Economy in Brief: November 2012

The Federal Government budget deficit deepened to $120.0B during October of FY13 versus $98.5B last fiscal year. The deeper deficit was paced by a 16.4% y/y increase in outlays which was greater than the 13.0% y/y rise in revenues. [...]

German financial experts continue to see weakening conditions in Germany. The current index fell from 10 to 5.4 and expectations edged down to -15.7 from -11.5. At these levels the current index is stronger about 35% of the time [...]

The Composite Leading Indicators of the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) were published today. Besides the official 34 member countries from Europe, North and South America, Australia, New Zealand, and [...]

There's been some w/w stability in chain store sales of late. Nevertheless, the 0.7% uptick in last week's sales left the November average 3.5% below July. During the last ten years there has been a 72% correlation between the y/y [...]

The National Federation of Independent Business indicated that its October Index of Small Business Optimism improved to 93.1 from 92.9 in September. While the figure was well above the recession low, it remained depressed versus past [...]

Who says it can't get any worse? President Francois Hollande has been met with an economy that has done progressively worse after he took office. While he has clamped an oppressive income tax (75%!) on the rich, he has not been able [...]

The University of Michigan's Index of Consumer Sentiment for mid-November jumped to 84.9 (33.3% y/y) from an unrevised 82.6 in October. The latest figure was the highest since July 2007 and beat expectations for 83.0. During the last [...]

Higher petroleum costs raised U.S. import prices by another 1.5% last month following an unrevised 1.1% September increase. Higher petroleum prices led the rise with a strong 1.3% gain (1.9% y/y). The Action Economics survey looked [...]