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...back to the job market. The week?s spate of economic reports culminates with the number everybody?s afraid of - July unemployment - and makes a few consumer-related stops along the way. Tuesday brings personal income for June and Consumer Confidence for July (and the Chicago Purchasing Managers Index for July, which?ll be bad news for manufacturing, but you knew that). Wednesday gives us auto and truck sales for July, and construction spending for June and National Association Purchasing Managers for July (see CPMI, above). Thursday sets the table with weekly Initial Unemployment Claims and a new four-week...
...labor market, the Labor Department serves weekly unemployment claims, the Employment Cost Index and Help-Wanted Index on Thursday. But first figure out which way to read unemployment indicators - low, it's an inflation worry; high, it's a consumer-sentiment risk...
...Inflation is still far, far away: "There has been little, if any, acceleration in the index of core personal consumption expenditure prices, which we consider to be a more reliable measure of inflation" (than the risen CPI number released just that morning). More bond-market jawboning - those long-term rates, over which Greenspan has only psychological control, are the ones that determine mortgage rates and refinancing opportunities and thus have untold stimulatory power for consumers. (You may also recall that the great economic windfall of federal budget deficit reduction during the Clinton years was a reduction in long-term interest...
...Producer Price Index fell 0.4%, indicating...
...basis points on June 27) were not stimulating demand as expected. Meanwhile, Japan continues to see no growth at all; the needed structural reforms that Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has promised will depress economic activity in the short term. And in Germany, Europe's largest economy, the IFO index of business confidence has fallen to its lowest level in two years. To cap it all off, prices are rising in Europe...