Daily update
Daily update
- UK labor market data are due. Employment is not a constraint on British consumers (and unemployment data come with quality health warnings). Average earnings will be a market focus, although if flexible working allows people to move into higher paid employment this raises average earnings without raising wages.
- Final September consumer price data are due from some Eurozone economies—this is not a focus. The ECB’s bank lending survey is of more interest. Although this is survey evidence, banks should take more time considering their responses when their regulator is asking what they are doing.
- Survey quality is more of an issue with the other data—the US Empire State and New York Fed inflation expectations surveys, for instance. Political polarization is an ever growing distortion. A majority of surveyed Republicans say that US equity markets and employment levels have fallen this year. This is presumably political partisanship, as it does not reflect reality.
- Federal Reserve governor Waller suggested recent inflation data were disappointing. This depends on your definition of inflation. Egg price increases were disappointing (perhaps Waller really likes eggs). However, inflation is supposed to be a general change in prices, reflecting broad imbalances in the economy—it has less to do with peculiarities in single markets.