Economy in Brief

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, [...]

PPI inflation is not in the gun-sights of any central bank that targets inflation. But it's an important ingredient in the inflation mix. Most measures of inflation tend to have the same cycles so in each there is a reason to take [...]

Foreign trade numbers do bounce around, don't they? The July U.S. foreign trade deficit improved to $42.8B from a little-revised $49.8B in June. That improvement reversed virtually all of the June deepening which helped trade deficit [...]

The German harmonized CPI rose by 0.2% in August and gained 0.9% Yr/Yr. The German domestic inflation measured by its CPI rose by 0.,1% and gained 1% Yr/Yr. The domestic measure posted a core inflation reading of 0.2% and of 0.7% [...]

The downtrend continues. Initial claims for unemployment insurance fell 27,000 last week to 451,000 from an upwardly revised 478,000 in the week prior (originally 472,000). Claims remained the lowest in nine weeks, just before Census- [...]

Debt remains a bad word in consumers' dictionary. As such, they want less of it. Federal Reserve figures released yesterday indicate that consumer credit outstanding fell $3.6B during July following declines during the prior two [...]