REUTERS/Chris Keane
Jeffrey Lacker, president of the Federal Reserve Bank, of Richmond.
At 8:10 am ET, Richmond Fed president Jeffrey Lacker is set to give a speech titled "The Case Against Further Delay."
This speech is notable for a few reasons.
For one, Lacker is a voting member of the Federal Open Market Committee, or FOMC, the Fed committee that votes on monetary policy decisions, and so what he says can be directly manifested in how he votes at this month's meeting.
The second is that as we wrote earlier on Friday, the Fed is currently facing a communication problem, as no major Fed speech has telegraphed a move to raise interest rates at the September FOMC meeting.
And so without hearing from Fed chair Yellen before the September meeting - which we're not scheduled to - the read here could be that either Yellen has determined not to raise rates in September, or that Lacker's speech on Friday, in addition to Fed vice chair Stanley Fischer's speech last week, will do Yellen's bidding for her.
In other words, this could be the place to telegraph the Fed's next move.
Ahead of the jobs report and Lacker's speech, markets were lower, and we'll be back with Lacker's full remarks when they drop.