Daily update
Daily update
- The Federal Reserve minutes were anxious about the tightness of the labor market. The financial markets were anxious about the Fed’s anxiety. The weird thing is that US real wages have been breaking all records—and not in a good way. The year-over-year rate of real wage growth has been negative for 22 consecutive months. With such a collapse in living standards, the Fed’s relative focus on labor-led rather than profit-led inflation seems peculiar.
- We get revised 4Q GDP from the US, with the consensus looking for unchanged data. While the numbers are likely to be unexciting, the increased unreliability of data does throw up more frequent revisions. Nonetheless, it is the weekly jobless claims that are likely to fuel media excitement.
- The Eurozone is offering final consumer price inflation data for January. This is one of the few economic numbers that is almost never revised, and almost never interesting to anyone.
- From the UK, there is the CBI distributive trades survey—which is how you say retail sales survey with a British accent. Survey evidence should always be treated with caution. However, UK tax data implies UK consumers do have a bit more money to spend.
