by Calculated Risk on 7/22/2012 10:15:00 PM

First, from the Financial Times on "open-ended QE": Bleak jobs outlook raises heat on Fed

In an interview with the Financial Times, [San Francisco Fed President John Williams] forecast that unless “further action” was taken, there would be a lack of progress in boosting the jobs market ...

He added that there would also be benefits in having an open-ended programme of QE, where the ultimate amount of purchases was not fixed in advance ... “The main benefit from my point of view is it will get the markets to stop focusing on the terminal date [when a programme of purchases ends] and also focusing on, ‘Oh, are they going to do QE3?’” he said. Instead, markets would adjust their expectation of Fed purchases as economic conditions changed.
excerpt with permission

The key releases this week are the new home sales report on Wednesday and the advance Q2 GDP report on Friday.

• On Monday, at 8:30 AM ET, the Chicago Fed is schedule to release the National Activity Index for June. This is a composite index of other data and will probably be fairly weak.

The Asian markets are red tonight, with the Nikkei down 1.3% and the Shanghai Composite down 1.1%.

From CNBC: Pre-Market Data and Bloomberg futures: the S&P future are down about 6, and the DOW futures down about 50.

Oil: WTI futures are at $91.12 (this is down from $109.77 in February, but up last week) and Brent is at $106.17 per barrel.

Yesterday:
• Summary for Week Ending July 13th
• Schedule for Week of July 15th

Two more questions this week for the July contest: