WASHINGTON (MaceNews) – This week’s economic data includes the Consumer Price Index for August, with forecasters not anticipating an acceleration in the rate of change but not much, if any, deceleration.
If the annual consumer inflation rate remains around the 5.4% in July and June, or a little less as forecasted, analysts are likely to be coalescing around the view that the worst fears won’t be realized.
Some generators of increasing prices will likely prove to be stubbornly persistent, they are likely to say, but the vast array of prices that feed into the CPI are reflecting an inertia or a pace of adjustment that suggests the inflation scenario is settling down.
Also highlighting the data after Tuesday’s CPI is Thursday’s retail sales report for August and the preliminary University of Michigan consumer sentiment report on Friday. Forecasters see another month of decline, around the 1.1% drop in July, another sign that consumption has been leveling off.
The University of Michigan’s monthly twice-a-month survey of 600 households surprised last time around, plummeting to an index level of 70.3 from July’s 81.2 and below even the year earlier’s 74.1.
Last week’s losses for all the major stock indices, the slew of analysts’ pessimistic outlooks for stock that accompanied it, another hit to consumer sentiment along with another retail sales decline would seem to set the stage for a major inflection point in consensus thinking in the direction of a weakening in third and especially fourth-quarter GDP.
The Delta variant’s virulence is, of course, a damper on activity alone sufficient to be an entirely plausible reason for an end-of-year slowdown in the economy and stocks. There may, however, be other reasons that are harder to see. A worldwide hesitancy of businesses to invest and the murkiness in outlooks has a pervasive influence on overall activity that compounds the longer visibility is clouded.
The blanket focus on the collapse of the of New York’s twin towers was mainly narrowly focused on the exhumation of archival footage, remembrances and the powerful stories of grief and loss. There was only a scattering examination of what has happened since, the confused government policy in fighting terrorism, in prosecuting the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and remnants of hasty decisions, like the Department of Homeland Security, with the exception of PBS’s Frontline, a couple of WSJ columns and the Atlantic article by Garrett M. Graff.
The most peculiar omission the dozens of hours of gripping TV was any discussion of why the towers’ collapses happened so rapidly. Another half hour would have allowed hundreds, perhaps thousands more to escape. Why the 156 steel columns didn’t withstand plane crashes as the design specifications anticipated is examined in near molecular detail by the government’s National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Finally, the government’s economic data efforts, kept feeble and incomplete by a short-sighted Congress, are being supplemented by private-sector high-frequency data on employment and sales that are not nearly as available to the investing public already disadvantaged by all the high-powered exploitation of gaps in market microstructure.
Which brings us to a look forward at the next 20 years. The argument can be made that the past two decades have seen a devolution on many fronts and that an American culture chewing itself to bits – literally into little chunks of commonality of vision and purpose – is existentially challenged when facing the imperative of evolution. Whether Black Lives Matter or the Arab Spring, the upwelling of change in the world demands a bigger influence worldwide of true Americanism, not its atrophy.
Now back to the small-bore and badly delayed government reporting of some bulk numbers, the week’s data points are listed below:
UPCOMING ECONOMIC DATA AND FEDERAL RESERVE EVENTS
Monday, Sept 13 – 2p ET US Treasury monthly budget/August (CBO=-$173 bln)
Tuesday, Sept 14 – 6a ET NFIB Small Biz Optimisn Index
Tuesday, Sept 14 – 8:30a ET US August CPI (expected 5.3% Y/Y)
Tuesday, Sept 14 – 8:55a Redbook wkly retail activity
Wednesday, Sept 15 – 7a ET US MBA wkly mortgage apps
Wednesday, Sept 15 – 8:30a US import prices
Wednesday, Sept 15 – 8:30a ET NYFed Empire State mfg index
Wednesday, Sept 15 – 9:15a ET Fed’s industrial production/Aug (July +0.9%)
Wednesday, Sept 15 – 10a ET Atl Fed biz inflation expectations
Wednesday, Sept 15 – 10:30a US EIA oil stocks
Thursday, Sept 16 – 8:30a ET Wkly Initial Jobless Benefit Claims)
Thursday, Sept 16 – 8:30a ET US Retail Sales/Aug (expected -1.0%)
Thursday, Sept 16 – 8:30a ET Phill Fed mfg index
Thursday, Sept 16– 10a ET US business inventories/July
Thursday, Sept 16 – 4p ET US Treasury TICS
Friday, Sept 10 – 10a ET – UMich prelim consumer confidence (expected 71.4)
Friday, Sept 10 – 1p ET Baker-Hughes oil rig count
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Contact this writer: denny@macenews.com. Opinions expressed are solely those of the author.
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