Economy in Brief: 2011

Overall mortgage applications jumped 15.5% last week. The gain followed four weeks of decline. Remaining strong were applications to refinance which jumped nearly one-quarter w/w, also after four weeks of decline. Working the other [...]

Japan’s LEI advanced in May as Japan continued the process of recovery in the post disaster period. The LEI data still do not have much distance from the development of the disasters and their lingering impacts. The LEI’s strong move [...]

The financial community in Germany represented by 288 institutional investors and analysts in the ZEW July survey has become more guarded in its expectations of macroeconomic developments over the next six months as the excess of [...]

Chain store sales rose 0.4% last week for the fourth consecutive weekly gain. The increase pulled sales to a record high and up 3.5% so far in July versus June. During the last ten years there has been a 66% correlation between the [...]

Good news often doesn't last forever. Reversing earlier declines, the pump price for regular gasoline rose four cents last week to $3.68 per gallon, its highest in a month. Nevertheless, prices remained down twenty eight cents since [...]

New residential building activity just can't break out to the upside. Housing starts rose 14.6% last month to 629,000 (AR) following a downwardly revised no change in May. Despite the increase, however, the lift only made up for [...]

The National Association For Business Economics (NABE) today released its latest Industry Survey. It paints a picture of continued recovery in the U.S. economy. First, though the unit demand figure for Q2 slipped versus Q1, the level [...]

The National Association of Home Builders reported that its July index of housing market activity inched up to 15 versus an unrevised 13 in June. Though the latest figure remained above the all-time low of 8 reached in January of [...]