Economy in Brief: May 2011

China's total trade surplus rose $4.7 billion from $14.2 billion in March to $18.9 billion in April. Although exports declined by $4.1 billion in April, imports declined even more--by $8.8 billion. The seasonally adjusted trade [...]

Pricing strength amongst internationally traded U.S. products has been pronounced this year and last. Overall U.S. import prices last month jumped another 2.2% after a little-revised 2.6% March increase. The gain was stronger than [...]

Earlier strength in chain store sales stalled recently. Store sales were unchanged last week after a 0.8% slip at the end of April. The stall follows great strength earlier in April and during March. During the last ten years there [...]

The National Federation of Independent Business indicated that its index of small business optimism slipped to 91.2 in April from an unrevised 91.9 in March. The latest was the lowest level since September. Deterioration amongst the [...]

Last week, the pump price for regular gasoline rose another penny to $3.97 per gallon, the highest level since July, 2008. Typically, however, pump prices start rising this time of year in anticipation of increased seasonal demand. To [...]

Germany's exports of goods rose 7.3% from 84.7 billion euros in February to 90.9 billion euros in March. The rise in imports was smaller, 3.0% from 73.46 billion euros to 75.7 billion euros in March, resulting in an increase of 3.96 [...]

The OECD's Leading Economic Indices show that the US and the OECD area each indicate that expansion is continuing. The LEIs plummeted in recession, rebounded strongly to signal recovery then dipped back to zero for both the US and for [...]

The recent recovery in consumer spending has been accompanied by a combination of strengthened use of non-revolving credit and less use of revolving usage. Reported Friday, overall consumer credit rose $6.0B during March following a [...]