It should be quiet until the FOMC decision but warnings about skews in economic data due to warm weather are continuing. Perhaps the talk is overdone — and a large part of the recovery is inarguably real — but it was a remarkably warm winter. It’s almost impossible to calculate the impacts of sunshine but this number jumps out:
One reason why consumers may have continued to spend despite the increased pressure at the pump was the unusually warm weather, which the Energy Information Administration expects to knock off $629 from the average natural-gas heating bill this winter.