Up and down

Daily update

Today’s release of US October producer price inflation is expected to show higher prices, with oil leading the way. Diesel prices are directly included in this data (they are not in US consumer price numbers). However, there will also be examination of the details to see if there is better evidence of tariff inflation effects fading from the calculation.
New York City banned what they call “surveillance pricing” (economists know this as “first degree price discrimination”). This occurs when companies charge the maximum price they think an individual can pay—meaning two people can pay different prices for the same product bought at the same time. This is how prices were set before urbanization anonymized consumers. It is hard to measure, but the legislation underscores general anger at the affordability crisis and a search for groups to blame.
New York Fed President Williams sounded hawkish about inflation overnight. It is not clear if this is part of a campaign to make the Federal Reserve sound vigilant on inflation, or whether there is a genuine desire to push the non-oil US economy into recession to offset oil prices.
The Microsoft outage affecting email and AI is an interesting economic experiment. Will economic productivity go up when Microsoft apps go down?