Economy in Brief: January 2011

The consumer climate in Germany, as measure by GfK* was unchanged in January at 5.5% but is forecast to increase to 5.7% in February. The consumer climate has improved slowly and haltingly from the low point in September and October [...]

Consumers' loss of their jolly, holiday spirit quickened last week. Sales at chain stores fell 1.2% after declines of 0.1% and 3.2% during the prior two weeks. The average level so far this month was the lowest since last February. [...]

Consumers were more upbeat last month. The Conference Board reported that the January index of consumer confidence rose 13.7% from December to 60.6 from a revised 53.3 in December. The latest was the highest level since May and [...]

German confidence continues to edge ahead. In February GfK estimates that it will rise to 5.7 from 5.5. At that level confidence stands in the top 16% of its ordered queue of values and in the 65th percentile of this high-low range. [...]

Gasoline prices know only one way to go; higher. Last week, the pump price for regular gasoline rose another penny to $3.11 per gallon and mirrored the prior week's uptick. Prices were the firmest since October 2008 and were nearly [...]

First home prices fell through early-2009. Then they rose modestly until this past June with the help of the government tax credit. But during the last five months, they resumed their decline. During November, the seasonally adjusted [...]

Orders in the Euro-Area scooted ahead by 2.1% in November after rising smartly by 1.4% in October. Together the two months still do not restore the ground lost in the 4.2% drop of September. Domestic orders have dropped by about two [...]

Markit Economics, which conducts a monthly survey of purchasing managers in some 30 countries, publishes "Flash" estimates of the Purchasing Managers Surveys for the Euro Area as a whole and for Germany and France. The Survey covers [...]