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The Conference Board Leading Economic Index® (LEI) for Germany increased 0.7 percent and The Conference Board Coincident Economic Index® (CEI) increased 0.2 percent in August.

The Conference Board Leading Economic Index® (LEI) for France increased 0.9 percent and The Conference Board Coincident Economic Index® (CEI) remained unchanged in August.

The dominant social network sites of Europe and North America have yet to extend their reach into parts of Asia Pacific where local sites retain the leading consumer mind share and profitable business models, according to new research from Gartner, Inc.

The Conference Board Leading Economic Index® (LEI) for the U.S. increased 0.3 percent, The Conference Board Coincident Economic Index® (CEI) remained unchanged and The Conference Board Lagging Economic Index® (LAG) increased 0.4 percent in September.

In the first three quarters of 2010 all regions and departments consistently carried out the packages of policies dealing with the impacts of international financial crisis and other policies and measures, and proactively pushed forward the transformation of economic development mode and the adjustment of economic structures. As a result, the good developing momentum of economy was further consolidated, and the national economy kept moving towards the expected direction of macro economic control.

China Economic Monitoring Center of China National Bureau of Statistics and Sinotrust International Information & Consulting (Beijing) jointly released the "2010 Q3 China Automotive Industry Climate Index".

Mortgage rates hit another record low this week, with the average rate on the benchmark conforming 30-year fixed mortgage rate retreating to 4.42 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.

According to the latest available data, the EU27 external current account recorded a deficit of 37.1 billion euro in the second quarter of 2010, compared with a deficit of 42.1 bn in the second quarter of 2009 and a deficit of 31.8 bn in the first quarter of 2010.

Confirmed by the European Central Bank’s recent announcement of four percent growth in the EU, global payments volumes continued to grow in 2009, despite economic pressure from the financial crisis according to findings from the World Payments Report 2010, announced by Capgemini, RBS and Efma. This followed a period of overall growth in non cash-payments which accelerated to nine percent in 2008 from seven percent in 2007. The rate of growth in non-cash payments volumes in 2008 was far faster in developing economies, such as China (29 percent), South Africa (25 percent) and Russia (66 percent), than in mature markets, such as North America which had a growth rate of four percent.

Though Americans are still operating with the recession in the back of their minds and many have fundamentally changed their shopping habits, some findings from NRF’s first holiday survey imply consumers won’t only be focusing on low prices and basic necessities this year. According to NRF’s 2010 Holiday Consumer Intentions and Actions Survey, conducted by BIGresearch, U.S. consumers plan to spend an average of $688.87 on holiday-related shopping, a slight rise from last year’s $681.83.