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Overview: Fri, June 05

Daily Agenda

Time Indicator/Event Comment
08:30Nonfarm payrollsSlight deceleration in May but still a solid increase
15:00Consumer creditApril data

Federal Reserve and the Overnight Market

US Economy

This Week's MMO

  • MMO for June 1, 2026

     

    Editor’s Note.  Due to staff schedules, this week’s newsletter is limited to our regular Treasury auction and economic indicator calendars.  We will return to our regular format next week.

Circuit Breakers

Susan Phillips

Tue, October 14, 1997

Circuit breakers are widely cited today as one of the successes of the crash post-mortems. But I, for one, question this evaluation. Circuit breakers have never actually been triggered, in contrast to some of the so-called "speed bumps" which affect particular trading strategies and are now tripped routinely. (In contrast to circuit breakers, which are coordinated across the equity and derivative markets, speed bumps are trading restrictions that have been put in place by individual market places.) If circuit breakers have never been used to halt trading, it follows that we have never had the experience of trying to re-start trading either. To an economist such as myself, some of the scariest times during the market crash were those in which trading was not occurring. Our tendency to worry more about stopping trading than re-starting it is mystifying. (I realize that there has been some discussion about the rules for the resumption of trading but the overwhelming attention has been on the halt.)

MMO Analysis