SocGen economist Omair Sharif eyed..........>

US VIEW: SocGen economist Omair Sharif eyed "avocados, gasoline, and gigabytes"

as "over the last few days, several developments have raised questions about the

near-term inflation outlook. These include cuts to various food items (prices)

at Whole Foods, the impact on gasoline prices from Hurricane Harvey, as well as

the potential for further changes in wireless services costs from a large

wireless operator's change in plan offerings. In short, we suspect that the

September NSA index could see some upward revisions on the back of higher

gasoline prices and the potential for a small drag, or even a modest boost, from

the wireless services index."

- He said there is a "whole lot of noise around food inflation" as the

"announcement that Whole Foods has sharply reduced prices for a select number of

items has touched off concern that the CPI's food at home index could be dragged

down in the coming months However, we are skeptical of this notion for a couple

of reasons. First, the total weight in the CPI of the items that saw price cuts

totals 1.21%, and even that is almost certainly larger than the true weight."