Economy in Brief

Despite continued weakness in factory sector output around the world during January, industrial commodity prices showed scattered improvement. The industrial price index from the Foundation for International Business and Economic [...]

Dutch retail sales have had a rocky time since 2007. After that, the first flirtation with advancing sales was in 2010, but that did not last. Since 2014, however, year-over-year sales have been steadily advancing. Even so, recent [...]

Initial unemployment insurance claims retreated to 269,000 during the week ended February 6 from an unrevised 285,000 in the prior week. The four-week moving average declined to 281,250, yet has been working higher since October. [...]

The U.S. Treasury Department reported a $55.2 billion budget surplus during January versus a $17.5 billion deficit twelve months earlier. Calendar quirks contributed to the improvement. A $16.0 billion surplus had been expected in the [...]

The National Association of Realtors reported that the Composite Index of Home Affordability declined 3.4% during December (-5.4% y/y). For all of 2015, affordability eased 1.1% following a 6.3% drop in 2014. During the last ten [...]

December is showing weak industrial output in the euro area. We feature Italy and France and some of their IP details in the table above. But of 10 early reporting EMU members, half of them have output falling and one has output flat [...]

Inventories at the wholesale level ticked 0.1% lower (+1.8% y/y) during December following a 0.4% November decline, revised from -0.3%. The decline reflected a broad-based 0.3% fall (+0.5% y/y) in durable goods inventories. Lumber & [...]

Gasoline prices continued to decline last week and remained at the lowest level since January 2009. The pump price for a gallon of regular gasoline fell to an average $1.76 (-19.7% y/y), down from $1.82 in the prior week, according to [...]