Click on graph for larger image in new window. Total housing starts were at 581 thousand (SAAR) in July, off slightly from June, but up sharply over the last three months from the all time record low in April of 479 thousand (the lowest level since the Census Bureau…
As I follow up to my post Sunday, Health Care Spending and PCE , here is an animation of the U.S population distribution, by age, from 1950 through 2050. The population data and estimates are from the Census Bureau . Note: the third graph ( link ) is a Dynamic…
Reader Mark sent me a link to a talk by Jon Fisher, a professor at the University of San Francisco School of Business. Jon made the point that housing starts and unemployment are inversely correlated. Of course readers here know that housing lead the economy, and employment lags. So naturally…
To preface this post, here are my notes from the April 2008 Milken conference: Sam Zell started by saying we need to separate commercial from residential. Commercial will be fine in his view (not my view). Also Zell thinks losses are overstated for investment banks and CDOs. Zell isn’t talking…
This will be a very busy week for economic news, and some of the key data will be new home sales for June released on Monday, the Case-Shiller home price index for May released on Tuesday, and Q2 GDP from the BEA on Friday. At the beginning of this dark…
For the last few years, whenever housing starts increased, I wrote that was bad news because there was already too much inventory. Now, even though there is still too much existing home inventory, and too much new home inventory in some areas, it appears that new home sales have stabilized.…
Click on graph for larger image in new window. Total housing starts were at 582 thousand (SAAR) in June, up sharply over the last two months from the all time record low in April of 479 thousand (the lowest level since the Census Bureau began tracking housing starts in…
From Forbes: Bank Earnings: Beauty Is Skin-Deep (ht Brett) The banking industry is bracing for continued losses from consumer loans, considering the rising unemployment rate, and an expected wave of commercial real-estate losses. At a Senate Banking Committee hearing in Washington on Thursday, Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky., related a comment…