The Business News Week Ahead

The US will open and close the week, the latter in style with the September employment report. The week gets rolling on Tuesday with US goods trade where a very deep deficit is expected to get even deeper in August, followed later in the day by consumer confidence which has yet to revive at all from the crisis. Key Japanese data, which have also failed to show much life, will be posted Wednesday: industrial production and retail sales, both for August and neither expected to show improvement. Wednesday will also see the beginning of September data from China, opening with the CFLP manufacturing index in what is expected to be another month of slow expansion. The progress of the recovery in Germany will also be updated on Wednesday, first with retail sales for August then unemployment for September. September inflation updates will come from the Eurozone on Wednesday followed by Switzerland on Thursday, a day that will also see Swiss data on August retail sales and September's SVME PMI with the latter expected to show improvement. Attention will shift back to the US beginning on Thursday with weekly jobless and the ISM manufacturing index followed on Friday by September employment where another month of slowing improvement is the expectation.