by Calculated Risk on 2/24/2013 09:58:00 PM

I'm frequently asked about the "Sequester". Next week the "Sequester" budget cuts will begin if government does not take any action, and over the next 7 months the sequester will require $85 billion in cuts, about half from defense programs. This is one of those really dumb policies that is hard to stop. The cuts will not be catastrophic, but as we've discussed, the deficit will decline sharply this year already, and we really don't need additional deficit reduction in the near term. Here are a couple of articles on the cuts:

From the WaPo: The big sequester gamble: How badly will the cuts hurt? and White House releases state-by-state breakdown of sequester’s effects

Monday:
• At 8:30 AM ET, the Chicago Fed National Activity Index for January will be released. This is a composite index of other data.

• At 10:30 AM, the Dallas Fed Manufacturing Survey for February will be released. The consensus is a decrease to 4.0 from 5.5 in January (above zero is expansion).

Weekend:
• Summary for Week Ending Feb 22nd
• Schedule for Week of Feb 24th

The Asian markets are mostly up tonight with the Nikkei up 1.9%, and Shanghai Composite up 0.3%.

From CNBC: Pre-Market Data and Bloomberg futures: the S&P futures are down 2 and DOW futures are down 20 (fair value).

Oil prices have moved down a little recently with WTI futures at $93.00 per barrel and Brent at $113.82 per barrel.