Happy New Year, everyone! And just like that, we've gone through three years of living with the Covid pandemic - which has arguably reached the endemic phase. Fingers crossed, the world will be able to put this chapter behind us and move forward again. However, not without dealing with the aftermath and consequences to the economy.
One of it has been the surge in inflation pressures, which wasn't helped by the Russia-Ukraine conflict, and we're still very much trying to handle that right now. The good news is that we are starting to see price pressures cool off and German annual inflation today is expected to ease from double-digits to 9.1%.
The monthly reading is estimated to show a 0.3% decline, following the 0.5% drop in November. That will mark the first back-to-back drop in monthly inflation change in Germany since September 2020.
The trend is a common one across Europe but the major worry is that we could get second-round effects and/or inflation may prove to be more sticky and persistent than otherwise thought. That will be a mainstay debate for the year.
Here's the agenda for today:
0530 GMT - North Rhine Westphalia
0900 GMT - Brandenburg
0900 GMT - Hesse
0900 GMT - Bavaria
0900 GMT - Baden Wuerttemberg
1000 GMT - Saxony
1300 GMT - Germany national preliminary figures
Do note that the releases don't exactly follow the schedule at times and may be released a little earlier or later.
