Economy in Brief: May 2013

Following earlier improvement, gasoline prices lost upward momentum last week. The price of regular gasoline slipped two cents to $3.65 per gallon and remained down just slightly versus last year. Prices remain below the $3.78 per [...]

Higher interest rates prompted an immediate reaction in the mortgage loan market. Last week's increase in the effective rate on a 15-year mortgage to 3.17% left it at it's highest level since the last week of August. In tandem, the [...]

Consumer confidence has been building across the board. The Conference Board's Consumer Confidence Index rose to 76.2 this month and built on the upwardly revised April figure of 69.0. Consensus expectations had been for a roughly [...]

Household confidence in France took a sharp step down in May dropping to a level of 79 from a level of 83 in April. The drop this month in the INSEE survey index has fallen to its lowest level since the monetary union was formed. [...]

Home price strength is quite uneven around the country this year, but improvement is apparent everywhere. The seasonally adjusted Case-Shiller 20 City Home Price Index gained 1.1% (10.9% y/y) during March following a little-revised [...]

IFO gauge of German real sector activity shows a pickup in May compared April. This is the first rise following two months of declines. In the table and in the chart we present the IFO data on diffusion readings. This is the same sort [...]

Strength in the transportation sector led new orders for durable goods 3.3% higher (2.4% y/y) during April. This followed a little-revised 5.9% March decline and an upwardly-revised 6.4% February jump. A 1.7% rise in orders for last [...]

In May the purchasing managers indices that assess the manufacturing and services sectors in the European Monetary Union are showing that both sectors continue to decline but that the rate of decline has been reduced for both [...]