Economy in Brief: October 2010

The labor market is showing halting improvement. Last week, initial claims for unemployment insurance rose 13,000 to 462,000 after a 7,000 decline (revised from -11,000) during the prior week. Since February, the level of claims has [...]

The August U.S. foreign trade deficit deteriorated to $46.3B following July's improvement to a little-revised $42.6B. Nevertheless, the Q3 deficits stand to roughly equal those of Q2 and, as a result, exert little drag on GDP growth. [...]

Trends under the surface - The final inflation number for the Zone in September is not yet in and core readings are missing as well. But we can look at the inflation trend by perusing the various trends in a number of 'early- [...]

The U.S. Producer Price Index for finished goods again turned in a strong performance last month. The 0.4% increase repeated its August gain and left the y/y comparison at 4.0%, about where it's been this all year. The monthly rise [...]

Consumers just aren't in a buying mood. Last week, chain store sales recovered the prior week's decline and that sideways movement emphasizes the sales weakness since July. Since then sales have fallen 2.3%. During the last ten years [...]

The Mortgage Bankers Association reported that mortgage applications surged by 14.6% last week to the highest level since May 2009. Last week's total increase was led by a 21.0% w/w jump in applications to refinance a mortgage. They [...]

Euro-Area IP jumped in August. The 0.9% rise in MFG output follows a slide of 0.3% and drop of 0.2%. Those are the fist consecutive drops in IP for the Zone Since April of 2009. Through thick and through thin in this recovery one fact [...]

A back-slide in oil prices lowered U.S. import prices during September. The 0.3% overall decline reversed half of the 0.6% August increase and left prices up 3.5% y/y. Consensus expectations had been for a 0.2% decline during last [...]