Elon Musk sounds the alarm about the economic outlook
Benzinga – The past week saw the release of the Labor Department’s non-farm payrolls report, which was more positive than expected. In April, U.S. employers added 253,000 jobs, ahead of the consensus estimate of 180,000.
Still, on Saturday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk used a certain data point to seemingly reiterate his view that the Federal Reserve is committing a mistake by basing its rate decisions on lagging indicators.
The Labor Department revised its job figure for March from 236,000 to 165,000 — a move that appeared to take the sheen off the April number, wrote conservative blog site Zerohege in a tweet on Friday.
Instead of a beat, would have been a huge miss,” it tweeted.
In response to the tweet, Musk wrote, “Almost like there’s latency in their data, so things are worse than they realize…”
Almost like there’s latency in their data, so things are worse than they realize …— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 6, 2023
Ahead of last week’s Fed decision, the billionaire warned that another hike from the country’s central banking system could push the country’s economy into a deeper recession. At a recent meeting, the Fed made the decision to raise rates to a 16-year high of 5-5.25%.
Although the Fed’s post-meeting statement was tweaked to remove references to “further rate increases,” Fed Chair Jerome Powell hinted that the central bank may not be done with hikes just yet.