| Claims data due, Musk's flip flop on Bitcoin, and largest fuel pipeline reopens. Labor market Last week's huge miss on payrolls has not stopped economists surveyed by Bloomberg from forecasting continued improvement in weekly jobless claims data at 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time. The median expectation is for 490,000 new sign-ups for unemployment benefits in the week, with continuing claims holding steady near 3.65 million. The large number of people remaining on benefits continues despite record levels of job openings in the U.S. economy. Nope Car maker, rocket launcher and erstwhile comedian Elon Musk made a shock u-turn on Bitcoin when he tweeted that Tesla Inc. would no longer accept the digital token as payment for cars. The cryptocurrency, which dropped as much as 15% in the immediate aftermath of the about-face, was 9.5% lower at 5:50 a.m. Musk drew attention to the environmental costs associated with transactions in the coin, while saying Tesla might accept other less energy-intensive digital currencies. He also said Tesla would not be selling its own Bitcoin holdings. Fuel lineThere was good news for U.S. drivers with the return to service of the largest gasoline pipeline in the country after a cyberattack forced its shutdown. Shortages are expected to continue into the weekend as deliveries are ramped up to retail stations. Earlier President Joe Biden gave a Jones Act waiver to one company to allow it to increase seaborne shipping capacity. Markets drop Global equites are sliding again as worries over how transitory the jump in inflation will be clouds the optimistic market outlook that had dominated until recently. Overnight the MSCI Asia Pacific Index slid 1.5% while Japan's Topix index closed 1.5% lower. In Europe, the Stoxx 600 Index had dropped 1.3% by 5:50 a.m. with every industry sector in the red. S&P 500 futures pointed to another move lower at the open, the 10-year Treasury yield was at 1.704%, oil slumped and gold was down. Coming up... As well as claims, PPI for April is at 8:30 a.m. The U.S. will test bond market appetite at 1:00 p.m. with a $27 billion sale of 30-year debt. Mexico, Chile and Peru all see central bank rate decisions today. Walt Disney Co., Airbnb Inc., DoorDash Inc., and Coinbase Global Inc. all report earnings. What we've been readingHere's what caught our eye over the last 24 hours. And finally, here's what Joe's interested in this morningYesterday we got one of the hottest CPI readings in years. Going into it, there was already a ton of talk about inflation, and whether things were running too hot, and whether policy makers are making some kind of mistake. And so the 0.9% month-over-month print ratcheted up the intensity of that debate dramatically. In addition to being a hot number, it was also an interesting and complicated number. Actually, the economic data is very complicated in general right now. Forecasters seem to be making errors left and right. Last week's jobs report was also very confusing, since the pace of job creation seemed to fall well short of expectations, giving mixed readings on whether the labor market is already tight or not. (BTW, there's a great Skanda Amarnath piece in the NYT you should read on the report). As for the inflation data, Matt Klein at Barron's has a compelling column arguing that the overshoot can almost entirely be attributed to the economic reopening. Even the surging price of used cars is related to reopening, because the heavy buyers are car rental companies that need to restock their fleet. So going back to the Fed for a second. Obviously some people think they've made some kind of mistake. Going too easy. Buying too many assets or whatever. But you could make the argument that they're really being vindicated in their approach right now. Last summer, they spelled out their new framework where they established that they want to see sustained inflation above recent trends before they would consider hiking. They also want to see a sustained, tight labor market that benefits wide swathes of the population. By focusing on the destination as opposed to the path, they've relieved themselves of trying to navigate the data in real time and come up with "The Right Answer". Had we gotten this print under the old framework, there would be immediate pressure on the Fed to act now, and to think about hiking rates, even though the unemployment rate is at 6.1%. The new framework gives it time to breathe, to see how things unfold, rather than try to do some real-time course correction, using noisy data that's impossible to forecast in an economy that's engaged in an unprecedented reopening. Joe Weisenthal is an editor at Bloomberg Like Bloomberg's Five Things? Subscribe for unlimited access to trusted, data-based journalism in 120 countries around the world and gain expert analysis from exclusive daily newsletters, The Bloomberg Open and The Bloomberg Close. | 
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