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Warren Buffett just disclosed his newest $4.5 billion investment pick

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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', HelveticaNeue, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15.0000009536743px; line-height: 24.0000019073486px;">On Friday evening, billionaire investor Warren Buffett, the founder of Berkshire Hathaway, disclosed that he had purchased a massive stake in oil refinery Phillips 66 (PSX).</span><br />
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Buffett now owns <span id="yui_3_18_1_1_1440857513422_2660">57,975,456 shares, or a <a data-rapid_p="9" href="http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/315090/000120919115068492/xslF345X02/doc3.xml" style="color: #324fe1; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">10% stake</a>, in the Texas-based energy company, according to <a data-rapid_p="10" href="http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/315090/000120919115068494/xslF345X03/doc4.xml" style="color: #324fe1; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">a securities filing</a><span id="yui_3_18_1_1_1440857513422_2704"> posted shortly after 8 p.m. ET.</span></span></div>
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<span id="yui_3_18_1_1_1440857513422_2656"><span id="yui_3_18_1_1_1440857513422_2655">As of Friday's share price close at $77.23, Buffett's stake is valued at more than $</span>4.47 billion.</span></div>
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<span id="yui_3_18_1_1_1440857513422_2664">Buffett had been aggressively buying shares of Phillips 66 since Wednesday of this week.</span></div>
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<span id="yui_3_18_1_1_1440857513422_2668">Earlier this month, Buffett had indicated in his 13-F filing <a data-rapid_p="11" href="http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1067983/000095012315009404/xslForm13F_X01/primary_doc.xml" style="color: #324fe1; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">that he was building a new position.</a></span></div>
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<span id="yui_3_18_1_1_1440857513422_2672">Here's a rundown of Buffett's purchases over the last few days.</span></div>
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<img alt="Buffett Refinery 66" class="editorial" data-link="http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/315090/000120919115068494/xslF345X03/doc4.xml" data-mce-source="SEC.gov" data-preembed="image" height="231" src="http://l2.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/v4rw_HZzd2K8ysGFoFh8TA--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3NfbGVnbztxPTg1O3c9NjUw/http://globalfinance.zenfs.com/en_us/Finance/US_AFTP_SILICONALLEY_H_LIVE/Warren_Buffett_just_disclosed_his-07cad0fec88c373e83047fd131e7d430" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; border: 0px; display: inline; height: auto; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; min-height: 1px; opacity: 1 !important; vertical-align: bottom; visibility: visible !important; width: auto !important;" width="650" /></figure></div>
<span class="source" style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', HelveticaNeue, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15.0000009536743px; line-height: 24.0000019073486px;">(SEC.gov) </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', HelveticaNeue, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15.0000009536743px; line-height: 24.0000019073486px;"></span><br />
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Here's the Phillips 66 stock chart for this week:</div>
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<img alt="Phillips 66" class="editorial" data-mce-source="Google Finance" data-preembed="image" height="405" src="http://l.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/BXTsq2NFPjZ34mggCR0YpQ--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3NfbGVnbztxPTg1O3c9NjUw/http://globalfinance.zenfs.com/en_us/Finance/US_AFTP_SILICONALLEY_H_LIVE/Warren_Buffett_just_disclosed_his-c1d5849e365f4362de511718dadc5770" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; border: 0px; display: inline; height: auto; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; min-height: 1px; opacity: 1 !important; vertical-align: bottom; visibility: visible !important; width: auto !important;" width="650" /></figure></div>
<span class="source">(Google Finance) </span></span></span></span></div>
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NOW WATCH: <a data-rapid_p="16" href="http://www.businessinsider.com/language-impacts-retirement-savings-chinese-german-keith-chen-ucla-2015-8" style="color: #324fe1; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">The startling theory about why Chinese people save so much more than Americans</a></div>
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Warren Buffett just disclosed his newest $4.5 billion investment pick

On Friday evening, billionaire investor Warren Buffett, the founder of Berkshire Hathaway, disclosed that he had purchased a massive...

