Economy in Brief

The Mortgage Bankers Association index of total mortgage applications fell 1.3% (+53.0% y/y) last week. Applications to refinance were off 1.5% (+79.9% y/y) while home purchase applications slipped 0.6% (-3.0% y/y), down for the third [...]

Chain store sales fell 0.5% last week (+2.9% y/y), down for the fifth straight week. Sales have fallen 2.4% so far in May following a 3.4% rise in April. During the last ten years there has been a 72% correlation between the y/y [...]

The National Association of Realtors (NAR) reported that pending sales of single-family homes during April slumped 5.5% (+14.4% y/y) to their lowest level since December. The sales index level of 95.5 was down 5.5% m/m after three [...]

Soft economies worldwide are continuing to prompt weakness in oil markets. Last week, the pump price of regular gasoline again declined another four cents to $3.67 per gallon. Over the last eight weeks, prices have fallen twenty seven [...]

Austerity has not made life easy in Spain and its goals for deficit reduction seem to be a moving target that is moving ever farther away. However, Prime Minister Rajoy is dedicated to hitting his targets and at the same time he has [...]

The value of the Euro has declined 10% from May 4, 2011 to 1.2523 today. Over roughly the same time period, the broad nominal effective exchange rate has declined 18% to 122.32(2000=100). The daily values of the euro and the broad [...]

The Conference Board's Index of Consumer Confidence during May fell for the fourth month in the last five. The 5.5% decline to 64.9 was from 68.7 last month, initially reported as 69.2. Nevertheless, the index remained up by more-than [...]

The seasonally adjusted Case-Shiller 20-City Home Price Index ticked up 0.1% during March following an unrevised 0.2% February rise. The latest figure eased the year-to-year change to -2.6%, an improvement versus last year's 3.9% rate [...]