Daily update
Daily update
- What have we learned this week? Remarkably little. Economists have been wrestling with real-time economic data that has become progressively less reliable as structural change has swept the economy. Now the aftermath of the first bank runs of the Twitter era only adds uncertainty. The future depends on two hard-to-predict behaviors: will bank investors and depositors keep moving their money? And if they do, will loan officers respond by tightening lending standards? Central banks will know what is happening before markets do.
- UK retail sales were better than expected in February. This is real data, but UK profit-led inflation is still having an impact. Discount stores saw higher sales volumes. Food stores also did better, presumably as people switched from eating in restaurants. Supermarkets are certainly not innocent of expanding profit margins with aggressive price hikes, but the overall cost of eating at home is still lower than eating in restaurants.
- Japanese February consumer price inflation slowed, reflecting government subsidies. The internationally-defined core inflation measure accelerated slightly. Japanese food prices are the one area where margin expansion may be occurring.
- US durable goods prices are due—the range of forecasts is so wide as to make the consensus a meaningless concept. Europe has assorted business sentiment polls.