7:17 AM

Why big salary raises may be gone for good

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If you’re hoping for a big raise this year, prepare to be disappointed. Sure, you might be among the lucky people who get a healthy bump in salary, but a recent survey by professional services firm Towers Watson found that companies are planning <a data-rapid_p="26" href="http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2015/08/10/Hoping-Raise-Here-s-How-Much-Most-People-Are-Getting" rel="nofollow" style="color: #324fe1; text-decoration: none;">pay raises of 3 percent</a> on average for workers.</div>
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A new survey by human resources and management consultancy Aon Hewitt confirms that forecast: Even as the job market continues to improve, salaried employees can expect their base pay to increase 3 percent, or about a percentage point smaller than the raises employers were handing out 20 years ago.</div>
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<a data-rapid_p="27" href="http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2015/01/13/Full-Employment-Alone-Won-t-Solve-Problem-Stagnating-Wages" id="yui_3_18_1_1_1440832172443_2119" rel="nofollow" style="color: #324fe1; text-decoration: none;"><strong id="yui_3_18_1_1_1440832172443_2118">Related: Full Employment Alone Won’t Solve Problem of Stagnating Wages</strong></a></div>
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From 1996 through 2000, salaries went up by about 4.1 percent a year, according to Aon Hewitt data. From 2011 through 2015, annual raises have averaged about 2.8 percent. And even as we get further away from the recession, that downward shift appears to be permanent, as companies look to keep a lid on their fixed costs.</div>
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"The modest increases we've seen over the past 20 years are an indication that employers have changed their compensation strategies for good, and we shouldn't expect to see salary increases revert back to 4 percent or higher levels that were commonplace in the past," said Aon Hewitt’s Ken Abosch.</div>
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<a data-rapid_p="28" href="http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2015/05/05/Obama-Moves-Toward-Executive-Action-Overtime-Pay" rel="nofollow" style="color: #324fe1; text-decoration: none;"><strong>Related: Obama Moves Toward Executive Action on Overtime Pay</strong></a></div>
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On the bright side, at least for some workers, employers are planning on doling out more money in the form of bonuses, cash awards and other so-called variable pay. Aon Hewitt’s survey found that workers will see their variable pay rise by 12.9 percent this year.</div>
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That shift favors higher-level white-collar workers, since companies have been cutting back on bonus and incentive pay for clerical or technical workers. In 2011, only 43 percent of companies gave bonuses or other cash incentives to those hourly workers eligible for overtime pay, down from 61 percent in 2009, according to <a data-rapid_p="29" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-leadership/wp/2015/08/26/fewer-companies-are-giving-out-bonuses-to-lower-paid-employees/" id="yui_3_18_1_1_1440832172443_2132" rel="nofollow" style="color: #324fe1; text-decoration: none;">data Aon Hewitt shared with <em>The Washington Post</em></a>. On the other hand, 93 percent of companies offer incentive programs to employees with a fixed salary.</div>
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As Abosch told the Post: “It’s the haves and the have nots.”</div>

Why big salary raises may be gone for good

If you’re hoping for a big raise this year, prepare to be disappointed. Sure, you might be among the lucky people who get a healthy bump in...

