The world economy appears to be slowing. This is bad news for Slasher and the UK economy.
This morning, Markit released its flash eurozone purchasing manager indices (PMIs), which are pretty good predictors of what is happening to output. Official data takes some months to be published and is frequently revised, so the timeliness of the PMIs is a big asset. What do they show?
Eurozone growth turns out to have been the weakest since October 2009, led by a sharp manufacturing slowdown. Input costs showed their smallest rise in eight months.
The main indices were as follows:
Flash eurozone PMI composite output index at 53.6 (55.8 in May). Twenty-month low.
Flash eurozone services PMI business activity index at 54.2 (56.0 in May). Six-month low.
Flash eurozone manufacturing PMI at 52.0 (54.6 in May). Eighteen-month low.
Flash eurozone manufacturing PMI output index(4) at 52.4 (55.2 in May). Twenty-one-month low.
Yesterday, the Fed completed its policy meeting and Ben Bernanke held his second press conference, in which he left open the possibility of more quantitative easing. Most importantly, the members of the FOMC downgraded their forecast for US growth and increased their forecasts for unemployment. This had an impact on oil and other commodity prices, which fell on the news. West Texas intermediate crude was down to $92.75 a barrel on the news, having been over $102 earlier in June.
The hawks on the MPC are wrong. Inflation is headed down.