Dec 15: CPI up 0.1% – Economic Highlights

The Consumer Price Index increased by 0.1% in November, the smallest rise in five months, lower than the expected increase of 0.2%, to an index value of 219.146 (1982-84=100), after increasing by 0.2% in October and 0.1% in September. Over the year the CPI has increased by 1.1% before seasonal adjustment. The food index increased by 0.2%, after increasing by 0.1% in October and 0.3% in September and is up by 1.1% over the year. Energy Prices increased by 0.2% after increasing by 2.6% in October and are up 3.9% over the year. Excluding food and energy prices, the Core CPI increased by 0.1%after remaining unchanged in September and October. This is its first increase since July and the index has advanced by 0.8% over the year.

Net Foreign Purchases for October decreased to $27.6 billion, following a September decrease of $81.0 billion from $128.7 billion in August. Net foreign purchases of long-term U.S. securities were $54.7 billion, $62.2 billion of which were from private foreign investors and net purchases by foreign official institutions were negative $7.5 billion. U.S. residents purchased a net $27.1 billion of long-term foreign securities.

Industrial Production increased by 0.4% to an index value of 93.9 (2007=100) in November, higher than the expected 0.3% increase, following a 0.2% decrease in October. Over the year, the industrial production index is up by 5.4%. Capacity Utilization increased to 75.2% for November from 74.9% in October and was 5.4 percentage points below its average for the period from 1972 through 2009. In November 2009, Capacity Utilization was measured at 71.1%.

Crude inventories are expected today at 10:30 AM EST. For the week ending December 3, U.S. commercial crude oil inventories had decreased by 3.8 million barrels from the previous week to 355.9 million barrels and were above the upper limit of the average range for that time of year. U.S. crude oil refinery inputs averaged 14.9 million barrels per day during this period, 789 thousand barrels per day above the previous week’s average. U.S. crude oil imports were averaging 9.1 million barrels per day, up by 607 thousand barrels per day from the previous week.

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