Economy in Brief

German IP picks up after drop - The pick-up in German IP is good news. Unfortunately it is still IP rising on the back of capital goods output. The capital goods sector is the backbone of the German export machine. Capital goods [...]

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in its Job Openings & Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) that the October job openings rate improved to 2.5% from an upwardly revised 2.3% during September. These levels remained improved versus the [...]

The German economy continues to show strength in the midst of the financial uncertainties of the Euro Area. The volume of manufacturing new orders rose 1.6% in October. Foreign new orders rose only 0.82%, due largely to a 0.28% fall [...]

Spain’s economy is steadily losing ground. Industrial output made a recovery and began to show Yr/Yr increases but it is now backsliding. Real retail sales cut their recession losses and flirted with making Yr/Yr gains when [...]

The pump price for regular gasoline jumped ten cents last week to $2.96 per gallon. Prices have risen roughly fifty cents per gallon since the middle of last year and have surged from the December-2008 low of $1.61. Yesterday the spot [...]

The latest Manpower Inc. Survey suggested that recent improvement in the U.S. labor market will pick up next quarter. For Q1 2011, the level of the seasonally adjusted diffusion index rose to 9 following a reading of 5 in Q4. The [...]

Spain’s economy is steadily losing ground. Industrial output made a recovery and began to show Yr/Yr increases but it is now backsliding. Real retail sales cut their recession losses and flirted with making Yr/Yr gains when [...]

The price of copper has more than tripled from its low point of $1.2474 per pound on December 24, 2008 to $3.9950 on December 3rd of this year, as can be seen in the first chart which shows the price of copper found in the Haver data [...]