Economy in Brief: 2021

The U.K. retail volume survey conducted by the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) shows dramatically weakened data for January- and for the February outlook- as the U.K. implements what is still a severe economic lockdown. U.K. [...]

• Consumer confidence rebounds following two months of decline. • Expectations improve while the current conditions reading continues to fall. • Jobs gap deterioration suggests higher unemployment rate. The Conference Board Consumer [...]

• House prices rose 1.0% m/m, the sixth consecutive monthly increase of 1.0% or more. • Prices were up 11.0% y/y, a series record annual increase. The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) House Price Index increased 1.0% m/m in [...]

Many commentators have been focusing on some of the negative longer-term effects of the coronavirus crisis on the world economy. These include higher levels of debt, higher long-term unemployment, weaker world trade growth and [...]

• Gasoline prices edge higher to March 2020 peak. • Oil prices increase to last February's high. • Natural gas prices weaken after two weeks of improvement. The price of regular gasoline rose to $2.39 per gallon (-4.5% y/y) in the [...]

While I was still trying to “process”, as the kids say, the events that took place the Wednesday before, on January 13, the Treasury released its December 2020 budgetary data. In the Calendar Year (CY) 2020, the federal government ran [...]

The IFO climate diffusion gauge fell to -0.6 in January after posting a 5.2 reading in December. The chart (tracking the IFO indexes instead of the diffusion gauges reported in the table) shows clear deterioration is afoot again. On [...]

• General business conditions deteriorate to six-month low. • Weakening is broad-based amongst subindexes. • Expectations reading improves. The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas reported that its Texas Manufacturing Outlook Survey [...]