12:14 AM

New Orleans is missing a key ingredient for its big business renaissance

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<span id="yui_3_18_1_1_1440831865027_2125">New Orleans is playing catch-up. A decade after Hurricane Katrina decimated the city, causing more than $135 billion in damage and leaving 80% of the area under water, New Orleans leaders are fighting to reinvent the “The Big Easy” as a destination for something other than Mardi Gras, beignets and big bands — big business.</span></div>
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<span id="yui_3_18_1_1_1440831865027_2119">To say their mission is ambitious would be an understatement. Unlike other major U.S. cities that rebounded in the wake of devastating disasters, such as San Francisco and Chicago, New Orleans was a city in decline long before Katrina struck. After the oil bust of the 1980s, the city lost nearly 55,000 jobs in key industries like manufacturing, mining and warehousing, according to a report by Loyola University. By the mid-1980s, one in eight workers were unemployed. In 1999, the annual median income was $27,000 while the poverty rate, at 28%, was twice the national average. “When we think about New Orleans today as it continues to recover, it’s important to keep that historical context in mind,” says Stephen Barnes, an economist at Louisiana State University. “The metro area in general had seen lackluster growth for many years before the storms.”</span></div>
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There has been some progress, but New Orleans has yet to get on a level with Houston or Atlanta. If it wants to stay competitive, it’s going to have to win on several fronts: convince big businesses to move their operations to New Orleans and bring jobs with them; make sure residents get the education needed to fill those jobs; and help small businesses scale up. We spoke with economists and city leaders to see how big business in New Orleans is faring so far.</div>
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<strong>What New Orleans is missing</strong></div>
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As much as New Orleans is investing in legacy industries like water transport, it’s also eager to establish itself as a <a data-rapid_p="10" href="http://finance.yahoo.com/news/startups-fuel-new-orleans-recovery-183630271.html#" style="color: #324fe1; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">haven for technology and engineering</a>. In many ways it’s succeeding. New Orleans has become a staple on just about every “best cities” list for tech and startup growth over the last few years. This is no small feat considering there was virtually no technology industry in New Orleans pre-Katrina. Still, the city has yet to launch the next Etsy or Twitter, although there are promising businesses such as <a data-rapid_p="11" href="http://www.nola.com/business/index.ssf/2012/08/new_orleans_company_iseatz_boo.html" style="color: #324fe1; text-decoration: none;">iSeatz</a>, a travel booking software development firm with revenues of over $1 billion, and GE Capital Technology Center, a branch of GE that opened in New Orleans to much fanfare in 2013.</div>
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But if there’s one thing other tech hubs have that New Orleans doesn’t, it’s a highly educated workforce, says Jacob Vigdor, an economist at the University of Washington who studied New Orleans’ economy in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. “Cities that have [thrived] in the post-industrial era have had top-notch research universities and a highly educated population,” says Vigdor. “New Orleans can be really good at what it does, but it’s not realistic to think it can be good at something it historically has never been good at.”</div>
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Just 27% of New Orleans residents have a bachelor’s degree or higher, according to Census data. That’s not far off from the national average (30%) but pales next to major tech magnets like Seattle (57.4%), San Francisco (52.4%) and Austin, Texas (45.6%). French videogame maker GameLoft opened a studio in New Orleans in 2012 but in an interview with Forbes, a company representative said it was hard to find qualified candidates for certain jobs, and that three-quarters of employees were from out of state. (We asked GameLoft if those numbers are still accurate but haven’t gotten a response.) Jim Fowler, CIO of GE Capital said his firm ran into similar challenges when GE decided to open its new technology center. Only half the company’s 230 employees are from Louisiana. GE launched an internship and apprenticeship program with the University of New Orleans to help create a pipeline for graduates into the industry—16 alumni have been hired so far.</div>
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<strong>Read more: <a data-rapid_p="12" href="http://finance.yahoo.com/news/post-katrina-new-orleans-black-men--185351817.html#" id="yui_3_18_1_1_1440788810702_1610" style="color: #324fe1; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">In post-Katrina New Orleans, Black men lift each other up</a></strong></div>
