Economy in Brief: October 2015

The economy grew 1.5% (AR) last quarter following a 3.9% Q2 increase. The shedding of inventories sapped 1.4 percentage points from growth, reversing accumulation during the prior six months. Inventory decumulation came as final [...]

At today's meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee, the Fed indicated that "economic activity will expand at a moderate pace" instead of suggesting that "recent global economic and financial developments may restrain economic [...]

The Mortgage Bankers Association reported that its total Mortgage Market Volume Index declined 3.5% in the latest week (+8.1% y/y) following an 11.8% rise during the prior period. The Association indicated that extreme volatility in [...]

GfK reports this month that concerns over the impact of migrants in Germany have set back the expected confidence reading for November. But the lagging components of the index show the sharpest drop is in economic expectations. [...]

Gasoline prices at the pump declined last week to $2.23 per gallon (-27.1% y/y), the lowest level since the middle of February. Haver Analytics constructs factors adjusting for the seasonal variation in pump prices. The seasonally [...]

The Conference Board's Consumer Confidence Index in October unexpectedly reversed improvement during the prior two months. The overall index declined 4.9% to 97.6 but remained up 3.7% y/y. The consensus expectation was for a level of [...]

While we are looking at growth and inflation developments in the EMU, we should also be looking at the financial raw material of growth: money and credit in the EMU. Here we see both series are slowing after about one year of [...]

New orders for durable goods fell 1.2% during September (-3.0% y/y) following a 3.0% August drop, revised from -2.0%. Expectations had been for a 1.0% decline in the Action Economics Forecast Survey. During the last ten years, there [...]