Economy in Brief

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 [...]

The U.S. foreign trade deficit narrowed markedly to $38.7B in October from $44.6B in September (revised from $44.0B). Consensus forecasts had looked for a result unchanged from September. Both exports and imports contributed to the [...]

The happier mood adopted by the consumer this past summer brightened further this holiday season. During early-December the University of Michigan Index of Consumer Sentiment rose to 74.4 from 71.6 last month. It was the highest level [...]

Firmness in oil prices continues to dominate this measure of overall U.S. import prices. During November, import prices jumped another 1.3% after an upwardly revised 1.0% October increase, initially reported as 0.9%. The increase [...]

Credit market borrowing grew $1,062 billion, seasonally adjusted annual rate, in Q3, almost twice as strong as Q2's $549 billion and the first push above $1 trillion since the market implosion in late 2008. These data are from the [...]

More angst in Euroland- Just in case there wasn’t enough to worry about in the e-Zone, Germany is now building a mild head of steam for inflation. The Yr/Yr rate is 1.4% while the three-month rate is 1.9%. The e-Zone as whole has an [...]