Economy in Brief

Industrial sector activity continues to soften. The Empire State Factory Index of General Business Conditions for September fell to -10.41, its lowest level of the economic recovery. Consensus expectations had been for m/m improvement [...]

Industrial production weak month, still up on quarter IP fell sharply in August ( the Fed had this number in its pocket at the FOMC meeting yesterday) led by a 3.7% drop in utilities output. But MFG alone also fell sharply, dropping [...]

Inflation is remaining moderate. But the weakness in core prices this month may not be as widespread as a 0.1% core rise would have you believe. It is always dodgy to try to judge inflation trends when energy prices are gyrating. The [...]

Retail sales seemed to surge in August even as July's gain was cut back to +0.6% from +0.8%. But reality is a bit grimmer. The retail sales gain ex motor vehicle sales stands up at 0.8% but then if you subtract gas station sales from [...]

The PPI is the most volatile and the least important of the "major" US gauges of inflation. Still it does send a signal and we prefer to look at the components of the PPI that will feed most directly into the CPI since the Fed places [...]

The OECD LEISs show slowdowns across most of EMU as well as for EMU itself. China is in "official" slowdown mode. The US escapes that designation as its reading is above 100. Still, the US measure has slipped a tick month-to month but [...]

U.S. import prices rose 0.7% in August, the first monthly increase since March, driven by a 4.1% surge in petroleum. July's total decreased 0.7%, revised from -0.6% reported initially. The August total was actually somewhat lower than [...]

The Department of Commerce announced today that the U. S. trade balance on goods and services was -$42.0 billion in July, slightly worse than the revised June figure of -$41.9 billion. Exports of goods and services were $183.l billion [...]