Economy in Brief: 2010

According to the outplacement firm of Challenger, Grey & Christmas the level of layoffs during August fell to 34,768, the smallest number since June of 2000. The level remains down by more than one-half from last year. Planned layoffs [...]

Deterioration in factory sector activity paused last month. The August Composite Index from the Institute for Supply Management rose to 56.3 from 55.2 in July after three consecutive months of decline. Consensus expectations had been [...]

Following six consecutive months of modest recovery, the payroll processor ADP, in their latest National Employment Report, indicated that private nonfarm payroll levels fell slightly during August. The 10,000 worker decline followed [...]

While the monetary authorities and the politicians scramble to develop policies to stimulate Japan's faltering economy, more and more actual data are being released confirming the need for such activity. The July Industrial Production [...]

The Conference Board indicated that consumer confidence rebounded moderately this month following two months of sharp decline. Their consumer confidence index rose 4.9% m/m to 53.5 following a 6.1% July decline that was less than [...]

Earlier, modest improvement in home prices recently lost some steam. Seasonally adjusted, the Case-Shiller 20-City Home Price Index gained 0.3% (4.2% y/y) in June following slightly stronger increases during the prior two months. [...]

Japan issued a host of data today, as is its custom at month-end. Today we found housing starts rose, retail sales rose and so did industrial output. The gains in these series were not huge but in general Japan’s indicators beat [...]

It's still recovery - The EMU recovery remains in place as the Economic Sentiment index has risen again in August. Despite some rather extreme pessimism following 'Europe's' strong Q2 GDP showing we find that post-Q2 economic [...]