Daily update
Daily update
- It is hedonism day in the US, with the release of August retail sales data. Two limits to the data. This is a value measure, and US goods prices have been falling for four months now. This underrepresents consumption at a time when people are still favoring fun over goods. Instagram reels of holidays and congealing restaurant meals cost money (and of that spending, only the congealing restaurant meals are captured in retail sales).
- Does this matter to the Federal Reserve? A single data point should not matter to a well-run central bank, but it could matter to the Fed. Hopefully, alternative data sources (like credit card data) will allow the Fed to take a broader view than provided by a number that has been revised every single month this year.
- US industrial and manufacturing production numbers are due, but the US is more important as a global consumer of last resort than it is as a global supplier of manufactured products.
- The German ZEW survey of financial experts’ sentiment is due. This is hopefully freer from partisan bias than some other surveys. However, an economist that can hide behind the anonymity of a survey may still offer a view that differs from the sanitized expression of their published opinion.
