In This Issue:

Leading the Past Week; Legislative Branch; Executive Branch; and Upcoming Hearings.

Excerpt from Leading the Past Week - As the first full week of the Federal government’s sequestration comes to a close, the effects have been palpable. The Dow Jones closed just shy of 14400, after hitting a 52 week high earlier in the day. The Department of Labor announced Friday that the economy added 236,000 jobs in February, significantly higher than the consensus prediction of around 165,000 and that unemployment now stood at 7.7 percent. Earlier in the week, the Fed’s latest beige book found that the US economy is continuing along a moderate growth trend. While these last three metric’s are on a month lag, the bullish nature of the equity markets, coupled with tangible loss in services, has complicated the Administration’s “sky is falling” rhetoric surrounding the impact of the sequester.

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