Economy in Brief: February 2018

The Small Business Optimism Index from the National Federation of Independent Business for January increased 1.9% to 106.9 (+0.9% y/) following a 2.4% December decline. The level of optimism was up from 95.3 during all of 2016. A [...]

Retail gasoline prices declined to $2.61 per gallon last week (+13.0% y/y) from $2.64 per gallon. Haver Analytics constructs factors adjusting for the seasonal variation in gasoline pump prices. The seasonally-adjusted price fell to [...]

The U.S. Treasury Department reported that the federal government ran a $49.2 billion budget deficit during January 2018. A surplus of $50.0 billion had been expected in the Action Economics Forecast Survey. During the first four [...]

Irish consumer confidence is at a 17-year high. That puts it more or less in the same league as the reading for the overall EMU area in terms of its relative strength. For Ireland the current index (with a history back to 1996) has [...]

The Industrial Materials Price Index from the Foundation for International Business and Economic Research (FIBER) rose 2.7% during the last four weeks following a 6.7% gain throughout all of last year. A 2.3% December-to-December [...]

U.K. output advanced again in December, marking six straight months in which manufacturing IP has risen month-over-month. Manufacturing output is sold at a gain of 3.5% over three months; it is not as strong as it is over six months [...]

During all of last year, inventories at the wholesale level increased 3.5%, the largest increase in three years. During December alone, inventories increased 0.4% (3.5% y/y) following a 0.6% November rise, revised from 0.8%. In the [...]

The Bank of France uses its survey to sort out its expectations for growth in the current quarter. At a level of 104.7 in January, the BoF business survey index is at its weakest level since June 2017. The BoF now thinks that this [...]