Economy in Brief: 2010

Small businesses optimism improved last month, finally. Following four months in the doldrums, the National Federation of Independent Business indicated that their index of small business optimism jumped to 91.7 last month from 89.0 [...]

Germany rules or drools? This month we saw the bottom suddenly fall out of German orders with especially weak results visited on German export orders. While the German trade picture seems to have held up in September Germany's [...]

The OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) published September leading composite indicators for its member countries and six non member transitions countries today. In the attached charts we show the indicators [...]

There's been a conscious effort by consumers to reduce debt levels this year. And despite Friday's report, it's ongoing. The Federal Reserve indicated that consumer credit outstanding rose $2.1B during September following declines [...]

The National Association of Realtors (NAR) reported that September pending sales of existing single-family homes fell 1.8% m/m. The decline reversed much of an August gain and was well short of a Consensus expectations for a 3.0% [...]

What goes around comes around... The German economy is going form wunderkind to flop. Its orders that seemed to defy gravity amid ongoing euro-austerity have swung from a gain of 3.5% in September to a drop of 4.0% in September. The [...]

The U.S. labor market is firmer, but still fragile. Payrolls rose a modest 151,000 last month after a 41,000 September decline. Encouraging news came from private sector payrolls. They rose 159,000 after gains of 107,000 and 143,000 [...]

The Euro-Area PPI spurted in September. But as the August PPI had been flat there is no acceleration in three-month growth rate after the September 0.5% spurt in the headline. None of the main PPI categories show three-month inflation [...]