Quick Overview

The Labor Department said Tuesday its producer price index rose 0.7% in March, and prices excluding food and energy rose just 0.1%.

Housing starts fell 17.6% in March, the biggest drop in 14 years, the Commerce Department reported Tuesday. YoY housing starts are up 5.5%.

The average national price of retail diesel fuel dropped 5.7 cents to $2.259 a gallon, the Department of Energy said Monday. Gasoline prices also tumbled from four weeks of records, dropping 4.3 cents to $2.237 a gallon, DOE said. Today however June unleaded gasoline was up 7.07 cents to $1.5807 with reports of refinery problems in Texas, Louisiana, and Kansas.

Chinese soybean futures settled higher on forecasts for smaller soy acreage in that country's largest soy-producing province, Soybean acreage in China's Heilongjiang province was expected to drop 3.1% this year, according to a local media report Monday.

General Motors reported a first quarter loss of $1.1 billion, the worst performance in 13 years and down from its $1.2 billion profit a year ago.

YoY Consumer prices in the U.K. were up 1.9%, the highest in almost seven years.

Canada's wholesale sales were up 1.1% in February and the composite index of leading indicators was up 0.2% in March

Unbelievable Sloppiness
The action is the only possible way of dealing with an unbelievable sloppiness -- the mixing of different genetically modified corn families. The so-called Bt10 corn from the US, with its resistance against the antibiotic Ampicillin is neither permitted in the US nor in Europe. The EU has not banned all US corn imports. It is merely demanding proof that the imported corn products do not include any Bt10.