Economy in Brief: 2010

Foreign participation in U.S. capital markets was relatively modest in June, according to the monthly "TIC" data reported this morning from the U.S. Treasury. Foreign investors were net purchasers of $33.9 billion in long-term [...]

Business inventories continued a halting recovery in June. All together, they rose 0.3%, and May's increase was revised from 0.1% to 0.2%. As visible in the first graph, this hardly constitutes a "recovery" from their total decline [...]

Consumers recovered slightly this month from their gloomy state during July, but not by much. The mid-month August reading of consumer sentiment, as measured by the University of Michigan, recovered a quarter of the July drop with an [...]

As spending on motor vehicles changes, so too does spending on gasoline. That probably overstates the case, but last month an expected 0.4% increase in total retail sales was driven by a 1.6% increase in motor vehicles and a 2.3% gain [...]

Europe surges - EMU GDP is advancing at a super-strong 3.9% rate (Saar) in Q2 leaving the US growth rate of 2.4% (and due to be revised lower...) in the dust. But at 3.2% the US Yr/Yr rate still towers over the EMU rate of 1.7%. But [...]

Not-with-standing a moderate blip in energy prices, consumer price inflation remained under control last month. The July Consumer Price Index increased 0.3% (1.3% y/y) following three consecutive months of slight decline. During the [...]

Euro-Area IP ending a period of acceleration? Euro-Area IP is not exactly sputtering but it is stabilizing and showing signs of settling into a lower perhaps sustainable growth path. The three month growth rate has been jerking around [...]

With a 0.2% July increase, U.S. import prices recovered just a piece of the prior two months' sharp decline. Moreover, the y/y gain fell to its least since November while May's 0.8% m/m drop was deepened from 0.5%. July's increase was [...]