Economy in Brief: September 2007

With the euro rising, it is not surprising to see the EMU area’s trade surplus erode. But the sharpness in the July erosion and the spurt in imports is good news that makes that erosion look more like it is due to a rekindling for [...]

Overall, August import prices fell 0.3% last month. The decline was led by a 1.3% drop in petroleum prices. Consensus expectations had been for a 0.2% increase. A reversal in that decline is likely for the September figures. Already [...]

Overall, August import prices fell 0.3% last month. The decline was led by a 1.3% drop in petroleum prices. Consensus expectations had been for a 0.2% increase. A reversal in that decline is likely for the September figures. Already [...]

The University of Michigan's preliminary reading of consumer sentiment in early September rose 0.5% to 83.8. The increase about matched Consensus expectations for a reading of 83.5 but it was still near the lows of one year ago. [...]

Industrial production rose an expected 0.2% following a little revised 0.5% July increase. The "But" in the headline, however, is due to a 0.3% decline in factory output. It followed a 0.8% gain which was upwardly revised only a bit [...]

Italy joins the trend of EU members with weak IP in July. The UK and Germany are already there. For Italy the weakness is broad-based. Consumer goods output remains negative. Intermediate goods output also remains negative and is [...]

German inflation trends are mixed but on balance softer, kinder. Inflation trends in Germany are cooling for both the core and headline in terms of their respective sequential rates of growth. The diffusion calculations at the table [...]

The table below flags higher period to period inflation with a red number. Cleary inflation’s acceleration is not a broad trend although the Y/Y pace for the core is up compared to last month (chart) and compared to its pace of one [...]