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These shortcomings are nothing new to city leaders. In 2013, NOLA Mayor Mitchell Landrieu, in conjunction with the New Orleans Business Alliance, debuted <a data-rapid_p="13" href="http://nolaba.org/economic-growth-NOLA.aspx" style="color: #324fe1; text-decoration: none;">“Prosperity NOLA”</a>, a five-year plan to transform the city’s economy by 2018, the year that will also mark its tri-centennial. Educating the city’s workforce and homing in on income inequities are two of the biggest pillars of the initiative. In our recent coverage of post-Katrina New Orleans, we wrote about several of the fruits of this initiative, including a program that trains minority workers for jobs tied to major expansions like the new terminal at the city’s major airport, and the growing cushion of startup incubator programs aimed at helping small businesses.</div>
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“We need to try to get some corporate headquarters to relocate to New Orleans and trying to make that happen makes me wake up at 3 o’clock in the morning at least three times a week." –Quentin Messer, President, NOLA Small Business Alliance</div>
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But arguably, the city’s most ambitious strategy is to focus on attracting anchor institutions — major corporations that not only produce thousands of jobs but also tend to lead to the growth of supporting businesses. In the ‘60s and ‘70s, those might have been major oil companies. But as Chevron, Exxon and others have deserted New Orleans to run their operations elsewhere, the city has had to come to grips with the fact that they may never return. Then there’s the prospect of dealing with another hurricane like Katrina. That’s why some firms decided to move further inland after the storm, boosting business growth and jobs in bordering parishes like Jefferson and St. Tammany. The share of jobs based in Orleans Parish was already on the decline before Katrina and fell sharply afterward, from 43% in 2000 to 34% in 2013, according to the Data Center.</div>
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“We need to try to get some corporate headquarters to relocate to New Orleans and trying to make that happen makes me wake up at 3 o’clock in the morning at least three times a week,” saysQuentin Messer, president of the New Orleans Business Alliance. “We went from a city that arguably was the center of the American energy industry in the ‘60s-’80s, and unfortunately we’ve ceded that to Houston.” City leaders are looking to healthcare to fill that gap. In 2012, Ochsner Health System, a nonprofit healthcare provider, moved its headquarters to New Orleans. A new veteran’s hospital, due to open in late 2016 after several years of costly delays, will be the region’s first VA hospital in a decade and serve 70,000 veterans.  </div>
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<strong>Signs of progress</strong></div>
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In the two years following Katrina, New Orleans lost more than 22% of local jobs, dropping from 624,000 jobs in 2004 to 491,600 in 2006. The city has since recovered about 90% of the jobs it lost, leaving a smaller but still sizable gap. Since 2011, <a data-rapid_p="15" href="http://www.nola.gov/getattachment/dc3c5612-7f9c-4ea5-ac2c-8af0f62f08a8/ResultsNOLA-2015-Mid-Year-Report-FINAL/" style="color: #324fe1; text-decoration: none;">14,000 new positions</a> were added. About one-third of those were added just in the last month, when the city's new University Medical Center opened its doors. The majority of new jobs came from retailers and hotels. This isn’t the most positive sign for the city’s big business campaign but isn’t bad news for workers. The Hyatt Regency, opened in 2011, added 800 jobs. New Walmart and Costco branches brought another 800 jobs, and the next-largest job creator was a new strip mall that opened in 2013, adding 500 jobs at shops including Staples, Pinkberry and Panera Bread. Retail work isn’t highly paid (Louisiana’s minimum wage is $7.25), but a robust retail sector was something New Orleans lacked before Katrina. “I think that’s an indication of healthy natural growth in the economy, but you certainly want to have growth in your core economic driver industries in addition to those service sectors,” says Barnes.</div>
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The Port of New Orleans, a crucial contributor to the city’s economy, has been a big post-Katrina success story. The port, which now supports about 8,000 jobs, was open and running just two weeks after the storm and has seen nearly $300 million worth of investment in the last decade. More than a tenth of those funds went into the construction of a new 90,000-square-foot cruise terminal (cruise traffic makes up 20% the port’s annual revenue, a spokesperson says). A record 1 million cruise passengers passed through in 2014, up 180% from 2001. Take a drive past the ship terminals and the port gives way to an expanse of shipping containers and cargo holds packed with key imports like rubber, steel, coffee and plywood. New Orleans is the No. 1 U.S. exporter of both rubber and frozen poultry (and has the $40.3 million storage facility to show for it).</div>
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<strong>Read more: <a data-rapid_p="16" href="http://finance.yahoo.com/news/startups-fuel-new-orleans-recovery-183630271.html" style="color: #324fe1; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Young people aren't enough to fuel New Orleans' recovery</a></strong></div>
