Economy in Brief

The overall U.S. unemployment rate declined last month to 7.3%. While the rate's improvement was widespread, it continued to reflect great variation amongst individual states. Nevada continued to be at the high end of the jobless [...]

Italy's trade picture has improved relatively sharply. Its trade position has been moving strongly into surplus over more than a year now. Over the last two months, however, the improvement in the trade trend has abated somewhat as [...]

Sales of existing homes increased 1.7% during August (13.2% y/y) to 5.480 mil. units (AR), according to the National Association of Realtors. Earlier figures were unrevised and the latest was the highest since February 2007. Consensus [...]

The U.S. current account deficit decreased In Q2 to $98.9 billion from $104.9 billion in Q1. Q2 had the smallest such deficit since Q3 2009. It represents 2.4% of GDP, and that ratio is the smallest since Q2 1998, that is, 15 years [...]

The index of Leading Economic Indicators, published by the Conference Board, increased 0.7% last month (4.2% y/y). The gain was the strongest since April and followed an upwardly-revised 0.5% July increase. A 0.5% rise had been [...]

The Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank reported that its General Business Conditions Index for September jumped to 22.3 from 9.3 in August. This latest reading was the highest since March 2011 and was much firmer than Consensus [...]

The job market remains on a firm footing. That's suggested by last week's modest rise in initial claims for jobless insurance to 309,000 from 294,000 during the previous period, revised from 292,000. Expectations had been for a larger [...]

It's too soon to reduce the large doses of liquidity being provided to the economy, concluded the Fed in its announcement following today's meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee. "The Committee sees the improvement in economic [...]