Economy in Brief: January 2011

France sails briskly though troubled euro-waters - INSEE's indicator for the French Industry rose briskly in January. Still, in broad terms the growth rate in the indicator is flattening out as the chart above demonstrates. Solid [...]

The Conference Board reported that its Index of Leading Economic Indicators rose 1.0% during December after an unrevised 1.1% November gain. The latest level of the index was a record high and the monthly gain exceeded Consensus [...]

The Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank indicated that its January index of regional factory sector activity slipped to 19.3 from a downwardly revised 20.8 in December. Nevertheless, it remained near its highest level since April 2005. [...]

The National Association of Realtors reported that December sales of existing homes jumped 12.3% to 5.280M following an upwardly revised 6.1% November increase. December sales exceeded Consensus expectations for 4.86M. For the full [...]

UK industrial orders fell off sharply in January and fell unexpectedly. The series have been expected to make a small improvement instead orders plummeted to a net reading of -16 from a net of -3 in December. Orders reside in the 61st [...]

Initial claims for jobless insurance fell sharply last week. The decline to 404,000 from 441,000 (initially reported as 445,000) was greater than expectations for 425,000 claims, according to Bloomberg. Moreover, the latest decline [...]

Consumers remained in a somber spending mood last week. Sales at chain stores slipped 0.1% after the earlier week's 3.2% decline. The average level was the lowest since last February. During the last ten years there has been a 66% [...]

Maybe the rate of increase slowed, but the direction of change in energy prices remains the same - higher. Last week, the pump price for regular gasoline rose another penny to $3.10 per gallon following the prior week's two cent rise. [...]