Economy in Brief

Positioned in its various arrays of data since 1991, the German IFO index and its principle components show the all-sector reading at its historic high (since 1991), manufacturing at its historic high and construction at its historic [...]

The Federal Housing Finance Agency's (FHFA) index of U.S. house prices rose 7.5% (AR) during the last three months, compared to a 6.2% gain during all of last year. In May, prices rose 0.4% (6.9% y/y) following a 0.6% April gain, [...]

New data but not much change The main story about the EMU PMIs this month is still plain vanilla. The message is that PMI readings are still strong in the EMU. The overall gauge did weaken on a softer manufacturing sector as the [...]

Sales of existing homes declined 1.8% (+0.7% y/y) during June to 5.520 million units (AR) from an unrevised 5.620 million in May. It was the lowest level of sales since February. Expectations were for 5.580 million sales in the Action [...]

Unemployment at a 10-year low of 4.5% reflected 1.4% y/y growth in employment and a dampened 0.8% gain in the size of the labor pool. Amongst the states, unemployment continued to be widely divergent. Two states held above the 6.0% [...]

The chart and table present data in slightly different formats. Nonetheless, they come to the same conclusion that Canada's retail sector is on very solid ground. This is something that most G7 countries cannot say. U.S., EMU and [...]

The Conference Board's Composite Index of Leading Economic Indicators increased 0.6% (4.0% y/y) during June following a 0.2% May gain, revised from 0.3%. It was the strongest increase since January. A 0.3% rise had been expected in [...]

In late 2015, Japan shook off a string of deficits on its trade account and began to post surpluses. The surpluses rose into 2016, but since then they have been unable to build momentum. Aside from one large surplus posted early this [...]