Economy in Brief

The Mortgage Bankers Association reported that mortgage applications fell 1.4% last week following an 8.9% decline during the prior week. Nevertheless, overall applications remain up 18.3% from September '09. Last week's total decline [...]

The pump price for regular gasoline has been roughly stable for the last four months near last week's level of $2.72 per gallon. Prices remained down from $2.91 in early-May. Nevertheless, pulled higher with recovery from the last [...]

At yesterday's meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee, the Federal Funds rate was held at 0.125% where it has been since December 2008. The discount rate also was held constant at 0.75%. In the Fed's statement released after the [...]

Canada's CPI rose by 0.1% in August as the core rose by 0.1% as well. Canada's inflation trends show moderate-to-low variability but not much sense of acceleration. Inflation seems to be subdued with only a slight hint of acceleration [...]

Each quarter, the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia surveys a group of professional forecasters to gain perspective on the outlook for the U.S. economy. In the August survey, the panel expected the current recovery to continue. [...]

The cash price for a pound of cotton was 95.22 cents last Friday, up 19% since the end of July. By Monday of this week, the futures price was over one dollar up almost 25%. The first two charts show the daily futures and cash prices [...]

Housing starts improved last month to the highest level since April; just before the expiration of the government's home buyer tax credit. August housing starts improved 10.5% m/m to 598,000 (AR) after a 0.4% July uptick which was [...]

For roughly one year, Haver Analytics has used June 2009 in its charts as the end of the most recent recession. Today the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), the arbiter for dating recessions, declared June 2009 as the end to [...]