Economy in Brief

Businesses want more inventories lining the shelves. A 0.7% increase in inventories during October eased after an upwardly revised 1.3% September gain. However, the 6.9% y/y increase was nearly the strongest since late-2006. Inventory [...]

The U.S. Producer Price Index for finished goods surged 0.8% last month, double the 0.4% gains during the prior three. The rise outpaced Consensus expectations for a 0.6% increase. Higher energy prices were behind much of the strength [...]

EMU continues to be a bit of an enigma. Its economic data have held up, the OECD leading indicators project a slowdown. And, market treatment of Euro-area bonds has been rough, "R"-rated at least. Bonds get bashed - Today Spanish and [...]

There was little change in the German financial community's appraisal of current conditions and expectations for the next six months in the German economy from November to December. The latest ZEW survey that took place during the [...]

Holiday cheer was very evident in the latest retail spending report from the Commerce Department. Sales rose 0.8% during November (7.7% y/y) following gains of 1.7% and 0.9% during the prior two months, respectively, revised from 1.2% [...]

Inflation in China accelerated in the last two months. The year to year increase in the consumer price index rose from 3.6% in September to 4.4% in October and 5.1% in November, well above the government's target of 3%. Comparable [...]

Growth in the monetary aggregates has roughly doubled during the last several months versus growth earlier in the year. The figures in the table below indicate that growth in the narrow aggregates has picked up the most as the cost of [...]

The OECD LEI is off in October. For the US index there is still some uptick in October compared to September. But Japan's index is off by 0.4% despite increasingly consistent gains in the Nikkei stock index in Japan. Germany's index [...]