Economy in Brief: 2010

What strength in home prices there might have been evaporated this summer. During September, the seasonally adjusted Case-Shiller 20-City Home Price Index fell 0.8% after a 0.5% August drop that was deeper than reported initially. It [...]

In spite of financial troubles in Ireland, Greece, Spain and Portugal, forward looking indicators are showing signs of improvement in the level of economic activity in the Euro Area as a whole. The latest measure to show improvement, [...]

By sector retailing has the highest rank in its historic queue of values followed by the industrial sector. Construction is the weakest sector followed by services. But the change in the services index this month was the 13th largest [...]

The "misery index" is a popular indicator of stress in the U.S. economy and it now shows plenty of it. The idea for the figure was created by Yale University economist Arthur Okun. The two components of the series are the unemployment [...]

While Germany's IFO survey is still looking to be bullet-proof in October orders fell and fell sharply in September, setting a pattern to be followed throughout the e-Zone (see the accompanying table). German domestic orders dropped [...]

Tom Moeller began last month's discussion of durable goods order with the warning, "Be not misled by the headline figure", which was +3.3%, a hefty one-month gain. He continued, "The underlying trend of durable orders has weakened [...]

Weakness in the housing market was reinforced with this month's readings. Yesterday, the figures on sales of existing single-family homes slipped. Today's reading indicated that sales of new homes collapsed. The 8.1% decline to [...]

The sour mood adopted by the consumer this summer seems to be brightening. For November, the full-month consumer sentiment reading of 71.6 was a marked improvement from mid-month. The University of Michigan Index of Consumer Sentiment [...]