Economy in Brief: 2015

Only moderate improvement in U.S. economic activity combined with weakness in the rest of the world provided little support to crude materials prices last month. The industrial commodity price index from the Foundation for [...]

Consumer prices in Italy are very well-behaved. The HICP headline rose by 0.1% in August as the core was flat. The domestic CPI fell by 0.1% in August. Italy's 12-month inflation is 0.5%; the core measure is up by 0.9%; the domestic [...]

The U.S. Treasury Department reported a $64.4 billion budget deficit during August, half the $128.7 billion deficit during August of 2014. An $84.0 billion deficit had been expected in the Action Economics Forecast Survey. Because [...]

The overall Final Demand Producer Price Index was flat in August (-0.8% y/y) following a 0.2% increase in July. The Action Economics Forecast Survey looked for a 0.1% decrease. Prices excluding food & energy were also stronger than [...]

France's current account slipped into deficit as its deficit on goods trade moved into deeper deficit. Export growth has been exceeding import growth for some time but only over the last nine months have exports got higher enough to [...]

Both import and export prices declined markedly in August. Yes, lower petroleum prices were a main feature, but other categories also had more than marginal decreases. Import prices fell 1.8% in August (-11.4% y/y) after July's 0.9% [...]

Spain is the large-economy success story for industrial production in the euro area. IP in Spain rose by 0.4% in July, up at a 3.8% annual rate over three months. The three-month pace is near the top pace for any EMU nation and by far [...]

Initial claims for unemployment insurance eased to 275,000 during the week ended September 5 from the previous week's 281,000. This latter figure was revised from 282,000, a small but unusual downward adjustment in a series that is [...]