Economy in Brief: February 2019

Real gross domestic product growth slowed to 2.6% q/q, saar (3.1% y/y) in the fourth quarter of 2018 following a 3.4% q/q increase in Q3 and a 4.2% q/q jump in Q2. The Action Economics Forecast had looked for a 2.3% q/q rise while the [...]

The first of the realities to sink in is that wishing does not make it so... despite an all-out charm offensive by Donald Trump he could not coax Kim Jong Un over from the dark side of the farce. Trump still has his charm offensive [...]

Initial claims for unemployment insurance were 225,000 in the week ended February 23, up 8,000 from the previous week's 217,000; that figure was revised up by 1,000. The Action Economics Forecast Survey projected 221,000 claims this [...]

The National Association of Realtors (NAR) reported that pending home sales jumped 4.6% in January (-2.3% year-on-year) in after six consecutive monthly declines. The December reading for the index was revised slightly lower to 98.7, [...]

Manufacturers' orders edged up 0.1% (2.4% year-on-year) in December following a slightly upwardly-revised 0.5% decline in November (this report was delayed as a result of the government shutdown). The Action Economics Forecast survey [...]

The EU indices eroded again this month with the EMU aggregate index edging lower to 106.1 in February from 106.3 in January. The overall EMU sentiment gauge sits at the 72nd percentile of its historic queue of data. As for the sector [...]

The Mortgage Bankers Association reported that its total Mortgage Applications Index rose 5.3% w/w (0.5% y/y) during the week ended February 22 after having risen 3.6% w/w in the previous week. The increases of the past two weeks [...]

This morning BEA released the first estimates of GDP by state for 2018:Q3. These figures tend to be released with a fairly substantial lag; the government shutdown delayed them by only about 3 weeks. Washington is estimated to have [...]