In the well-known Looney Tunes cartoon, Wile E Coyote regularly runs off a cliff in pursuit of the Road Runner and is suspended in mid-air temporarily. When he looks down and realises his predicament, he falls into the canyon below. In real life, US consumers and businesses have just run straight off a cash cliff, now that extra federal assistance to small companies and unemployed workers has ended.

The US economy is now suspended in mid-air. The unemployment rate fell to 8.4 per cent in August from 10.2 per cent. Home and auto sales have been robust, driven by historically low interest rates. Consumer spending rose modestly during August. Numbers of seated restaurant diners and manufacturing output increased. The spread of the virus has slowed. New cases in Arizona, California and Texas are trending down, though this has been partly offset by rising caseloads in 18 other states mainly driven by university reopenings.

Don’t look down. The Conference Board consumer confidence index dropped to a six-year low in August. Worries about jobs and incomes increased as Congress failed to agree on a new stimulus package and the $600 per week unemployment benefit bonus expired. A temporary $300 weekly federal enhancement has been disbursed in only six states so far. Funding for that will run out in just over a month. More than 29m Americans are still collecting some form of unemployment aid, yet federal and state unemployment benefits fell by around $60bn last month compared with July, according to research from Evercore ISI.