Layoffs, a shutdown, and yet the stock market keeps surging.

From Marketplace, I'm Sir Riebana Shore, in for David Bruncaccio.

Over the weekend, the White House threatened more government layoffs if negotiations between Democrats and Republicans continue to go nowhere.

Meanwhile, 100,000 earlier layoffs and buyouts finally took

effect last week. And yet stocks hit a record Friday. Julia Cornado is here to talk about it.

She's founder and president of macro policy perspectives. Morning, Julia. Good morning.

So 100,000 federal workers disappeared from payrolls last week. And the White House is threatening

more layoffs. I imagine that is going to make the monthly jobs report look pretty bad if we

actually get it. But does that threaten the labor market in general? So, 100,000 workers,

it's a lot of people, but it's a very tiny share of the labor market overall.

The threat of additional firings does leave a cloud over a much larger population of federal workers.

So it is a concern that it's one piece of a labor market where, you know, the job creation

machine and process is sputtering right now.

And despite that, despite the fact that people are worried or nervous about the job market,

stocks are hitting new records.

They hit new records last week. Even with a shutdown,

why is that happening? You know, there's a lot of tension right now in economic indicators.

For now, there's not a lot of data to get in the way of an optimistic stock market. So, you know, it just keeps going, it seems.

There are a couple other markets that are usually associated with, you know, worry.

Bond yields are rising here in Japan, in France this morning.

Also, the price of gold is surging to.

What is that telling us?

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