Economy in Brief

Initial unemployment insurance claims edged down to 331,000 (-11.7% y/y) during the week of August 24 from 337,000 in the week prior, initially reported as 336,000. The latest figure nearly matched an expected 332,000 in the Action [...]

U.S. economic growth of 2.5% last quarter (AR, 1.6% y/y) was more robust than last month's estimated gain of 1.7%. The figure also slightly outpaced the expected 2.3% gain in the Action Economics Forecast Survey. The foreign trade and [...]

Apollo 17? The understated words that informed the world of the serious risk that the US space mission called `Apollo 13' faced came with the simple phrase, "Houston, we have a problem." Unfortunately, no one in Europe is telling [...]

The National Association of Realtors (NAR) reported that pending sales of single-family homes during July declined 1.3% m/m but remained up 6.7% versus July of last year. The monthly decline followed an unrevised 0.4% June slip. [...]

The Mortgage Bankers Association reported that the recent increase in mortgage interest rates gained momentum last week. The 14 basis point w/w increase was the largest in two months. Moreover, the effective interest rate on a 15-year [...]

The Conference Board's Consumer Confidence Index ticked up to 81.5 this month from an upwardly revised 81.0 during July, last month reported as 80.3. The level of the confidence index peaked at 82.1 in June. Consensus expectations [...]

The Ifo index continues to rise in August. The all-sector climate index is up to 7.6 in August from 5.0 in July. At that point it stands in the top 20% of its historic queue (80.5 percentile). These queue standings place the current [...]

The price for a gallon of regular gasoline was unchanged last week at $3.55 last week (-5.9% y/y). Prices remained down from the $3.78 per gallon peak reached late in February. Haver Analytics constructs seasonal factors to account [...]