Economy in Brief

The Mortgage Bankers Association reported that its total Mortgage Applications Index rose 5.3% w/w (0.5% y/y) during the week ended February 22 after having risen 3.6% w/w in the previous week. The increases of the past two weeks [...]

This morning BEA released the first estimates of GDP by state for 2018:Q3. These figures tend to be released with a fairly substantial lag; the government shutdown delayed them by only about 3 weeks. Washington is estimated to have [...]

Retail gasoline prices edged up to $2.39 per gallon last week (-6.2% year-on-year). Haver Analytics constructs factors adjusting for the seasonal variation in gasoline pump prices. The seasonally-adjusted price rose to $2.57 per [...]

The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) Price Index for house purchases rose 0.3% m/m (5.6% y/y) in December following an unrevised 0.4% m/m (5.8% y/y) increase in November. The slowdown in the y/y rate to 5.6% was a continuation of [...]

The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index jumped a great-than-expected 8.0% to 131.4 in February (1.1% year-on-year) reversing January's decline. Still, confidence has fallen 6.5 points from the cycle high touched in October [...]

In Germany economic expectations have fallen off rather sharply but the German consumer confidence reading continues to hover very close to its all-time high on this gauge. The GFK index is a look-ahead index that is updated through [...]

Total housing starts dropped 11.2% (-10.9% year-on-year) during December to a 1.078 million annual rate (AR), its lowest level in 27 months (this report was delayed as a result of the government shutdown). December starts were [...]

The ifo detail this month comes as the headline indices have more or less paused for a month at low reading levels. As we saw in the advance ifo report business expectations for 6-months ahead stand in their lower 24th percentile, a [...]