Economy in Brief: October 2003

Sales of new single family homes fell just 0.2% in September to 1.145M (AR) and beat Consensus estimates for a decline to 1.125M. Sales in August were revised down slightly but July and June sales were revised up. Sales of new homes [...]

Gains in stock prices and signs of economic recovery in Japan helped lift the Japanese Consumer Sentiment Index by 2.7 points in Q3, to 40.0, the highest level in over two years. This survey of about 5,000 Japanese households was [...]

Initial claims for jobless insurance fell 4,000 to 386,000 last week. The modest decline reported initially for last week was revised to a slight increase. Consensus expectations had been for claims of 385,000. The latest figure [...]

Trade balances in three emerging countries, Poland, the Czech Republic and Turkey, which all reported data today, have been fairly stable in recent months. But those nations, which all have very "open" economies, are showing strong [...]

The index of mortgage applications compiled by the Mortgage Bankers Association ticked up 0.5% (-42.1% y/y) last week following the 20.5% plunge the week prior. Purchase applications gained back 7.5% of the prior week's 18.6% decline. [...]

For the month of September, retail sales in China were 397.18 billion Yuan (approximately $49 billion at the current exchange rate). As retail sales are not seasonally adjusted, year to year percent changes are more meaningful than [...]

The U.S. Government budget deficit deepened to a record $374.2 billion in the fiscal year completed last month. That brought the deficit to 3.5% of GDP versus a peak deficit of 6.0% in FY '83 and surpluses from FY '98 through FY '01. [...]

The unemployment rate for September in Hong Kong fell to 8.3% from 8.6% in August. The reduction, however, was due to a decline the labor force. Employment actually declined by 0.25%..Data on the labor force and employment tend to be [...]