U.S. retail sales posted a surprising gain in February despite falling car demand amid trouble at auto maker Toyota MotorCorp. and fierce blizzards that crippled the East Coast for days.
Retail sales rose last month by 0.3%, the Commerce Department said Friday. An average of economists surveyed had forecast a 0.3% decrease in February sales. The [...]

Rebuilding of depleted inventories was behind an improvement in 4Q economic growth estimates above what was previously estimated. The estimate brought estimates up to 5.9% from earlier estimate of 5.7%. Last quarter’s growth was likely the strongest since 3Q 2003.
Inventory accumulation was estimated to have added 3.9% to economic growth last quarter. The accumulation of [...]

Earlier this day, I came across Moody’s Misery Index (link) which estimated the size of macroeconomic difficulties in European countries. In particular, European countries within and outside the Eurozone are likely to face stagnant GDP growth rates, high unemployment rates, deflationary pressures and a depressing fiscal outlook.
Moody’s Sovereign Misery Index
Source: FT Alphaville (link)
The most [...]

The Economist published a very lucid analysis (link) of the recent macroeconomic instability in the Euroarea, following the outbreak of Greek debt crisis (link) and disappointing quarterly data on GDP growth (link):
Barely had the ink dried on a statement by European leaders supporting Greece in its struggle to finance its debts when more bad news [...]

The Rasmussen Consumer Confidence Index, rose to its highest reading so far this year on Wednesday. At 79.9, the index is now at its highest level since just a few days after the Lehman Brothers collapse — which many analysts mark as the start of last year’s financial crisis. The consumer index (which is refreshed [...]

On Tuesday, the National Association of Realtors announced that the pending home sales index for June jumped 3.6 percent. The gain is the fifth such monthly gain in a row and represents the longest string of surges in six years! Year-over-year comparisons also now show improvement — up 6.7 percent since June of 2008. In [...]