Economy in Brief: 2017

The housing market exhibited firm growth in 2016. Overall housing starts increased to 1.168 million, the highest level since 2007. The gain was paced by a rise in single-family starts to 783,000. Multi-family starts rose to 385,000. [...]

Energy prices notched lower last week. Regular gasoline prices slipped to $2.36 per gallon (+23.2% y/y) from $2.39 per gallon in the prior week. Haver Analytics constructs factors adjusting for the seasonal variation in these pump [...]

The Mortgage Bankers Association reported that its total Mortgage Market Volume Index improved 0.8% last week (-12.0% y/y) following a 5.8% jump during the week prior. Purchase applications declined 5.2% (+0.9% y/y) while refinancing [...]

The Composite Housing Market Index from the National Association of Home Builders-Wells Fargo fell to 67 during January (+9.8% y/y) following a revised jump to 69 in December, initially reported as 70. It remained near the highest [...]

During all of 2016, industrial production improved 0.5%. In December alone, industrial output increased 0.8% following a 0.7% November decline, revised from -0.4%. The latest reading exceeded expectations for a 0.6% increase in the [...]

The Consumer Price Index during all of 2016 increased 2.1% from December-to-December, the quickest y/y gain since June 2014. The 2.2% advance in prices excluding food & energy compared to a 2.1% rise in 2015. During December alone, [...]

The chart features the year-on-year inflation result in the three largest EMU economies as well as the economy-weighted result for the EMU itself. Inflation is turning higher in each of the countries in the chart but at different [...]

Table 1 shows a sharp improvement in German current conditions and a rise in German expectations. The German current index has been better historically less than 7% of the time while expectations are better about 54% of the time. [...]