Economy in Brief: 2008

The ISAE business index is still in a weakening trend. However, it currently only hovers near the midpoint of a range it has occupied over the last eight years. But looking at the table below we see that the domestic economy is [...]

Weakness remains in play in the UK retail sector. In January the ‘+4’ orders and sales results continue a trend of progressively weaker net balance results that extends back to early 2007. Still those readings bested the ‘-5’ for [...]

The Conference Board reported today that consumer confidence gave back about all of its December gain. The level fell 3.0% in January to a reading of 87.9. The decline was slightly less than had been expected by economists but it was [...]

Orders for durable manufactured goods surged 5.2% last month helped very much by a jump in orders for commercial aircraft. December's rise was the largest m/m gain since July. Nevertheless, a reduced increase in orders for all of 2007 [...]

Orders for durable manufactured goods surged 5.2% last month helped very much by a jump in orders for commercial aircraft. December's rise was the largest m/m gain since July. Nevertheless, a reduced increase in orders for all of 2007 [...]

Confidence indicators for the Czech Republic and Slovenia were published today. They give a mixed picture. Consumer confidence was up in the Czech Republic and down in Slovenia; confidence in industry was down slightly in the Czech [...]

At the end of 2007, new single family home sales dropped 4.7% to 604,000 after falling 12.6% m/m during November. A sales rate of 649,000 was the Consensus expectation for last month. The full year, however, contained much worse news. [...]

On the face of it money supply growth should not give us much cause to fear recession. The US and UK show slowdowns in high frequency growth rates of money supply but only the US three-month rate is a negative one; and three-month [...]