Economy in Brief

For the second month in the last three, the Conference Board reported that their Index of Leading Economic Indicators fell. During June, the index slipped 0.2% following a revised 0.5% May gain, initially reported at 0.4%, and a 0.1% [...]

In May orders in the EMU surges by 3.8% a sharp acceleration from May's rise of 0.6%. With this surge the 3-, 6- and 12-month rates of growth are held high and steady at the extremely high pace of above 23% with the three-month growth [...]

The FLASH PMIs for EMU from Markit show that the European expansion's death has been greatly exaggerated. In July the MFG PMI advanced to a reading of 56.48 from 56.64 in June. The Services PMI rose to 55.98 in July from 55.51, also [...]

An earlier sign of job market improvement was fleeting. That's the message from the report that initial claims for jobless insurance jumped to 464,000 and more-than-reversed the prior week's decline. The earlier week's figure was [...]

The CASH Index is produced by the RBC Financial Group. It stands for Consumer Attitudes & Spending By Households and the overall series moves much like the University of Michigan's Index of Consumer Sentiment, but its components [...]

Lower interest rates continued to spur mortgage applications last week, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. Overall, mortgage applications jumped another 7.6% last week. That raised applications 15.2% from June and 42.5% [...]

The consumer continues ready to spend. Chain store sales thus rose 1.4% last week and recovered virtually all of the prior week's decline. As a result, July sales so far in the month are 1.6% above June's average after that month's [...]

Off to the races - The German PPI excluding energy continues to show an escalating pace of inflation for each horizon and the patterns shows that acceleration is still the order of the day. Prices are advancing faster over three [...]