by Calculated Risk on 4/19/2017 07:15:00 PM

Some interesting comments from Dave Altig, Nicholas Parker and Brent Meyer at Macroblog: The Fed’s Inflation Goal: What Does the Public Know?

[O]ne natural question is whether the public is aware of this 2 percent target. We've posed this question a few times to our Business Inflation Expectations Panel, which is a set of roughly 450 private, nonfarm firms in the Southeast. These firms range in size from large corporations to owner operators.

Unsurprisingly, to us at least—and maybe to you if you're a regular macroblog reader—the typical respondent answered 2 percent (the same answer our panel gave us in 2015 and back in 2011). At a minimum, southeastern firms appear to have gotten and retained the message.
...
In a follow-up to our question about the numerical target, in the latest survey we asked our panel whether they thought the Fed was more, less, or equally likely to tolerate inflation below or above its target.

One in five respondents believes the Federal Reserve is more likely to accept inflation above its target, while nearly 40 percent believe it is more likely to accept inflation below its target. Twenty-five percent of firms believe the Federal Reserve is equally likely to accept inflation above or below its target. The remainder of respondents were unsure. This pattern was similar across firm sizes and industries.

In other words, more firms see the inflation target as a threshold (or ceiling) that the Fed is averse to crossing than see it as a symmetric target.
emphasis added

Thursday:
• At 8:30 AM ET, The initial weekly unemployment claims report will be released.  The consensus is for 244 thousand initial claims, up from 234 thousand the previous week.

• Also at 8:30 AM, the Philly Fed manufacturing survey for April. The consensus is for a reading of 26.0, down from 32.8.