An astute Lead Left reader sent us the following note regarding last week’s commentary:

“Besides the beneficial economic impact of pent-up consumerism, the Biden stimulus package, and vaccine distributions, you should also mention the healthy state of household savings,” he wrote. “February’s data [just released] showed family net worth’s hit a record high of $130.2 trillion. That’s up 10% from one year ago.

“Granted a lot of that is the stock market run-up,” he went on. “And it doesn’t reflect the challenge many unemployed people are having making ends meet with Covid still rampant across the country. But it adds fuel to the inflation fire some are concerned about.”

Nuveen’s Brian Nick noted the good shape of our family balance sheets. But he also pointed to the tame inflation numbers just in: core CPI actually slowed to an annual rate of 0.7% since December and 1.2% since September (vs 1.3% the year prior). A long way from the Fed’s 2% target.