Menu

Mortgage rates dropped to new lows this week, with the average conforming 30-year fixed mortgage rate now 4.5 percent, according to Bankrate.com's weekly national survey. The average 30-year fixed mortgage has an average of 0.35 discount and origination points.

President Barack Obama is contending with widespread opposition at home and mostly approval abroad among investors in a global poll reflecting divergent perspectives on the business climate from the U.S. to Europe and Asia.

In July 2010 compared with June 2010, the euro area (EA16) industrial new orders index fell by 2.4%. In June the index increased by 2.4%. In the EU27, new orders declined by 2.3% in July 2010, after a rise of 2.5% in June. Excluding ships, railway & aerospace equipment, for which changes tend to be more volatile, industrial new orders fell by 0.6% in the euro area and by 0.5% in the EU27.

The Conference Board Leading Economic Index® (LEI) for Germany increased 1.0 percent and The Conference Board Coincident Economic Index® (CEI) decreased 0.1 percent in July.

Most global investors expect China to become the world’s biggest economy over the next two decades, and they are divided over whether that will help or hurt the economies of other industrialized countries.

Planned IT spending by small and medium businesses (SMBs) is on the rise for the second half of the year, according to a new survey by Spiceworks™, Inc. Overall IT budgets are up an additional 4 percent from the first half of 2010.

Shoppers in Europe are finding more green products on the shelves thanks to promises made by European retailers to promote more environmentally sustainable consumption patterns. A report monitoring the achievements of voluntary targets set by members of the European Retail Forum – a European Commission and Retail sector initiative – shows retailers are delivering on their commitments. As well as putting more sustainable products on supermarket shelves, retailers have also made progress in reducing their environmental footprint, paying particular attention to resource efficiency measures. Communicating with consumers on sustainability issues, however, is considered an area for improvement. The report recommends setting up an award scheme to reward best practice.

The ranks of Americans with employment-based health insurance declined by more than 2 percentage points last year, according to a new analysis by the nonpartisan Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI).

The U.S. has fallen behind emerging markets in Brazil, China and India as the preferred place to invest, a Bloomberg survey shows, though the world’s largest economy still ranks highest of all major developed countries.

Regional and state unemployment rates were little changed in August. Twenty-seven states recorded unemployment rate increases, 13 states registered rate decreases, and 10 states and the District of Columbia had no rate change, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported. Twenty-six states and the District of Columbia posted unemployment rate decreases from a year earlier, 21 states reported increases, and 3 states had no change. The national jobless rate was about unchanged in August at 9.6 percent and also little different from a year earlier (9.7 percent).