shutdown notes for October 18th and two Fed manufacturing surveys for October

Major reports that were scheduled to be released this week but postponed due to the shutdown included the September Consumer Price Index and the September Producer Price Index, both from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Retail Sales report for September and the corresponding Business Sales and Inventories report for August, both from the Census Bureau, the report on Industrial production and Capacity Utilization for September from the Fed, and the September report on New Residential Construction from the Census Bureau….however, because the computation of Social Security’s annual cost of living increase is dependent on third quarter prices, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has brought in a crew to work on the September Consumer Price Index, and that report is now scheduled to be released on ​Friday, October 24th, shutdown or not, to give those agencies who need to compute COLAs the data they need before the annual increases would go into effect starting November 1st…

Since the Fed's operations are funded from the interest on Treasuries it holds, this week did see the release of the first two regional Fed manufacturing surveys for October: the Empire State Manufacturing Survey for October from the New York Fed, which covers New York, northern New Jersey, and an adjacent county in Connecticut, reported their headline general business conditions index rose from –8.7 in September to +10.7 in October, its third positive reading in the last four months, meaning that a large plurality of Second District manufactures reported improving conditions in various facets of their business in the current month…meanwhile the Philadelphia Fed Manufacturing Survey for October, covering most of Pennsylvania, southern New Jersey, and Delaware, reported its broadest diffusion index of manufacturing conditions fell from +23.2 in September, its highest reading since January, to -12.8 in October, its lowest reading since April, an index value they arrive at after “twenty-five percent of the firms reported decreases in general activity this month (up from 17 percent last month), while 12 percent reported increases (down from 40 percent); and 58 percent reported no change (up from 43 percent).”

While the Industrial production and Capacity Utilization report for September scheduled for this week is also from the Fed, that report depends on data from other agencies, and hence it too could not be completed; however, the Consumer Credit Report for August is generated from credit data collected by the New York Fed, so that report was published last week….it indicated that overall consumer credit, a measure of non-real estate debt, expanded by a seasonally adjusted $0.4 billion in August, or at a 0.1% annual rate, as non-revolving credit expanded at a 2.0 % rate to $3,755.6 billion, while revolving credit outstanding fell at a 5.5% rate to $1,305.5 billion…

 

 

(the above is the synopsis that accompanied my regular sunday morning news links emailing, which in turn was mostly selected from my weekly blog post on the global glass onion…if you’d be interested in receiving my weekly emailing of selected links, most of which are chosen from the aforementioned GGO posts, contact me…)