Daily update
Daily update
- The minutes of the last Federal Reserve meeting are due, and should be fascinating. This meeting cut interest rates by 50bps, and had the first Fed governor dissenting in over two decades. Dissents may possibly be managed as part of the theater of the Fed—a single high profile dissent may mask wider disquiet at the scale of the rate cut. Certainly Fed Chair Powell’s dependence on dodgy data is looking a questionable strategy in the wake of recent (inevitable) data revisions.
- The tone of the Fed minutes should not change expectations of further rate cuts—the Fed is still scrambling to catch up with inflation slowing in the US, and started cutting rates late. But expectations about the pace of easing may be set by the minutes.
- The US Department of Justice is considering asking for Google to be broken up. More focus on general competition policy may emerge in the wake of the recent profit-led inflation episode. Somewhat ironically, technology and big data may help to identify when anti-competitive behavior has been taking place.
- German trade data are due. They are relevant, with shifting global demand patterns and soft German domestic demand, but the small number of economists who bother to forecast the numbers is a symbol of markets’ relative disinterest.
