Economy in Brief: August 2010

Industrial production surprised for July with a 1.0% surge, compared with a consensus expectation of 0.5% and a downward revised -0.1% in June. Output is up 7.7% from a year ago. The manufacturing sector gained 1.1% in the month, [...]

The 284 German institutional investors and analysts who participated in the ZEW survey between July 26 and August 16 have become less optimistic about future economic conditions. At the same time, they raised their appraisal of the [...]

The producer price index for finished goods turned back higher in July, gaining 0.2% after June's 0.5% drop. The July rise pushed the year-on-year performance to a sharp 4.2% increase, compared with 2.7% registered in June. Both the [...]

The home builders index took a step back in August as all components of the index fell, except traffic that held steady. Across regions the indices also fell with the Midwest being stable month-to-month and the Northeast taking the [...]

For the third time since December 2008 the seasonally unadjusted nominal gross domestic product of China has exceeded that of Japan as can be seen in the first chart. In the second quarter of this year, China reported GDP at $1337 [...]

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 [...]