Economy in Brief

Regular gasoline prices edged down 2 cents in the week ended August 21 to $2.36 per gallon (7.6% y/y), remaining below the recent high of $2.45 per gallon in late-April. Haver Analytics constructs factors adjusting for the seasonal [...]

The FHFA home price tracker is put together a bit more scientifically than the NAR existing home price index. Still, over broad periods, the two indexes track relatively well. Over short periods, they can be quite different. The NAR [...]

The current economic situation in Germany and for most of the countries in the table continues to improve as expectations are being capped or set back in August. The current situation in the euro area advanced by 10 points month-to- [...]

A sharp drop in imports pushed the EMU trade surplus to a six-month high. The trade surplus rose to 22.3 billion euros in June from 19.0 billion euros in May, to its strongest point since logging a surplus of 23.0 billion euros in [...]

Japan's three main sectors industry (manufacturing), construction and tertiary (services) all show ongoing progress in June if not month-to-month, then in terms of trend. The chart on the left shows the indexes plotted in level [...]

In the short term, much of what happens to PPI inflation is determined by oil prices as the chart (on the left) reminds us. However, the mapping is not one-to-one and is not without its lags. Still, it is clear that recent hiatus in [...]

The National Association of Realtors reported that the Composite Index of Home Affordability declined 7.3% y/y during June to 144.5, the lowest level since September 2008. The index was 32.6% below its peak in January 2013. During the [...]

Initial unemployment insurance applications declined to 232,000 (-9.8% y/y) during the week ended August 12 from an unrevised 244,000 during the prior week. Expectations were for 240,000 claims in the Action Economics Forecast Survey. [...]