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In a major coup last year, Chiquita Brands International decided to return its U.S. shipping operations to New Orleans after leaving the port for Gulfport, Miss., more than 40 years ago. Chiquita added roughly 300 jobs and increased shipping container traffic in the city by an estimated 15%. But these rewards came at a price. Louisiana committed to spending $2 million on new banana ripening facilities for the Brazil-based company, as well as paying Chiquita $10 million over the next decade to offsets costs, according to a local news report.</div>
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The city’s water transport industry is still the largest internationally traded sector in New Orleans, despite the fact that it has shed more than 4,000 jobs since 2008, according to the Data Center, a research firm that studies Southeast Louisiana. But with an average annual wage of $74,340, local leaders have been eager to work with the port to make sure locals are filling those roles.</div>
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<span id="yui_3_18_1_1_1440831865027_2135">Matt Gresham, a port spokesman, says the Port of New Orleans has been working with local institutions like the University of New Orleans and community colleges to develop training programs for high school students and graduates that feed them directly into the maritime industry. One of the biggest challenges so far has been awareness. They hope to change that with a workforce summit in October, where port and civic leaders will develop strategies to train maritime workers. “There’s opportunity to be had but in the industry as a whole, you have a lot of people who just don’t know the opportunities that are available,” Gresham says.</span></div>
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<strong>The last hurdle</strong></div>
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<img alt="Steven Washington stands on the steps of the home on Lesseps Street in New Orleans on Thursday, Aug. 6, 2015, where his family rode out Hurricane Katr..." class="editorial" data-preembed="image" src="http://l2.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/Usnqp6LULAP8uyTWw2R33w--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3NfbGVnbztxPTg1O3c9NjMw/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/ap_webfeeds/dae1020ca2d96626800f6a7067006de2.jpg" style="background-repeat: no-repeat; border: 0px; display: inline; height: auto; margin: 0px; max-width: 100%; min-height: 1px; opacity: 1 !important; vertical-align: bottom; visibility: visible !important; width: auto !important;" title="Steven Washington stands on the steps of the home on Lesseps Street in New Orleans on Thursday, Aug. 6, 2015, where his family rode out Hurricane Katr..." width="630" /></figure><div class="legend" style="background: none; color: grey; font-size: 12.0000009536743px; font-style: italic; max-width: 100%; padding: 5px; text-align: left;">
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While the city has recovered about <a data-rapid_p="18" href="http://www.datacenterresearch.org/reports_analysis/neighborhood-recovery-rates-growth-continues-through-2015-in-new-orleans-neighborhoods/" style="color: #324fe1; text-decoration: none;">90% of its previous population,</a> it hasn’t been easy convincing people who left to return — especially minorities and the poor, two groups that, in New Orleans, often overlapped. One hundred thousand African-Americans left the city, <a data-rapid_p="19" href="https://gnocdc.s3.amazonaws.com/reports/TheDataCenter_WhoLivesInNewOrleansAndMetroParishesNow.pdf" style="color: #324fe1; text-decoration: none;">bringing their numbers down</a> from 67% of the population before the storm to 59% in 2013. Meanwhile, the number of white households has increased from 27% before the storm to 31%. In 2013, the median household income for African-Americans in New Orleans was 54% lower than for whites, and 20% lower than for African-Americans nationally.  </div>
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Housing costs are rising, which threatens to <a data-rapid_p="20" href="http://finance.yahoo.com/news/post-katrina-new-orleans-black-men--185351817.html#" style="color: #324fe1; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">push out poorer households</a>. The city’s school system, which was overhauled following Katrina, has improved but changes may be too late for families with school-age children who have settled elsewhere. Many who have not returned to New Orleans may be faring better financially than they were before.</div>
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“When you’re the mayor of a city, you want the place to grow because growth is good for business and when business is good, people like you,” Vigdor says. “But from a broader perspective, if you had a family living in New Orleans and they had trouble finding jobs and now they're making a much better life for themselves … we think that move is probably a good thing.”</div>
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<span id="yui_3_18_1_1_1440831865027_2182">For the sake of New Orleans’ future, city leaders will have to make sure that in the event of another major disaster, they won’t have to work as hard to convince people to come home again.</span></div>
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<span id="yui_3_18_1_1_1440831865027_2179">“We have a message to the folks — come back home,” says Messer. “Give us a second look. This is not the New Orleans you remember.”<strong id="docs-internal-guid-a8240a4f-75e0-aecf-0ecd-5d0fda1a84c9"></strong></span></div>
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New Orleans is missing a key ingredient for its big business renaissance

