Economy in Brief

Initial claims for unemployment insurance fell to 216,000 in the week ended February 16, down 23,000 from the previous week's 239,000; that figure was unrevised. The Action Economics Forecast Survey expected 225,000 claims this week. [...]

The international growth scourge spreads its wings in January. Japan’s yen based exports fell by 6.6% in January as imports declined by 4.2% driving the trade balance to -Ą370bn. It is the largest monthly deficit since February of [...]

The Mortgage Bankers Association reported that its total Mortgage Applications Index rose 3.6% (-2.0% year-on-year) during the week ending February 15th. After double digit gains in early January, applications had fallen for the [...]

The Composite Housing Market Index from the National Association of Home Builders-Wells Fargo improved to 62 during February after increasing to 58 in January. Nevertheless, the figure remained below the expansion high of 74 in [...]

The ZEW financial experts have weakened their assessment of current economic conditions everywhere except for very minor exception in the US. Current conditions placed in their historic queue of values rank highest in the US at a [...]

The Industrial Materials Price Index from the Foundation for International Business and Economic Research (FIBER) rose 2.8% during the last four weeks, but were 11.5% below the prior year's level. Individual commodity price gains were [...]

Activity in the factory sector weakened significantly last month. Industrial production declined 0.6% (+3.8% y/y) during January following a 0.1% December uptick, revised from +0.3%. A 0.2% rise had been expected in the Action [...]

EMU-wide exports ticked lower in December as imports were flat. That combination reduced the trade surplus slightly. Still the surplus in December at €15.6b is now far from its 12-month average of €16.2b but is significantly lower [...]