Economy in Brief: 2011

New orders for durable goods slipped an expected 0.1% last month following a little-revised 4.1% jump during July. Last month's figure reflected strong crosscurrents amongst the components, certainly in the transportation sector where [...]

The chart speaks volumes but despite the god-zillions of words used in this verbiage trained economists will look at that chart and have significantly divergent views of what it means. Like the story of the blind men feeling different [...]

The recent volatility in the stock markets of the world, the prices of precious and industrial metals and the price of oil can be attributed, in large part, to the swings in the hopes and fears that the Euro Area debt crisis will or [...]

The Conference Board's September Index of Consumer Confidence showed stability following the harrowing August decline. The index actually ticked up slightly m/m to 45.4 following the nearly one-quarter August downdraft, which was [...]

The seasonally adjusted Case-Shiller 20-City Home Price Index remained unchanged during July for the third straight month, June was revised up from a 0.1% slip reported earlier. Despite their recent stability, prices during the last [...]

Slacked demand and lower crude oil prices helped lower retail gasoline prices last week to their least since late-February. The pump price for a gallon of regular gasoline fell another nine cents to $3.51. Prices were down forty-five [...]

Given the seriousness of the financial situation and talk of recession in the Euro Area, it is not surprising that German business confidence weakened again in September. The IFO Institute measures confidence in industry and trade [...]

The sales market for new homes remained weak last month, and that greatly depressed home pricing power. Total new home sales decreased 2.3% to 295,000 after a downwardly revised 0.3% July slip. The latest was the fourth consecutive [...]