Economy in Brief: July 2010

The pump price for regular gasoline fell last week to $2.73 per gallon last week and reversed the gains during the prior two weeks. Pulled higher by firm demand, prices have risen from the late-2009 level of $2.61. Yesterday, the spot [...]

The Mortgage Bankers Association reported that mortgage applications jumped another 6.7% last week. The increase raised the level 14.6% versus June and by nearly one-half from July '09. Firm lending activity continued to reflect [...]

Shopping at chain stores improved another 1.0% last week to the highest level in two-months after the 2.1% gain during the prior week. The gain lifted sales 2.2% above the depressed June average. During the last ten years there has [...]

The June Composite Index for the service and construction sectors from the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) slipped during June to 53.8 after three months at 55.4. Nevertheless, the level was nearly the highest since early-2007 [...]

The ECB sets its rate-targeting sights on the Euro-Srea's HICP a consumer prices measure not on the PPI which is producer prices measure. But producer prices are showing some inflation escalation despite this month's result which say [...]

The ECB sets its rate-targeting sights on the euro-area's HICP a consumer prices measure not on the PPI which is producer prices measure. But producer prices are showing some inflation escalation despite this month's result which say [...]

Up for a month or two then down for a month or two. That's been the pattern of U.S. unit sales of light vehicles since last Fall and it's left sales little changed from their November '09 level. For June, total light vehicle sales [...]

As the 2010 Census ended, 225,000 census jobs were lost. That accounted for most of last month's 125,000 decline in nonfarm payrolls. The 433,000 May increase was little revised but the 313,000 April gain was slightly stronger than [...]