Economy in Brief: January 2013

The economy felt the full effect of businesses' efforts to reduce inventories last quarter and lower defense spending. Real GDP fell 0.1% (AR) in Q4'12 (+1.5% y/y) following an unrevised 3.1% rise in the third quarter. It was the [...]

The Conference Board's Consumer Confidence Index for January dropped sharply to 58.6 from 66.7 in December, revised from 65.1. The latest figure was the lowest since November 2011. Consensus expectations had been for a little-changed [...]

German consumer confidence edged higher in February according to the forward-looking GFK index. While the expectations sub index edged up only slightly several of its components rose significantly. Overall Germany's index rose to 5.8 [...]

Energy prices have taken a new tack: northward. The pump price for a gallon of regular gasoline rose another 4 cents last week to $3.36 per gallon. That followed a 2 cent rise during the prior. Still, prices remain down 52 cents per [...]

Back before the recession, home price appreciation was firm but decelerating. Now it's firm and accelerating. The seasonally adjusted Case-Shiller 20 City Home Price Index rose 0.6% during November following a revised 0.6% October [...]

Pending sales of single-family homes slumped 4.3% (+6.9% y/y) last month after a little-revised 1.6% November rise, according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR). For all of 2012, sales rose 11.2% y/y. The rebound in the [...]

A doubling of defense bookings raised total durable goods orders by 4.6% (0.2% y/y) during December, a 0.7% rise had been expected. Outside of the defense sector, orders rose 1.2% (-4.5% y/y) last month but the 4.1% full-year gain was [...]

Blue Chip Economic Indicators polls top business economists and collects their forecasts for critical indicators of future business activity. Since 1976, the monthly survey has been derived by averaging panel members' forecasts for [...]