Economy in Brief: 2017

Retail gasoline prices rose eased slightly last week to $2.57 per gallon (+19.2% y/y) following an increase to $2.59. It remained near the highest level since early-October. Haver Analytics constructs factors adjusting for the [...]

Retail gasoline prices eased last week to $2.57 per gallon (+19.2% y/y) following an increase to $2.59. It remained near the highest level since early-October. Haver Analytics constructs factors adjusting for the seasonal variation in [...]

The National Association of Realtors reported that sales of existing homes increased 2.0% (-0.9% y/y) during October to 5.480 million units (SAAR) after a little-revised 0.4% slip to 5.370 million in September. It was the highest [...]

A number of U.K. reports or actions of interest have come to light over the past day or so that give us some insight into how the U.K. economy is coping with Brexit. The CBI industrial survey released this morning shows strong total [...]

The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia's Nonmanufacturing Business Index of current conditions at the company level declined to 16.4 in November from 24.7 during October. It was the third straight monthly decline and left the index [...]

The Conference Board's Composite Index of Leading Economic Indicators jumped 1.2% during October following a 0.1% September rise, revised from -0.2%. It was the strongest monthly increase since November 2013 and occurred as hurricane [...]

Japan's trade trends, seemingly, offer little to the story about Japan's growth or global growth. Its surpluses have flattened out in the 300 billion yen range. Its exports and imports are now growing at very flat and highly similar [...]

Not only is the EMU current account at surplus an all-time record of 37.8 billion euros (all-time means since the area was formed in January 1999) but that surplus has been stubbornly large. And that is a symptom of something bad. We [...]