Strong US consumer spending and global manufacturing

On the whole, the economic data are still coming in strong, especially in manufacturing.

Reuters reports the news on US personal income and expenditure:

January was one of the warmest months on record, luring consumers into stores and producing a 0.9 percent jump in spending that outpaced a 0.7 percent rise in personal incomes... Americans' savings rate...eased to -0.7 percent from -0.4 percent...

The Commerce Department's price index for consumer spending rose 0.5 percent in January after being unchanged in December. The core index, which strips out food and energy, rose a milder 0.2 percent, in line with forecasts and up slightly from a 0.1 percent increase a month earlier.

...car sales:

Yet car sales data trickling in from automakers suggested the early year spending spree was not repeated in February. Sales of North American-made vehicles were tracking just below forecasts of around 13.3 million annualized units, still robust but down from more than 14 million the previous month.

...and manufacturing:

[T]he Institute for Supply Management's index of national factory activity rose to 56.7 in February from 54.8 in January, beating economists' forecasts for a rise to 55.6. The factory figures also showed broad underlying strength, with employment and new orders both showing healthy spikes.

PMI data for February were also good elsewhere. The euro-zone PMI rose to 54.5, the highest since July 2004, from 53.5 in January. The UK PMI slipped to 51.7 from 51.8 in January, but the China PMI rose to a record 50.7 from 50.2 the previous month. The JPMorgan Global Manufacturing PMI rose from 54.4 in January to 55.3 in February, its highest level in one-and-a-half years.