Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, gave a speech today, June 7th, titled “The U.S. Economic Outlook“. The Fed will complete the recent stimulus plan of purchasing $600 billion worth of Treasury securities by the end of…
Category: News by Region
Natural gas continues to rise – June 3rd update
According to Bloomberg, this current rally is due, in part, to the predictions of meteorologists Matt Rogers at Commodity Weather Group in Bethesda, Maryland of a heat wave in Eastern U.S. this week. This might further raise the demand for…
The Turmoil in Middle East continues – Yemen and Syria update
Yemen The recent reports from Yemen are that there was an attempted murder on President Ali Abdullah Saleh, the current president of Yemen by a bombing of his palace in Sana’a. According to the current reports, He managed to escape…
US PMI manufacturing index fell to 53.5, oil prices also declined
The U.S. ISM Manufacturing PMI, which is an index that estimate the economic activity in the manufacturing sector in the U.S., declined during May to 53.5% after it reached on April 60.4%, i.e. a 6.9 percent points decline. This decline…
Will OPEC raise oil supply quota? speculation around OPEC meeting
According to DnB NOR, the expectations are that OPEC will raise its crude oil quota by 2.2 million barrel and reach a new target supply of 27 million barrels a day – the highest level since 2008. If this will…
Oil prices rise over concerns of Keystone pipeline
There are some concerns in the crude oil market that might affect the level of uncertainty over supply of oil and cause crude oil prices to trade up: Due to a pump- station leak in the Keystone pipeline was shut…
China seeks to expand it gold operations in Africa
China, the second largest importer of gold, after India, is seeking to expand its take on gold: according to Bloomberg, the state owned company China National Gold Group Corp. is seeking to expand its investments in Africa in gold mining. The…
Monetary development in Euro Area declined during April
According to the recent publication of the Euro Area monetary development has declined during April 2011 compared to previous months: the annual growth rate for M3 declined from 2.3% during March to 2.0% during April 2011. On the other hand,…
US home sales fell and GDP 1Q11 rose by only 1.8%
The main economic indicators regarding the US economy didn’t show much improvement in 2011: The second estimate of the growth rate of the real GDP in the first quarter of 2011 remained unchanged at 1.8% after the US GDP grew…
US initial claims increased last week May 26
Today’s U.S. jobless claims weekly report was published and showed an increase in initial claims by 10,000 for the week ending on May 21st, and it reached 424,000 claims (seasonally adjusted data); the insured unemployment rate declined by 0.1 percent…