Economy in Brief: September 2014

U.K. nominal retail sales growth bounced back in August, rising by 0.2% after a 0.3% July decline. The sequential growth rates of retail sales have been extremely steady over three months, six months and 12 months around and just [...]

The U.S. current account deficit decreased in Q2'14 to $98.5 billion from $102.1 billion in Q1.The deficit amounted to 2.3% of GDP, roughly the same as during all of last year. The Action Economics Forecast Survey called for a deficit [...]

The Composite Housing Market Index from the National Association of Home Builders-Wells Fargo jumped to 59 during September from an unrevised from 55 in August. The latest figure was the highest since November 2005 and beat [...]

The consumer price index declined 0.2% during August (+1.7% y/y) following an unrevised 0.1% uptick. The decline was the first since April of last year and missed expectations for no change in the Action Economics Forecast Survey. [...]

The overall inflation rate in the European Monetary Union settled in at 0.4% year-over-year in August. That's the same pace as the previous month, but it keeps the downtrend for year-over-year inflation in place. Core inflation is up [...]

The International Council of Shopping Centers and Goldman Sachs reported that chain store sales fell 2.6% last week (+3.0% y/y). The decline left sales so far in September 1.0% below August when sales fell 1.5% from July. During the [...]

Prices for energy products remained under pressure last week. The price for a gallon of regular gasoline declined to $3.41 (-3.9% y/y). It was the lowest level since mid-February. To account for seasonal patterns, Haver Analytics [...]

The ZEW index in September fell to a level of 25.4 from the August level of 44.3. This drop means that current conditions have been stronger than this 29% of the time, instead of 15% of the time as was the case last month. The [...]