Economy in Brief: January 2012

Natural gas prices are continuing their recent slide. Warm temperatures, firm production and abundant inventories have lowered prices to their lowest since February, 2002. Last week's price of $2.40 per mmbtu was down nearly one-half [...]

Natural gas prices are continuing their recent slide. Warm temperatures, firm production and abundant inventories have lowered prices to their lowest since February, 2002. Last week's price of $2.40 per mmbtu was down nearly one-half [...]

France's overall business climate indicator continued its downward path in January. The measure is so designed that it's long term average is 100.& It declined to 91 in January from 92 in December and was 14.15% below a year ago. The [...]

At the end of 2011 most of the European/EU indicators were showing weakness. But toward the very end of the year some of the most forward-looking surveys Like the PMI measures began to show some stability. It is too soon to jump to [...]

The National Association of Realtors reported that December sales of existing homes jumped 5.0% to 4.610M (AR, 3.6% y/y) following a downwardly revised 3.3% November gain. The latest was the highest since last January. For all of [...]

The chart above is an approximation of purchasing power parity for the euro calculated on a broad basis. Despite its recent drop and the dollar’s rise the euro evaluated and weighted against its main trading partners remains above [...]

The Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank's General Business Conditions Index improved in January and continued to indicate expansion. The Index of General Business Conditions rose to 7.3 from 6.8 in December. The data for 2011 was [...]

Improvement in the labor market appears back on track. Initial claims for unemployment insurance fell to 352,000 last week from 402,000 the week earlier (revised from 399,000). The latest figure was the lowest reading since April, [...]