Economy in Brief: 2008

France and Italy often put their respective industrial sectors on a common trend. Although French IP has been expanding from mid 2006 to late 2007, Italy’s IP was declining and losing momentum in that period. However from late 2007 [...]

The U.S. foreign trade deficit widened surprisingly to $62.3B from 59.0B in January which was only slightly revised. Consensus expectations had been for a shallower deficit of $57.5B during February. Much of the surprise in the [...]

Initial unemployment insurance claims last week retraced all of the prior period's surge. The 53,000 decline to 357,000 followed a little revised 39,000 rise during the prior week and dropped claims to their lowest level since early [...]

The U.S. foreign trade deficit widened surprisingly to $62.3B from 59.0B in January which was only slightly revised. Consensus expectations had been for a shallower deficit of $57.5B during February. Much of the surprise in the [...]

The German trade picture shows a month-to-month slowing imports and flat exports. The slowdown in both the flows may be just monthly volatility or something more ominous. So far Europeans have remained up beat on their economic [...]

The sequential growth rates for January tell the story compared to their February counterparts: In January year/eayr output growth was 0.7% sliding to an annual rate of 0.6% over six months and to a pace of 0.4% over three months. UK [...]

For February, the National Association of Realtors reported that the level of pending sales of existing homes fell 1.9% after having been roughly unchanged in January. The latest reading was as expected and it was down 11.6% from the [...]

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in the Job Openings & Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) that for February, the job openings rate was unchanged from the prior month at 2.7%. The 2008 figures continued down from 2007 and from 2006. [...]