Economy in Brief: May 2014

Consumer spending pulled back in April by 0.1% after surging 1.0% in March, revised from the 0.9% initially reported; April's amount is up 4.3% y/y. A 0.2% rise was expected in the Action Economics Forecast Survey. Outlays on durable [...]

German retail sales were revised higher in March but still show weakness in April as sales dropped by 1% month-to-month. The profile of German growth rates shows year-over-year growth in sales at 1.2% with 3-month growth at a 1.1% [...]

Real GDP was revised to a 1.0% rate of decline in Q1 (2.0% y/y) from the minuscule 0.1% increase reported initially. It was also modestly worse than consensus forecasts of a 0.5% decrease. The chain-type price index remained at the [...]

Weekly initial claims for unemployment insurance dropped to 300,000 in the week ended May 24 from 327,000 the week before, basically reversing that week's increase and extending their recent seesaw pattern; the May 17 number was [...]

Japan imposed a new VAT tax at the start of the second quarter. Consumer behavior designed for tax avoidance has had a huge impact on retail sales in the month immediately before the imposition of the tax and in the month of the [...]

The EU Commission indices for the entire EU advanced to a level of 106.5 in May from 106.3 in April. For the European Monetary Union, the index advanced by 0.7% in May, rebounding from a 0.5% decline in April. Among the 17 EMU members [...]

The International Council of Shopping Centers and Goldman Sachs reported that chain store sales declined 1.2% (+2.1% y/y) last week, down for the fourth straight week. Sales have fallen 1.2% versus April. During the last ten years [...]

The price for a gallon of regular gasoline held at $3.67 last week (0.8% y/y), steady at that level for all of this month. The price remained down from the $3.78 per gallon peak reached in February of last year. To account for [...]