Economy in Brief: April 2016

The ZEW current index continues its slow erosion, but expectations rose to 11.2 in April from 4.3 in March. At 11.2, expectations are at the border of the bottom one-third of their historic queue of values. The slipping current index, [...]

The Composite Housing Market Index from the National Association of Home Builders-Wells Fargo held at 58 for the third straight month. It remained down from the October high of 65. The NAHB figures are seasonally adjusted. During the [...]

Inflation reports continue to be weak globally. Markets don't really focus on the PPI reports as much especially because they tend to be so dominated by commodities prices which have been so weak. But monetary authorities are looking [...]

Industrial output declined 0.6% during March after a 0.6% February drop, revised from -0.5%. No change in output had been expected in the Action Economics Forecast Survey. Annual data revisions, released earlier this month, lowered [...]

Some distinct divergent trends are starting to emerge and to be reinforced in EMU trade patterns. The first trend is an old one that exports remain weak and may even be weakening further. This is linked, of course, to manufacturing [...]

The Empire State Factory Index of General Business Conditions continued to indicate expansion in business activity this month. The New York index increased to 9.56 following its surge into positive territory during March. It was the [...]

Initial claims for jobless insurance fell to 253,000 during the week ended April 9 from a little-changed 266,000 in the prior week. For the past year, claims have hovered near the lowest level since 1973. Expectations were for 270,000 [...]

EMU inflation shows prices hovering around unchanged over the past 12 months. Core inflation is close to 1%. Inflation's progress for the headline over six-month and three-month shows a tendency to faster declines over shorter [...]