Economy in Brief

The chart tells a pretty clear story that requires little embellishment from me. The good news is that you can see the pit that the PMIs fell into in recession and Europe is not anywhere near as deep in its drop as it was in the [...]

The U.S. House Price Index from the Federal Housing and Finance Agency (FHFA) now has risen for four consecutive months. The July increase of 0.8% followed a 0.7% June rise. The gain lessened the y/y decline to 3.2%. The greatest [...]

Initial claims for jobless insurance retreated to 423,000 last week from 432,000 during the week prior (revised from 428,000). The figure roughly matched Consensus expectations for 422,000 claims, according to the Action Economics [...]

As expected, the Federal Open Market Committee today left the Federal funds rate in a "range from 0 to 1/4 percent." The Fed funds rate has remained unchanged since late-2008 at its lowest level ever. The discount rate also was left [...]

The National Association of Realtors reported that August sales of existing homes rose 7.7% to 5.030M (AR, 18.6% y/y) from an unrevised 4.670 in July. The y/y comparison is positive because of last year's decline after the ending of [...]

After its series of disasters Japan was expected to provide a shot of growth for the global economy as it was re-built. But the rebuilding effort is not pushing ahead with strength. One unexpected outcome has been the European debt [...]

Lower interest rates certainly are generating strength in mortgage refinancing, but so far no similar increase in home sales. The total index of mortgage applications rose 0.6% last week to 702.7 (March 16, 1990 = 100). Overall, [...]

Pessimism is increasing among German institutional investors and financial analysts. The latest ZEW report, which covers the period September 2nd to September 20th shows that the excess of pessimists over optimists rose 5.7 percentage [...]