Economy/Ecommerce

The Federal Open Market Committee released the minutes of its Sept. 17-18 meeting on Wednesday, and it was clear the central bankers saw one thing coming.

These are nervous days. Gallup reported on Tuesday that Americans’ confidence in the economy has deteriorated more in the past week during the partial government shutdown than in any week since Lehman Brothers collapsed in Sept. 2008.

Not much economic data is coming from the federal government these days, but the U.S. Energy Information Administration did manage to release a report on American oil and natural gas production.

The federal government shutdown continued throughout the weekend, though the House voted unanimously on Friday to pay furloughed government workers, who number about 800,000, for the time they’re spending furloughed.

On Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics did not release its customary monthly report on the U.S. employment picture, which is one of the most closely watched economic indicators produced by the federal government.

In a normal first week of the month, Wednesday’s Automated Data Processing report on employment would be a way station on route to more official numbers on jobs from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and probably not a good predictor of the government numbers.

Day One of the federal government shut down, 2013 version, passed without too much incident on Tuesday. As expected, certain functions of the U.S. government came to a halt. Also as expected, Congress didn’t act to resolve the situation.

Congress was unable to agree on legislation authorizing money for the continued operations of the federal government by midnight on Monday and, as has been expected for some days now, a shutdown began today, the beginning of the government’s fiscal year.