Economy in Brief: 2010

There was little change in the German financial community's appraisal of current conditions and expectations for the next six months in the German economy from November to December. The latest ZEW survey that took place during the [...]

Holiday cheer was very evident in the latest retail spending report from the Commerce Department. Sales rose 0.8% during November (7.7% y/y) following gains of 1.7% and 0.9% during the prior two months, respectively, revised from 1.2% [...]

Inflation in China accelerated in the last two months. The year to year increase in the consumer price index rose from 3.6% in September to 4.4% in October and 5.1% in November, well above the government's target of 3%. Comparable [...]

Growth in the monetary aggregates has roughly doubled during the last several months versus growth earlier in the year. The figures in the table below indicate that growth in the narrow aggregates has picked up the most as the cost of [...]

The OECD LEI is off in October. For the US index there is still some uptick in October compared to September. But Japan's index is off by 0.4% despite increasingly consistent gains in the Nikkei stock index in Japan. Germany's index [...]

The U.S. foreign trade deficit narrowed markedly to $38.7B in October from $44.6B in September (revised from $44.0B). Consensus forecasts had looked for a result unchanged from September. Both exports and imports contributed to the [...]

The happier mood adopted by the consumer this past summer brightened further this holiday season. During early-December the University of Michigan Index of Consumer Sentiment rose to 74.4 from 71.6 last month. It was the highest level [...]

Firmness in oil prices continues to dominate this measure of overall U.S. import prices. During November, import prices jumped another 1.3% after an upwardly revised 1.0% October increase, initially reported as 0.9%. The increase [...]