Economy in Brief: 2020

Italian industrial production has been decimated over the last two months, falling by 30.7% in March then falling again by 21.4% in April. Both are month-to-month percentage changes. Over three months, IP is falling at a 91.5% annual [...]

• Price index increases for first time in four months • Prices less food & energy slip. • Core goods prices hold steady while services prices ease. With industrial sector activity under pressure, pricing power remains constrained. The [...]

• Initial jobless claims declined to a still extremely-elevated 1.542 million in the week ending June 6. • Federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance new filers down to 705,676. • Continuing claim for state programs decreased to 20.9 [...]

• May budget deficit of $399 billion; fiscal-year-to-date (FY) deficit of $1.88 trillion. • Last month FY surpassed dollar deficit record, this month share of GDP at 75-year high. • FY outlays up 29.4% versus a year ago; revenues down [...]

• Mortgage applications increased 9.3% in week ending June 5. • 15-year fixed rate mortgage declines to seven-year low of 2.89%. The Mortgage Bankers Association reported that its total Mortgage Applications Index rose 9.3% (48.1% [...]

Many economists are now looking to non-traditional real-time data sources to get a bearing on the economic temperature. That's partly because of the normal lags that exist between the period to which traditional data sources pertain [...]

The Federal Reserve left the target for the Fed funds rate in a range of 0.00% to 0.25% at today's meeting of the FOMC. In the Fed's press release, it stated, "The coronavirus outbreak is causing tremendous human and economic hardship [...]

• May budget deficit of $399 billion; fiscal-year-to-date (FY) deficit of $1.88 trillion. • Last month FY surpassed dollar deficit record, this month share of GDP at 75-year high. • FY outlays up 29.4% versus a year ago; revenues down [...]