Economy in Brief

The South African Reserve Bank bucked the current trend among world central banks by tightening monetary policy today. They raised their key policy rate, the repurchase rate, by 50 basis points to 10.50%. The Bank conducts an [...]

The UK RICs survey is a net balance survey and therefore samples the breadth of gains or drops across the area and dimension surveyed. In September the net balance for prices fell to -15 from -3 in August, a sharp month-to-month [...]

While auto sales have revived in August, the rest of retail sales remain lethargic.In real terms retail sales excluding auto sales fell by 1.6% in August. For the third quarter, sales are off to a weak start as nominal retail sales [...]

U.S. September import prices jumped 5.4% as petroleum prices surged. Consensus expectations had been for a 1.0% increase. Some stabilization of that upward pressure seems likely for October since so far in the month, Brent crude oil [...]

Initial claims for unemployment insurance opened the month of October with a reversal of most of prior week's rise and fell 12,000 to 308,000. The labor Department indicated that there were no special factors that distorted these [...]

The U.S. foreign trade deficit in August narrowed very slightly to $57.6B from $59.0B in July which was revised slightly shallower from the initial report. The August deficit was below Consensus expectations for a deficit of $58.7B. [...]

The U.S. foreign trade deficit in August narrowed very slightly to $57.6B from $59.0B in July which was revised slightly shallower from the initial report. The August deficit was below Consensus expectations for a deficit of $58.7B. [...]

Last Friday, we wrote here about the current ECB survey of bank lending policies. A couple of weeks ago, the Bank of England published the first results of a similar, brand new survey of bank and nonbank lenders in the UK. These [...]