This probably doesn't mean inflation is about to fall a lot further - producer price numbers the same day will remind us that food and petrol price rises will prevent that - but it might make it easier for the Bank of England to do more quantitative easing next month. Wednesday's minutes of the last meeting of the monetary policy committee are likely to show that members are already considering such a move.
Lower inflation is also relieving the squeeze on households' real incomes, which should help consumer spending to grow. We'll see in Thursday's official retail sales numbers whether this is happening. Economists expect to see annual growth in volumes of around 2 per cent in September.
Friday's public sector finances, however, might cause concern. They are likely to show that current borrowing (a measure not distorted by the transfer of the Royal Mail's pension fund) so far this year has been around £65bn, £11bn more than in the same period of 2011. This tells us not so much that fiscal policy is loose, but rather that the private sector is still a big net saver, the counterpart to which must be big government borrowing.
Overseas, we'll get confirmation on Thursday that China's economy is slowing down. Annual growth in industrial production is likely to have fallen to around 9 per cent, and GDP growth in the third quarter is expected to be around 7 per cent, its lowest since the worst point of the 2009 global recession. The big issue is: how far does this reflect a merely cyclical slowdown, due in part to weaker export markets, and how far a slowdown in long-term growth as the economy matures?
US figures, meanwhile, should confirm that the economy is growing slowly. Official industrial production and retail sales figures for September are likely to be consistent with the economy growing at an annualised rate of around 2 per cent in the third quarter. That's not enough to reduce unemployment. There might, though, be a glimmer of hope in the Empire State survey of manufacturers in the New York area, as this could confirm last month's finding of a pick-up in business optimism.
Such optimism might not be confined to the US. Germany's ZEW survey could also show a small rise in expectations of future economic activity.
