Economy in Brief

Deflation is much too strong a word to describe all of the pieces of the current pricing environment, but it appropriately denotes the CPI total and some of its components. Last month, the CPI matched Consensus expectations and was [...]

Business inventories have continued to fall sharply through June, and at all three levels of distribution, manufacturing, wholesale and retail. Total inventories were off 1.1% in June alone, following 1.2% in May and 1.3% in April. [...]

U.S. import prices last month declined a slightly more-than-expected 0.7%. Prices have fallen sharply since last year due to lower oil prices, the firmer dollar and the global economic recession. The recent gain in petroleum prices [...]

The latest figures from the Labor Department indicate that initial claims for unemployment insurance increased slightly to 558,000 last week after an upwardly revised 554,000 during the prior week. For all of July, claims fell 9.3% [...]

European growth figures continue to be weak when we log the indicators month by month but if instead we complete a formal GDP presentation, Germany and France have exited recession while the EMU GDP drop is only -0.1% in Q2 of 2009, a [...]

Price discounting apparently wasn't enough last month to entice consumers to open their wallets and spend. July retail sales slipped 0.1% after an upwardly revised 0.8% June increase that was fueled by higher gasoline prices. The July [...]

Price discounting apparently wasn't enough last month to entice consumers to open their wallets and spend. July retail sales slipped 0.1% after an upwardly revised 0.8% June increase that was fueled by higher gasoline prices. The July [...]

In an anticipated and unanimous vote, the Federal Open Market Committee today left the Federal funds rate in a "range from 0 to 1/4 percent." The discount rate also was left unchanged at 0.5%. The Fed funds rate remained the lowest [...]