Capital Economics is line with the consensus on both income and spending but notes that a spending bump of just 0.1% is nothing to get too excited about.
"Although real consumption rose at a half-decent annualized rate in the fourth quarter of 2.0%, spending growth appears to have lost a fair amount of momentum right at the end of the year," the firm said. "This does not bode well for the first quarter of this year."
And lastly, M&A will be featured prominently in Monday's corporate headlines following a report from The Wall Street Journal on Friday that Delta Airlines (DAL) is mulling a bid for US Airways (LCC) or possibly even AMR Corp., the parent company of American Airlines.
PharMerica (PMC) and OmniCare (OCR) will also be active after the Federal Trade Commission moved to block OmniCare's hostile bid for PharMerica, saying it would be bad for consumers.
-- Written by Michael Baron in New York.>To contact the writer of this article, click here: Michael Baron.
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