New Orleans is playing catch-up. A decade after Hurricane Katrina decimated the city, causing more than $135 billion in damage ...

12:11 AM

Fed says rate hike next month hinges on market volatility

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By Jonathan Spicer and Howard Schneider</div>
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<span style="font-size: 15.0000009536743px; line-height: 24.0000019073486px;"><br />Some top policymakers, including Fed Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer, said recent volatility in global markets could quickly ease and possibly pave the way for the U.S. rate hike, for which investors, governments and central banks around the world are bracing.</span>JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. (Reuters) - The Federal Reserve on Friday left the door open to a September interest rate hike even while several U.S. central bank officials acknowledged that turmoil in financial markets, if prolonged, could delay the first policy tightening in nearly a decade.<span style="font-size: 15.0000009536743px; line-height: 24.0000019073486px;">Some top policymakers, including Fed Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer, said recent volatility in global markets could quickly ease and possibly pave the way for the U.S. rate hike, for which investors, governments and central banks around the world are bracing.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 15.0000009536743px; line-height: 24.0000019073486px;">With a key policy meeting set for Sept. 16-17, at least five Fed officials spoke publicly in what amounted to a jockeying for position on whether increasing the Fed's benchmark overnight lending rate was too risky amid an economic slowdown in China, a rising U.S. dollar (.DXY) and falling commodity prices (XAU=) (CMCU3).</span></div>
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"It's early to tell," Fischer told CNBC on the sidelines of the annual central banking conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. "We're still watching how it unfolds." He, along with other Fed officials, acknowledged that the global equities sell-off that began last week would influence the timing of a rate hike, which until only a couple of weeks ago seemed increasingly likely to occur in September.</div>
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Concerns about China's economy have whipsawed markets, including Wall Street, even while U.S. economic data has been robust. U.S. stock indexes ended largely unchanged, capping a week that included both the market's worst day in four years and biggest two-day gain since the 2007-2009 financial crisis.</div>
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"I think they could settle fairly quickly," said Fischer, a close ally of Fed Chair Janet Yellen.</div>
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St. Louis Fed President James Bullard told Reuters he still favored hiking rates next month, though he added that his colleagues would be hesitant to do so if global markets continued to be volatile in mid-September.</div>
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The Fed's policy committee "does not like to move right in the middle of a global financial storm," Bullard, a Fed hawk, said in an interview. "So one of the advantages we have is that this storm is occurring now and, at least as of now, we think it will be settled down" by the September meeting.</div>
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The comments suggest the next two and a half weeks will be critical for the Fed as well as for global markets. A U.S. rate hike is expected to hit emerging market equities and currencies particularly hard, adding to the sell-offs already seen.</div>
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The American economy, however, continues to shine despite longer-term concerns about low inflation.</div>
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The U.S. government reported this week that the economy grew at a 3.7 percent annualized pace in the second quarter, sharply higher than its previous estimate, and that consumer spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of economic activity, rose again in July.</div>
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'HANG OUT' AFTER A HIKE</div>
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Investors and economists have been betting the Fed would delay a policy tightening to December or later, prolonging the monetary stimulus that has kept rates at rock-bottom levels for more than six years and has pumped trillions of dollars into the global banking system.</div>
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But after Fischer spoke, traders added to bets that a rate hike would come this year, with overnight indexed swap rates implying a 35 percent chance the Fed would move in September and a 77 percent chance of a December move.</div>
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Atlanta Fed President Dennis Lockhart, a centrist who has become less resolute about a September rate hike as markets have tumbled, told Bloomberg TV that it was reasonable to see the odds of a move next month as roughly even.</div>
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One idea appearing to gain ground on Friday hinged on the Fed raising rates once or twice and then holding off until inflation started to rise to its 2 percent target. A strong dollar and lower oil prices (CLc1) (LCOc1) have kept a lid on prices despite an unemployment rate that is close to normal at 5.3 percent.</div>
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Bullard told Reuters the Fed could hike rates once then "hang out" at that level if inflation remains too low.</div>
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Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester, another so-called hawk who, like Bullard, sometimes runs against the grain at the central bank, said the economy still could handle a modest rate hike, though she did not commit to backing a move next month.</div>
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"I want to take the time I have between now and the September meeting to evaluate all the economic information that's come in, including recent volatility in markets and the reasons behind that," she was quoted as saying by the Wall Street Journal.</div>
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The Fed decision has drawn unusually intense interest from both foreign central bankers, who will have to respond, and from Americans on both the right and left.</div>
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The conservative American Principles Project held speeches at a nearby hotel urging a prompt rate hike. Meanwhile, a floor below the main Federal Reserve conference space, the Center for Popular Democracy hosted workers and economists calling on the Fed to keep rates low to get more Americans back to work.</div>
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The Fed needs to re-think "full employment in a way that recognizes the high joblessness of black and Latino communities," Sarita Turner of PolicyLink told about 60 advocates, noting that U.S. joblessness among blacks is twice that of whites.</div>
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Minneapolis Fed President Narayana Kocherlakota, a dove who wants to stand pat on rates until the second half of 2016, said in an interview China's slowdown heightens the risk of a U.S. shock. "There's just no reason to go now," he said.</div>
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(Additional reporting by Jason Lange and Krista Hughes in Washington; Editing by Paul Simao and James Dalgleish)</div>

