Economy in Brief

The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas indicated in its Texas Manufacturing Outlook Survey that the General Business Activity Index increased to 24.5 during February, the strongest reading since April 2006. Improved readings for [...]

A nice step up in growth for Europe continues The EU and EMU indexes compiled by the EU Commission show gains in February but small gains. After a period of deceleration dating from mid-2015, the EMU area and its largest economies [...]

The National Association of Realtors (NAR) reported that pending home sales declined by 2.8% in January to an index level of 106.4. The index, which is reported on a 2001 = 100 basis, had hovered in a range near 109 for the past year [...]

Durable goods orders increased by 1.8% in January (-0.6% y/y), following a revised 0.8% decline in December. The January rise was close to the Action Economics forecast survey median of 1.6%. Although the headline orders figure [...]

Confidence measures 'go their own way' but wind up in the same place In February, Italian consumer confidence trolled a five-month low while business confidence perked up. At the end of the day, both confidence indexes sit in their [...]

Sales of new single-family homes rebounded in January, rising 3.7% m/m to 555,000 units, seasonally adjusted at an annual rate. The sharp 10.4% m/m drop in December was revised up to a 7.0% m/m decline (575,000 units), but this was [...]

Initial claims for unemployment insurance increased to 244,000 (-7.6% y/y) during the week ended February 18 from 238,000 claims in the week prior, revised from 239,000. Expectations had been for 240,000 claims in the Action Economics [...]

Despite a coming setback to German confidence in March, the GfK look-ahead confidence reading remains strong and is barely off that index's best of all-time levels. There have been three episodes in which the GfK reading has attained [...]