No more games with BTFP/US PMI/Shipping/Sentiment/Company comments/"The German economy is stuck in a recession"

So the Federal Reserve finally wised up to how banks were gaming its Bank Term Funding Program and now no more ahead of its eventual extinction (hopefully) in March as they raised the bank borrowing rate to where the interest rate paid on excess reserves stands, 5.4%. 

Here is some color on the January S&P Global manufacturing and services PMI seen yesterday where the former rose back to the flat line at 50.3 from 47.9 and services were up by 1.5 pts m/o/m to 52.9. 

With new orders, "Service providers reported the strongest gain for 7 months. More robust demand conditions were linked to greater client referrals and emerging reports of customers having worked through their buffer stocks." New orders rose too for manufacturing but delivery delays were cited "following severe storms and shipping disruptions at times hampered production."

And to the last point, the result was higher prices. "The pace of manufacturing input cost inflation picked up to the steepest since April 2023 amid challenges sourcing materials, higher prices for transportation and increased fuel costs."

On the other hand in the service sector, "service providers signaled the slowest rise in output charges in the current sequence of inflation which began in June 2020 amid efforts to price competitively and drive new orders."

Employment was down slightly from December and "The increase in staffing numbers was only marginal overall and the 2nd softest since last August."

Bottom line, the service sector continues to drive the bus but merging all of the data points being seen, both hard and soft, continues to confuse me. What is becoming clear, the hiring situation has definitely slowed, also seen with other data points. 

Out yesterday, the December Architecture Billings Index, obviously  very sensitive to interest rates and the cost of capital, remained well below 50 at 45.4, little changed with November at 45.3. "Billings at firms declined for eight months of the year, and the last four months saw this overall weakness accelerate. Fortunately, project backlogs at firms eased only slightly through the year despite the overall reported softness in billings." All four categories remain well below 50, commercial/industrial, institutional, mixed practice and multi family residential.

An update on container prices as they were newly reflected today. The Shanghai to Rotterdam price for a 40 foot container was only up modestly to $4,984, up $33 w/o/w but it was $1,148 one month ago and just above $1,000 two months ago. The Shanghai to LA saw a bigger jump but also playing catch up as this route now will cost you $4,344 per container, up $484 w/o/w and up from $1,971 one month ago and $2,000 two months ago. I'm guessing that the geopolitics in the region don't calm anytime soon, with the potential of further escalation so this will be the new challenge in containing goods price inflation.