Economy in Brief: August 2010

Unexpectedly, the June U.S. foreign trade deficit deteriorated to $49.9B from a little-revised $42.0B in May. The combination of lower exports and higher imports brought the deficit to its deepest level since September 2008. The [...]

While Japan and Germany run trade surpluses and China's trade surplus grows, the US trade deficit erratically is creeping higher. The reason is clear. As we saw earlier in German orders, demand for German goods is led by demand from [...]

France, Denmark and Finland released their June Industrial Production Indexes today. All three indexes are based on 2005=100. Finland and Denmark showed increases from May: the former rose 2.1 points from 99.7 to 101.8 and the latter [...]

The pump price for regular gasoline moved four cents higher last week to $2.78 per gallon. That remained down from $2.91 in early-May. Pulled higher by firm demand, prices have risen from the late-2009 level of $2.61. Yesterday, the [...]

For the second consecutive month, small business optimism fell. The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) reported their July small business optimism index fell m/m to 88.1. That's down from the recent high of 92.2 and it [...]

Labor productivity fell last quarter. A modest uptick had been expected, but the drop is a natural result of slower output growth coupled with a faster increase in labor hours worked. Nonfarm business sector productivity fell 0.9% [...]

On the surface German inflation trends are excellent. The HICP is decelerating from a meager 1.2% Yr/Yr to 0.7% over six-months to less than one-half of one percent over three-months. The German domestic inflation measure is actually [...]

Consumers still are shying away from carrying credit balances. At least they're looking to lower the balances they have. Consumer credit outstanding fell $1.3B during June after a $5.3B May decline that was smaller than reported [...]