Is Wall Street focused on Syria … or Labor Day?
Wall Street recorded its worst month since May 2012 — and the markets were especially volatile during Secretary of State John Kerry’s speech about Syria.
“People like to blame it on Syria — it’s not just Syria,” says CNBC’s John Carney. “We have a lot of obstacles coming up in the future: Probably the debt ceiling is the big fight coming up.”
“The thing that was very interesting that happened today is after Kerry’s very belligerent speech, the oil price did not spike up very much after that, and a lot of people think that that’s because realistically, Syria directly does not have a big impact on oil prices. It export a lot of oil, it has some oil it produces domestically,” Carney adds. “Also, the U.S. is producing a lot more energy domestically so it may not have the same spike effect that we’ve seen in past Middle East conflicts. We may actually be on secure grounds right now.”
“Certainly there are plenty of things to worry about going forward, domestically as well as internationally,” says The New York Times’ Catherine Rampell.
One concern with international markets is that the Federal Reserve might be looking to ease off quantitative easing.
“Fed policy has helped keep a lot of funding going to these developing nations, to these emerging markets, and there’s this threat that there’s going to be a lot of money coming out of them going forward, which could hurt their currencies, and has been encouraging them to raise interest rates to have those higher yields to attract foreign funds,” says Rampell.
And we’ve got your long Labor Day weekend #longreads from the Wrappers themselves.
From John Carney:
- A deeply informative discussion about our National Security state. Goes way beyond the headlines: A Conversation with General Michael V. Hayden.
- Too Big for Comfort: Why we need to break up the banks. James Pethokoukis makes the case for breaking up the banks from a conservative perspective. Why are we still having this discussion and not doing anything?
- Have we over-criminalized white-collar crime? In a piece about Raj Rajartnam I show that we’re unduly harsh on frauds and insider traders.
Chosen by Catherine Rampell:
- Manufacturer’s price for an IV bag of saline (salt water): $1. Patient billing price: $500+.
- On the shorter careers of charter-school teachers, and the implications for their students.
- The leaked “black budget” for U.S. spy agencies.
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