Ahead of Friday's key 8:30am ET.....>

US DATA PREVIEW: Ahead of Friday's key 8:30am ET Sept. CPI, MNI is fielding

questions on if/how much BLS might talk about how recent hurricanes affected the

report. MNI's Kevin Kastner said he'd expect "BLS with CPI, will do as they did

this morning with PPI, and make general comments about any issues with

collecting the survey and that they made no adjustments to their procedures. We

will headline whatever we do get, either from the report itself or from the BLS

analyst that we interview during the lockup." 

- "If there is nothing that stands out with the exception of energy, they are

not likely to say much," he said. "And I would not give much of a chance of a

"CPI ex hurricanes" figure. We already headline CPI ex energy, which is in the

report, so that might be a good guide." 

- But he noted that "as for retail sales and business inventories, they are

likely to say more. Again there will not be a retail sales ex. hurricanes number

that will come out of them, but they would mention if there were any issues with

taking the survey and if they had to fill in any blanks if hard data was

missing."