Fed says rate hike next month hinges on market volatility

By Jonathan Spicer and Howard Schneider Some top policymakers, including Fed Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer, said recent volatility ...

12:01 AM

Focus turns to U.S. data as China slowdown looms

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By Chuck Mikolajczak</div>
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NEW YORK (Reuters) - After a dizzying two weeks that saw a rapid plunge and rebound in equity prices, investors are looking forward to a week of economic data that may provide clarity on the likelihood of a near-term U.S. interest rate hike and help tamp down the market's recent wild swings.</div>
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The economic figures will culminate in Friday’s jobs report that should reveal more about the strength of the U.S. economy. Car sales, construction spending, the Federal Reserve's "beige book" and jobs growth may show the economy is strong enough to withstand the first rate hike in nearly a decade from the Federal Reserve, despite worries about a hard landing for China’s economy.</div>
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Global stock markets were stung by severe swings in recent weeks, stoked by concerns that a slowdown in China's economy may be more harsh than anticipated.</div>
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But after confirming a move into correction territory, the S&P 500 rebounded to score its best two-day percentage gain in over six years this week, as comments from Fed officials led some investors to believe the market turmoil and global growth concerns had diminished the possibility of a rate hike at the central bank's September meeting.</div>
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A September rate increase hasn't been ruled out, however. Fed Vice President Stanley Fischer told CNBC during the Fed's annual conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, that the committee was "heading in the direction" of higher rates. Traders in futures markets that bet on rate increases boosted September's odds after his words.</div>
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"There is a narrative out there that Yellen’s Fed is looking for a reason to delay the rate hike; I don’t think that is necessarily the case," said Brad McMillan, chief investment officer for Commonwealth Financial in Waltham, Massachusetts.</div>
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"If we continue this run of strong data and if the market keeps coming back or at least doesn’t keep dropping, that makes September more likely."</div>
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After a stronger-than-expected revision to second quarter gross domestic product and solid durable goods figures, another run of strong data next week could bolster the case for a rate increase next month. As of early August, most U.S. primary dealers polled expected a September rate increase.</div>
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But traders also are also mindful of the fact that the Chinese slowdown could hit U.S. companies and their shares disproportionately in the second half of the year, with luxury goods companies and industrials among the groups paying a price.</div>
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Thomson Reuters data shows third-quarter earnings expectations have dropped 6.4 percent for the industrial sector and 8.8 percent for the materials sector since July 1.</div>
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Should analysts continue to downgrade their expectations for third- and fourth-quarter earnings in those sectors or more broadly, that could make stocks more expensive, even after the recent selloff.</div>
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"It is more important to the U.S. whether or not GM and Ford can sell cars there," said Kim Forrest, senior equity research analyst, Fort Pitt Capital Group in Pittsburgh.</div>
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"That is probably what a softening of the Chinese economy could affect and it factors into the earnings of these companies."</div>
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Should next week's data show the U.S. economy continues to slowly improve, market volatility is likely to remain as investors grapple with the possibility of a September hike and its ramifications for risk assets.</div>
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"Markets and investors were nervous anyway about this normalization anyway after years without a raise," said Peter Kenny, chief market strategist at Clearpool Group in New York.</div>
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"If we were not in a position where markets are as jittery as they are as a result of the China deceleration story, it would be fair to say a rate move of 25 basis points would be able to be managed by the world’s largest economy."</div>
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(Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Meredith Mazzilli)</div>

Focus turns to U.S. data as China slowdown looms

By Chuck Mikolajczak NEW YORK (Reuters) - After a dizzying two weeks that saw a rapid plunge and rebound in equity pri...

11:55 PM