Retail sales in Japan are off by 0.2% month-to-month in February, falling on that basis for the second month in a row on seasonally adjusted data. Still, retail sales are up by 1.7% from one year ago. With only two exceptions since [...]
Introducing
Robert Brusca
in:Our Authors
Robert A. Brusca is Chief Economist of Fact and Opinion Economics, a consulting firm he founded in Manhattan. He has been an economist on Wall Street for over 25 years. He has visited central banking and large institutional clients in over 30 countries in his career as an economist. Mr. Brusca was a Divisional Research Chief at the Federal Reserve Bank of NY (Chief of the International Financial markets Division), a Fed Watcher at Irving Trust and Chief Economist at Nikko Securities International. He is widely quoted and appears in various media. Mr. Brusca holds an MA and Ph.D. in economics from Michigan State University and a BA in Economics from the University of Michigan. His research pursues his strong interests in non aligned policy economics as well as international economics. FAO Economics’ research targets investors to assist them in making better investment decisions in stocks, bonds and in a variety of international assets. The company does not manage money and has no conflicts in giving economic advice.
Publications by Robert Brusca
Global| Mar 29 2018Japan's Retail Sales Show Some Life Year Over Year
- Global| Mar 28 2018
German Consumer Confidence Holds the High Ground
The look-ahead consumer climate metric from GfK for Germany shows an uptick in April. Confidence sits in the top 2 percentile of its historic rank of all confidence measures for Germany since early-2002. The components for the GfK [...]
- Global| Mar 27 2018
EU Commission Indexes for EMU Fall Again; What Is the Message Here?
EU Commission indexes for the EMU area turned down broadly, falling for the straight third month. The five sector indexes saw declines in three sectors (industrial, retail, and services), a gain in one (construction), and unchanged [...]
- Global| Mar 26 2018
Eurozone Economic Outlook from IFO, Istat and KOF
According to the Eurozone Economic Outlook that is jointly published by the IFO Institute, Italy's statistical office Istat and the KOF Swiss Economic Institute, EMU area GDP is projected to grow 0.6% each in the first and second [...]
- Global| Mar 23 2018
Japan’s CPI Pace Moves Higher As New Risks Emerge
Japan’s CPI moved higher, rising by 0.1% in February after a 0.4% increase in January. This marks a 12-month string of monthly CPI changes without a month-to-month decline. This is the longest such string for Japan without the CPI [...]
- Global| Mar 22 2018
Composite PMIs Slip; How Far Will They Slide?
The drop off in the EMU manufacturing PMI is sharp; two full diffusion points in March. Meanwhile, the services gauge lops off more than one full point. As a result, the overall EMU private sector PMI drops by nearly two diffusion [...]
- Global| Mar 21 2018
Spain's Trade Trends and Performance Deteriorate
Spain's trade deficit widened to 4.0 billion euros in January from 1.1 billion euros in December/ Exports fell by 2.2% m/m as imports jumped by 9.4% m/m driving the deficit higher. Spanish data are hard handicap because of their [...]
- Global| Mar 20 2018
ZEW Expectations for Germany and Elsewhere Drop Sharply; What Would a Trade War Look Like--Really?
The ZEW expectations for Germany as well as across a number of developed economies pulled back relatively sharply in March as fears of a trade war touched all the outlooks and the rising euro had some special consequences for EMU [...]
- Global| Mar 19 2018
EMU Trade Surplus Shrinks A Bit As Trade Attacks Lurk
While the EMU trade surplus is the lowest in three months, it is also still higher than five month's surpluses back to January 2017 and higher than anything before November 2014. The 12-month average for a surplus is 20.1 billion [...]
- Global| Mar 16 2018
EMU Inflation Continues to Stay Under Wraps While the ECB Waits for the World to Change...Will It?
EMU inflation is even weaker upon its final revision. In February the HICP fell by 0.1% with core inflation up by 0.1% even the three-month pace of inflation is below 1.5% at 1.4% with the core pace even weaker at 1.2%. In February [...]
- Global| Mar 15 2018
European Car Registrations Fall- What Does It Mean?
Auto sales are a very cyclical economic variable. They are usually very good at pegging the business cycle. However, registrations in Europe are now following a path that is a bit hard to place. Forecasting and making economic [...]
- Global| Mar 14 2018
Cross Currents Swirl through European IP Trends
EMU industrial output fell by 1% in January. IP trends are relatively steady over 12 months and six months, but output is down to a 1.9% rate of growth over three months. Manufacturing output trends are in the 4.5% to 6% range over [...]
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