Economy in Brief: 2012

While job growth improved slightly during May, this quarter's rise still is sharply reduced versus Q1. Private sector payrolls rose 133,000 as reported by the payroll processor Automatic Data Processing (ADP) and economic consultants [...]

The Mortgage Bankers Association index of total mortgage applications fell 1.3% (+53.0% y/y) last week. Applications to refinance were off 1.5% (+79.9% y/y) while home purchase applications slipped 0.6% (-3.0% y/y), down for the third [...]

Chain store sales fell 0.5% last week (+2.9% y/y), down for the fifth straight week. Sales have fallen 2.4% so far in May following a 3.4% rise in April. During the last ten years there has been a 72% correlation between the y/y [...]

The National Association of Realtors (NAR) reported that pending sales of single-family homes during April slumped 5.5% (+14.4% y/y) to their lowest level since December. The sales index level of 95.5 was down 5.5% m/m after three [...]

Soft economies worldwide are continuing to prompt weakness in oil markets. Last week, the pump price of regular gasoline again declined another four cents to $3.67 per gallon. Over the last eight weeks, prices have fallen twenty seven [...]

Austerity has not made life easy in Spain and its goals for deficit reduction seem to be a moving target that is moving ever farther away. However, Prime Minister Rajoy is dedicated to hitting his targets and at the same time he has [...]

The value of the Euro has declined 10% from May 4, 2011 to 1.2523 today. Over roughly the same time period, the broad nominal effective exchange rate has declined 18% to 122.32(2000=100). The daily values of the euro and the broad [...]

The Conference Board's Index of Consumer Confidence during May fell for the fourth month in the last five. The 5.5% decline to 64.9 was from 68.7 last month, initially reported as 69.2. Nevertheless, the index remained up by more-than [...]