Economy in Brief: 2009

Yr/Yr regional housing markets all are still declining, of course, but the pace of the drop is diminishing across each of the main regions. The turn is clear but to keep it in gear will require more growth. With the first time home [...]

The EMU HICP finalized with August’s headline rate rising by 0.5% in and still dropping by 0.2% Yr/Yr. Core prices rose by 0.2% in August and rose by 1.2% Yr/Yr – a moderate result and indicating that inflation pressures are within [...]

Headline rises 0.4% core rises 0.1% for second month in a row The summary table shows that inflation remains contained for the most part. Energy prices rose 8.5% in August slamming the headline and lien items with energy in them. But [...]

Output and capacity: IP rose by 0.8% in August and manufacturing capacity rose for the second month in a row. For MFG, utilized capacity is just at 66.6% barely two thirds of the capacity put in place. However, even going back to the [...]

Output and capacity: IP rose by 0.8% in August and manufacturing capacity rose for the second month in a row. For MFG, utilized capacity is just at 66.6% barely two thirds of the capacity put in place. However, even going back to the [...]

Inventories fell again in the current month. Still the 1% drop while large is the smallest drop in eight months. Inventories average a 1.3% monthly decline in Q2 so in Q4 inventories are improving by 30% over the previous quarter. The [...]

The PPI headline spurted by 1.7% in August as the core rose by 02% and core for consumer prices at the producer level edged up by just 0.1%. Finished energy prices rose by 8% in the month. The headline displays an accelerating pattern [...]

In the September ZEW survey, released today, German analysts and institutional investors were only slightly more optimistic about the next six months than they were in August. The ZEW balance of optimists over pessimists rose only 1.2 [...]