Economy in Brief

Consumers continue to rein in spending. The latest report from the International Council of Shopping Centers and Goldman Sachs indicated that chain store sales fell 2.5% last week (+2.1% y/y) to the lowest level since February 2012. [...]

The pump price for a gallon of regular gasoline rose notably for the fourth consecutive week. Last week's seven cent increase to $3.61 per gallon (2.5% y/y) pulled them up 36 cents from the December low. The norm for this time of [...]

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in the December Job Openings & Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) report, the job openings rate fell to 2.6% from 2.8% in November, revised from 2.7%. The latest remained up from the recession [...]

The National Federation of Independent Business reported that its January Small Business Optimism Index rose for the second straight month. The advance to 88.9 was from 88.0 in December and 87.5 in November, the lowest reading since [...]

First-time homebuyers saw three necessary ingredients for a favorable buying environment in 2012; low prices, lower interest rates and lower monthly payments. The National Association of Homebuilders reported that their Composite [...]

In the OECD framework the US economy picked up a bit of steam in December. The UK and Japan each showed their ratios to trend above 100 and advanced slightly compared to November. But the sense of growth and momentum form the OECD [...]

To be sure business sentiment in France is weak. But it is also engaged in a long swing higher and it continues to extend that trend with a gain in January despite a number of internal readings that warn us that the strength in this [...]

The U.S. foreign trade deficit during December improved to $38.5 from little-revised $48.6B in November. A $46.0B deficit had been expected. The latest deficit was the least since January 2010. The improvement was due to a 2.1% [...]