Janet Yellen sees signs of life in our economy, insisting on a cautious rate hike later in the year from a Dispatch Times report. “””(The Fed) wants to signal to everybody that the economy is getting back to normal”, she said, but they’re not in a rush due to a slumbering labor market; thus, price increases will be held back. She added that she’s lowered the forecast for the natural rate of unemployment to 5 percent if inflation continues to drag.

She also delivered a tight-lipped 14-page speech in Cleveland on Friday about Greece’s economy hanging in the balance and the uncertain forces that could ricochet into our market.

But Yellen’s main concern is the labor sector, in which the natural rate of unemployment forecast was lowered to 5 percent, and may be cut further if inflation continues to drag.  Some at the Fed were skeptical of the data, questioning whether if it slants first-quarter numbers. An impending Greek solution and an uptick in China’s equity market quelled fears of a disastrous shutdown of the world’s second mainstay economy.

With her guarded optimism, Yellen said, “We look at many different indicators of the labor market, and no single indicator tells the story”. Even though a critical rate jump isn’t due this year, it signals the US economy is waking from a coma. US Treasury yields looked to the sky as a potpourri of currencies followed behind. But again, she fingered the lack of labor force participation, which was due to “cyclical” momentum.

Greece inched closer to a handshake with creditors on Thursday after Alexis Tsipras presented new stipulations of spending cuts and tax leverages that left smiles on a few European officials.

“I now anticipate that the appropriate pace of normalization will be gradual, and that monetary policy will need to be highly supportive of economic activity for quite some time,” Yellen said.