Economy in Brief

U.S. import prices during August posted their largest one-month increase since April. The 0.6% gain followed a modest 0.1% July uptick that was revised from 0.2%. Consensus expectations had been for a 0.2% gain during last month. A [...]

Overall inflation ticked up to 0.4% (m/m) in August. But trends remain very much subdued in the Zone. Core inflation rose by 0.2% in August and by 0.1% in July. Broader trends signal no damage. Three month headline inflation descended [...]

Inventory management continues to turn towards accumulation. Total business inventories rose 1.0% during July following an upwardly revised 0.5% gain during June, changed from 0.3%. A 0.6% gain had been expected. As mentioned by [...]

Pessimists concerning the outlook for the next six months among German institutional investors and analysts now outnumber optimists for the first time since March of 2009. In September the ZEW indicator fell to -4.3% from 14.0% in [...]

Consumers are getting back on their feet. Retail spending rose last month by 0.4% following a little-revised 0.3% July increase. The last was slightly greater-than-expectations for a 0.3% increase and came despite a 0.7% drop in [...]

Over six months the OECD and the US trend-adjusted LEIs are now much weaker. The OECD prefers to use its measures as gauges over six month periods. On that basis either growth is slowing or an actual slow down is setting in depending [...]

The Federal government ran a budget deficit last month of $90.6 billion pulling the YTD deficit to $1,169 billion. That was diminished from the deficit of $1,267 billion during the first eleven months of FY'09. The deficit's decline [...]

The latest economic news from China suggests that the deceleration of growth in industrial production and in retail sales evident in the first half of this year may be coming to an end. The year to year gain in industrial production, [...]