Economy in Brief

The Mortgage Bankers Association indicated that mortgage applications overall increased 5.6% last week; however, that only made up for a 3.5% decline during the prior period. Together, the latest figures left applications for all of [...]

The participants in the ZEW survey--institutional investors and analysts--have become much more positive about the outlook, six months ahead. The ZEW Economic Sentiment indicator increased 16.6 points in August to reach a percent [...]

The strong rise this year in gasoline prices stabilized last week. The pump price for regular gasoline held at an average $2.64 per gallon and that was down a nickel from last month's high. Despite this w/w stability, however, prices [...]

After two months of fairly strong increases, the momentum in the housing sector paused last month. Housing starts dipped to 581,000 (AR) units versus 587,000 during June, a level which was revised up slightly from the initial report. [...]

Pricing power reflected the weakness in the U.S. economy last month as the PPI for finished goods fell 0.9%. That reversed half of the 1.8% jump during June and left prices down 6.4% from the year ago level. The decline also was [...]

Pricing power reflected the weakness in the U.S. economy last month as the PPI for finished goods fell 0.9%. That reversed half of the 1.8% jump during June and left prices down 6.4% from the year ago level. The decline also was [...]

As generally expected, Japan's GDP rose in the second quarter, but the 3.7% annual rate of increase was below the 4-4.5% consensus estimate and failed to impress the financial markets. Japan's Nikkei 225 stock price index greeted the [...]

Exports have the better trend among bad results EMU exports and imports are still on life support in terms of their year-over-year drops. But exports are showing slightly more life in recent months. Apart from splitting hairs, exports [...]