Economy in Brief: September 2011

Divergent forces tear at the Zone - Weaker oil prices should help salve the over-the-top EMU inflation picture. But the 12% drop in the Euro’s foreign exchange value Vs the dollar form December is not going to help much at all. The [...]

The National Australia Bank's, August survey of the business community, released today, shows that their measure of business confidence, a percent balance between optimists on the outlook and the pessimists, is now -7.7%, compared [...]

The pump price for a gallon of regular gasoline fell one penny last week to $3.66. Prices remained down thirty cents since the May peak. Pump prices usually rise this time of year with increased seasonal demand. To account for this [...]

Overall U.S. import prices fell 0.4% last month after an unrevised 0.3% July gain. Consensus expectations had been for a 0.8% decline. Year-to-year, the lower value of the U.S. dollar as well as higher oil prices have raised imported [...]

The National Association for Business Economics reported another downward revision to the U.S. economic growth forecast. For this year, real GDP growth should average 1.7%, versus 2.8% expected three months ago. For next year, growth [...]

The OECD trend restored leading indicators show that a slowdown is in progress. The OECD likes to look at its indices in terms of changes over six-months and on that basis the overall OECD, the OECD-7 and the US OECD LEIs all are not [...]

In their attempts to find safe havens for their wealth in unsettled financial environments, investors have often looked to foreign currencies. Recently the Australian Dollar, the Norwegian Kroner, the Japanese Yen and the Swiss Franc [...]

On Friday, the Commerce Department reported that sales in the wholesale sector were essentially unchanged during July after a 0.6% jump in June. A 0.8% increase had been generally expected. Holding back the increase was a 1.1% decline [...]