Get ready: This week is going to be huge. This holiday-shortened week is going to be jam-packed with economic data, culminating with the grand finale at 8:30 a.m. ET on Thursday, when we get the latest jobs report, and the weekly Initial Jobless Claims report.
Earlier in the week we'll be getting construction data, housing data, auto sales data, and manufacturing numbers, all of which will give us a fresh lens through which to see the economy.
Now the first week of every month is always packed with data, so in a sense it's a normal week. The fact that the data will be compressed into four days as opposed to five marginally adds to what will make this week so exciting.
The real story is that this is truly do-or-die time for the economy.
Last week we discovered that in Q1, the U.S. economy shrank a staggering 2.9%, but observers like myself and others, including Goldman Sachs top economist Jan Hatzius, have suggested that current conditions appear to show an economy lifting off and turning in its best performance since the financial crisis.
If this week's data is bad, it will suggest that the U.S. economy is not ready for liftoff. And if the U.S. economy isn't ready now, when will it be? There's no particular drag happening from government these days. Much of the economy has normalized? If things are still crappy, and there's actually no strong bounceback from Q1, a re-assessment of the current U.S. economic potential might be in order.
If this week's data is good, then it's a different story.
Either way, by Thursday afternoon, we'll know much more about what's going on.