Economy in Brief

Initial claims dropped sharply last week to 434,000, the lowest level since early-July. It's happened before. Initial claims for unemployment insurance would fall sharply, suggesting labor market improvement, only to subsequently [...]

The Mortgage Bankers Association reported that a 3.2% w/w rise in mortgage applications recovered some of the prior week's decline. The stabilization left the uptrend in applications intact. They were at their highest level since May [...]

Home sales remain in the doldrums. The Census Department reported September new home sales rose 6.6% to 307,000 from an unrevised 288,000. Nevertheless the latest remained near the series' low. Expectations were for September sales of [...]

Global liquidity is going nowhere. In EMU the nominal growth rates for money supply growth have moved up ever so slightly over the past 12-months. The same cannot be said of real money growth. Inflation adjusted credit growth has not [...]

Be not misled by the headline figure. The underlying trend of durable orders has weakened substantially. The Commerce Department reported that September orders surged 3.3% following a 1.0% August decline that was slightly less than [...]

A number of reports on consumer and business confidence were released today--four pertaining to the consumer for France, Germany, Italy and Switzerland and one pertaining to business for the Netherlands. In Switzerland, the latest [...]

The Conference Board reported that consumer confidence improved slightly this month but remained near the lowest level since February. The index of overall confidence rose 3.3% to 50.2 from a little-changed 48.6 in September. [...]

Home price gains lost forward momentum this summer. During August, the seasonally adjusted Case-Shiller 20-City Home Price Index fell 0.3%. It was the second month of decline and pulled the y/y gain down to 1.7% from 4.7% this past [...]