Economists expect a 0.4% increase in sales after the 0.6% gain a month earlier, based on the Bloomberg survey median estimate. Delayed for more than a month by the government shutdown, the Census Bureau is scheduled to issue the figures on Tuesday.

Jerome Powell is forcing Wall Street and investors to confront reality, whether they like it or not.

If you’d asked me a year ago, I would have said I think Kevin would be a good pick. I wouldn’t say that today. Kevin has been incredibly dishonest.”

Like everyone else, policymakers at the Federal Reserve are increasingly obsessed with artificial intelligence and its promise of a turbocharged economy. They’re just not ready to make a big call that the revolution is under way.

Dealing with a credit or stock market crisis is a difficult challenge for the Fed in the best of times. Doing so against the backdrop of the chaotic macroeconomic policy-making of the Trump administration will make those challenges all the more daunting.

But it’s not just the building. The Fed itself is changing in ways that may make its future decisions even more inscrutable. An incompetent central bank can be tolerable if it’s predictably incompetent. An unpredictably incompetent central bank is potentially far more dangerous.

What was once seen as a near-certain cut in interest rates next month now looks more like a coin flip as Federal Reserve officials sharply disagree over the economy's health and whether stubborn infla