The next couple months the focus is absolutely on the inflation data... as we get to the summer, if oil prices have come down, I do expect softer demand is going to limit the pass through of higher oil prices to core inflation. Once we get to the summer, the pattern the last few years has been that we start to get weaker labor market data over the summer. It's really by late summer that the unemployment rate has risen from the start of the year. We expect that pattern to repeat again this year and the last couple years that's meant a Fed cut starting in September and that's what we have in our forecast.

This low-hire, low-fire environment has meant that the unemployment rate is rising something like three to four-tenths every year. Demand is just running below whatever that break even employment rate is. That's been the trend for the last few years.

March retail sales are reported in nominal terms. So they will look strong. There will be this surge in gas prices... We don't what we want to know is, how much does that subtract from spending on other types of goods? You have to spend more on gas. March might be a little bit too soon to know those effects... Whatever you were expecting, the boost to consumption from those larger tax refunds to be, should probably be less now in real terms that a lot will be going to paying higher gas prices. So yeah, we would expect that consumption is slowing this year.

The fundamental driver of consumption first and foremost is going to be, do people have a job or not. Is aggregate labor income slowing? And it will be, but unless you see those larger layoffs, I imagine consumption would hold up well enough.