Covid Up, Inflation Up, Another Supreme Court Step Toward Overturning Roe, and a Flash Flood State of Emergency in NYC Headline Today’s News
September 2, 2021
U.S. deaths from Covid topped 1,400 on Wednesday, which constitutes a 75% jump from two weeks earlier.
Producer prices in the euro area leaped 2.3% on month in July, the most since early 1995. Powered by a 28.9% increase in energy, the 12-month PPI increase swelled to 12.1%, most in almost four decades. Swiss consumer price inflation advanced another 0.2 percentage points to a 33-month high of 0.9% in August, and a 0.6% increase of South Korean consumer prices last month was twice as much as expected. PPI inflation in Hungary accelerated 3.2 percentage points to 14.8% in August, most since 2001. New Zealand import and export prices respectively leaped 4.8% and 8.3% on quarter in 2Q 2021.
In a controversial U.S. culture war development that is likely to fracture U.S. domestic tranquility further, a near-complete ban on abortions in Texas was not overturned by the Supreme Court.
A flash flood emergency in NYC, one of the world’s financial capitols, has been declared after record-setting rainfall. The previous record had occurred just 9 days earlier.
The weighted DXY dollar index is less than 0.1% softer. The U.S. currency dropped 0.3% against sterling and 0.1% versus the yen but rose 0.2% against the Swiss franc and 0.1% relative to the Japanese yen. The Aussie and New Zealand dollars are 0.4-0.5% firmer.
The 10-year U.S. Treasury yield is steady at 1.30%, while counterparts in Europe have slipped modestly.
Today’s most notable financial market development is a 2.5% advance in the price of WTI oil. U.S. share prices are modestly higher. Japan’s Nikkei closed up 0.3%, but the German Dax and British Ftse currently show no net movement.
Several U.S. economic indicators were released:
- Factory orders rose 0.4% on month in July, down from advances of 1.5% in June and 2.3% in May.
- The goods and services trade deficit narrowed to a 2-month low of $70.05 billion in July, but the year-to-date deficit of $484.6 billion was 37% wider than a year earlier.
- U.S. labor productivity growth last quarter was revised down 0.2 percentage points to 2.1% and was also 1.8% greater than in 2Q 2020. Quarterly growth in unit labor costs got revised up 0.3 percentage points to 1.3% and is now associated with a 0.2% on-year uptick.
- There were 340k new jobless insurance claims last week, 14k less than in the week to August 21st and the smallest weekly number since March 2020.
Canada’s trade surplus in July of only C$ 778 million was about half the size that analysts anticipated and down from C$ 2.56 billion in June. Imports surged 4.2% on month, dwarfing a 0.6% rise in exports. Canadian building permits slumped 3.9% in July but were 21.8% greater than in the year-earlier month.
Industrial production in Brazil dropped 1.3% in July, a much larger monthly slide than forecast and the fourth contraction in six months. An on-year advance of 1.2% was the smallest rise in five months.
India’s trade deficit widened from $8.2 billion in August 2020 to 13.87 billion last month.
Australia’s trade surplus in July of A$ 12.12 billion was the most ever and lifted the year-to-date surplus to A$ 66.34 billion, 50% greater than in January-July of 2020.
Swiss GDP growth of 0.8% in 2Q 2021 was just half as much as in 1Q, but a record 7.7% on-year growth occurred against the pandemic-stricken second quarter of 2020.
Growth in Japan’s monetary base slowed to 14.9% year on year in August from 15.4% in July but still exceeded 9.1% in the second quarter.
Consumer confidence in Mexico weakened to a 4-month low in August.
Copyright 2021, Larry Greenberg. All rights reserved. No secondary distribution without express permission.
Tags: Euroland PPI, NYC flooding, U.S. productivity and trade balance
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