to get any good answers. But it'd be very interesting to see how the Fed will be interpreting the team this. Again, the Fed, of course, has two mandates full employment price stability. Looking at full employment, it looks like the unemployment rate ticked up a little bit. Looking at price stability, it looks like wage growth continues to be above expectations.
So we're heading into a place where I think the monetary policy is going to be a bit more conflicted between their two mandates. Okay, the last thing that I want to talk about is some interesting developments in emerging markets. Now, starting with Mexico, over the past week, the Mexican peso got absolutely clobbered and the Mexican stock market got absolutely clobbered as well. So the markets were really unhappy with political developments in Mexico.
So what happened is that it seems like one of the parties there was basically one, a super majority in one house of a legislator and a very close to super majority in another house. Now, this seems to have given that political party confidence to try to make big changes to the structure of the Mexican government. Now, what I'm reading is that some of the proposals are basically to reduce some of the checks and balances in government, where let's say you have some independent advisory committees that oversee the government, well, the new party wants to get rid of those independent bodies. The new party also seems to want to weaken the rule of law by making judges to be democratically elected.
In addition, of course, the new party wants to also to give more stuff to the public and is proposing to increase benefits to senior citizens and so forth. Now, I think from what I read is that more and more market participants are worried that this is a trend towards basically a one party state where there's just less checks and balances and this one party may not be a super market friendly and so the markets are getting a bit concerned. Now, in addition to what happened in Mexico, we also had this tremendous sell off in India where we saw the Indian stock market take a huge plunge and then recover a few days later. Now, the huge reaction in Indian stock market seems to be due to the ruling party, the BJP performing less well than expected.
Now, they've had a majority for the for the past few sessions and now they unexpectedly lost their majority and the market seems to think that maybe that means that the ruling BJP party will have to compromise a bit and maybe become less business friendly. My understanding is that they that party is perceived to be business friendly. So, what I'm pointing out though is that I think going forward the outcomes of political elections are going to be much have a much bigger impact on markets than even the central bank. Now, just looking to our own election in the US, for example, President Trump, as we've discussed earlier, is proposing big changes in how he would like to run the country.
For example, he would like to cheapen the dollar, he would like to have the or interest rates, he would have to have less independent monetary policy, basically pretty inflationary policies. So, my sense is that we were probably going to have something similar happen in November, depending on who wins. I think there's actually a real chance that if we have a sweeping Trump victory, again, the bond market would sell off, it'd be very inflationary, but the stock market could absolutely surge. And that could be the catalyst to take us to S&P 6000. Again, I think going forward, the fiscal authorities are going to have more influence on the markets than the monetary authorities who are going to be subordinate to the fiscal authorities. We're seeing that happen throughout the world. And I think it's happening here as well.
All right, so this week is an FOMC week. So I'll be back on Wednesday to give you my FOMC debrief. Yeah, and if you're interested in hearing more about my thoughts, remember to check out my blog, FETGuy.com. And of course, if you're interested in learning more about markets, check out my online courses at centralbanking101.com. Talk to you guys soon.