Economy in Brief

The U.S. current account deficit lessened at the end of last year to $110.4B from $112.4B in Q3. A deeper deficit of $113.0B had been expected. The easing left the deficit to GDP ratio at 2.8%, its least in roughly three years. For [...]

European employment trends show that employment in the Zone is at a seven year low. Even with stagnant population growth this is not a good development. Over the last year the unemployment rate for the Zone has gone up by 0.7 [...]

Signs of improvement in the U.S. labor market are continuing to surface.Initial claims for jobless insurance fell to 332,000 (-8.5% y/y) during the week ended March 9 versus 342,000 a week earlier (revised from 342,000). Consensus [...]

The producer price index for finished goods gained 0.2% last month (1.8% y/y), the same as during January. The latest rise matched expectations. Also, as expected, there was a 0.2% gain (1.7% y/y) in prices excluding food & energy [...]

Prices in the U.S. foreign trade sector increased during February, for the second consecutive month. Import prices jumped 1.1% (-0.3% y/y), about double the unrevised 0.6% January rise. The Action Economics survey looked for prices to [...]

All of a sudden, business inventories reversed their prior moderation and jumped in January. Total business inventories surged 1.0% (5.6% y/y) during January following an upwardly revised 0.3% December rise. The latest was the [...]

Manufacturing industrial production fell by 0.6% in January. The drop follows a gain of 1.1% in December which follows a 0.8% drop in November. Although manufacturing production is declining over all horizons its pace of decline seems [...]

The consumer regained the inclination to spend last month. February retail sales increased 1.1% (4.6% y/y) following a 0.2% January uptick, earlier reported as 0.1%. The latest rise exceeded expectations for a 0.5% gain, according to [...]