Here Comes Janet Yellen...
These are Yellen's first comments since her press conference on June 18, which followed the latest FOMC meeting.
Since that meeting, we've gotten a bunch of economic data, headlined by the June jobs report. That report showed that non-farm payrolls expanded by 288,000 in June as the unemployment rate fell to 6.1%, its lowest level since September 2008.
In a note to clients over the weekend, Credit Suisse's Jay Feldman wrote that, "Yellen will have little choice but to acknowledge the improvement in the labor market" when she speaks in front of lawmakers. Feldman added that, "With the unemployment rate plunging and with inflation trending higher, some in Congress will press [Yellen] to explain why exceptionally accommodative monetary policy is still required to reach the Fed's objectives."
Yellen's testimony also follows a profile in The New Yorker published yesterday, in which Yellen admitted that she did not expect the 2005 and 2006 housing bubble to cause the kind of problems that it did. We would not be surprised if some lawmakers pressed her on these comments.
We'll be back with live comments when Yellen steps up to the mic.