The Economic Week Ahead: November 6 - 10

It's a light week for US economic indicators. However, the FOMC's blackout period is over, so there should be lots of erudite remarks coming from the members of the Federal Open Mouth Committee. They are likely to be less hawkish following last week's batch of somewhat weak economic indicators--though the batch wasn't weak enough to cause more than a tiny decline in the Citigroup Economic Surprise Index (chart).

Q4's Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey (Mon) undoubtedly will show more tightening of credit conditions. We are tracking this development with the weekly commercial bank data on loans and leases, including commercial & industrial (C&I) loans. The growth rates of both series have been declining confirming that credit conditions are tightening and the demand for credit is weakening (chart).