Economy in Brief

Growth scare is OVER! German factory orders spurted in August after giving growth a scare in July and dropping by 1.6% (revised and smaller drop than was first reported). While we know that within Germany retailing and consumer [...]

The outplacement firm of Challenger, Grey & Christmas indicated that the level of layoffs during September increased slightly to 37,151 but that was still near the smallest number since June of 2000. The level remains down by more [...]

Pressure continues on the ability of the U.S. market to grow. After seven consecutive months of modest recovery, the payroll processor ADP, in their latest National Employment Report, indicated that private nonfarm payroll levels fell [...]

Both the EMU and US services indices backtracked in September. For the US the backtracking was only in activity as the headline for the Non-MFG PMI (not only services') did rise. The level of both the US and EMU sector barometers [...]

The U.S. service sector last month recovered most of what it lost during August. The September Composite Index for the service and construction sectors from the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) rose to 53.2 from 51.5 in August. [...]

The pump price for regular gasoline has been roughly stable since June, close to last week's level of $2.73 per gallon. Prices remained down from $2.91 in early-May. To the upside, however, the moderate economic recovery has been [...]

The National Association of Realtors (NAR) reported that pending sales of existing single-family homes improved during August. The 4.3% m/m rise repeated the gain during July and brought home sales to the highest level since April. [...]

The Euro-Area PPI has stopped accelerating in August. The Yr/Yr rate dropped to 3.5% from 4%. The sequential growth rates show steadily diminishing momentum for inflation. Capital goods and intermediate goods inflation rates are lower [...]