Full text of U.S. Financial Data : January 17, 2002

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January 17, 2002

USFinancialData
THE WEEK’S HIGHLIGHTS:
■ In December, the consumer price index (CPI) fell 0.2 percent, or
2 percent at an annual rate, as energy prices fell 3.2 percent. Excluding energy prices, the CPI rose at a 0.6 percent rate. Following
gains of 2.7 percent in 1999 and 3.4 percent in 2000, CPI inflation
measured 1.6 percent in 2001 (December 2000 to December 2001).
Excluding food and energy prices, however, the CPI rose 2.7 percent
in 2001 after increasing 1.9 percent in 1999 and 2.6 percent in
2000.
■ The index of industrial production fell 0.1 percent in December,
while the capacity utilization rate fell 0.1 percentage points to
74.4 percent. Relative to recent months, sizable increases occurred
in the production of computers and office equipment (0.7 percent),
semiconductors (1.4 percent), and motor vehicles and parts (4.1
percent). Industrial production fell 6.4 percent in 2001, the largest
drop since 1974. Similarly, the capacity utilization rate fell 5.8
percentage points in 2001, the largest decline since 1982.
■ Measured in current dollars, manufacturing and trade inventories
fell 1 percent in November. Business inventories have declined for
10 consecutive months. But with manufacturing and trade sales
falling 1.4 percent in November, the inventory-to-sales ratio was
unchanged in November.
■ Privately owned housing starts fell 3.4 percent in December to
1,570,000 units (annualized). Actual housing starts totaled 1,603,100
units in 2001, up 2.2 percent from a year earlier.
All data are seasonally adjusted unless otherwise indicated.
U.S. Financial Data is published weekly by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of
St. Louis. For more information on data, please call (314) 444-8590. To be added to the mailing
list, please call (314) 444-8809.
Information in this publication is also included in the Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) data base
on the internet at www.stls.frb.org/fred.