New jobless claims dropped last week by a hefty 37,000 to a seasonally adjusted 391,000. That’s the biggest weekly tumble since May, pushing new filings for jobless benefits under the 400,000 mark for only the second time in 25 weeks. It looks good, and it surprised a lot of economists. But let’s refrain just yet from declaring this as the start of something big.

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Kansas City President Thomas Hoenig is the Uriah Heep of central banking. “We ought to be very, very humble in our expectations of what we can do with this instrument we call monetary policy,” says Hoenig, who retires this week after racking up eight straight dissents last year as a voting member of the FOMC. But would tighter monetary policy imposed six months or a year earlier be paying macro dividends now? Let’s be generous and say that it’s debatable. Still, the prescription endures.

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