September 2010

Housing Starts & Building Permits for August 2010 - 10.5%

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This is a surprise. Housing Starts jumped +10.5% in August 2010. Last month housing starts were revised to a -0.4% flatline from June. The change was all due to apartments, which increased 42.7% from last month.

 

 

Privately-owned housing starts in August were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 598,000. This is 10.5 percent (±11.9%)* above the revised July estimate of 541,000 and is 2.2 percent (±9.7%)* above the August 2009 rate of 585,000.

Single-family housing starts in August were at a rate of 438,000; this is 4.3 percent (±12.4%)* above the revised July figure of 420,000. The August rate for units in buildings with five units or more was 147,000.

Regionally, the new construction was happening in the West, with all regions having much higher 5 or more unit housing starts than single family. Here is a percentage breakdown of the nation's regions housing start totals:

  • West: 34.3%
  • South: 7.0%
  • Midwest: 21.7%
  • Northeast: -24.3%

 

The Great Recession Is Over! So Declares the NBER

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The National Bureau of Economic Research has declared an end of the Great Recession.

The committee determined that a trough in business activity occurred in the U.S. economy in June 2009. The trough marks the end of the recession that began in December 2007 and the beginning of an expansion. The recession lasted 18 months, which makes it the longest of any recession since World War II. Previously the longest postwar recessions were those of 1973-75 and 1981-82, both of which lasted 16 months.

So, it's all good then and we're back to normal? Not exactly.

In determining that a trough occurred in June 2009, the committee did not conclude that economic conditions since that month have been favorable or that the economy has returned to operating at normal capacity. Rather, the committee determined only that the recession ended and a recovery began in that month. A recession is a period of falling economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales. The trough marks the end of the declining phase and the start of the rising phase of the business cycle. Economic activity is typically below normal in the early stages of an expansion, and it sometimes remains so well into the expansion.

Fed Flow of Funds Report - It's Official, We're Broke..er...er

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The Federal Reserve released their flow of funds Q2 report last Friday. Over 160 pages of data, the report shows debt, wealth, GDP distribution.

According to the Huffington Post, we just got a whole lot poorer (you are shocked I'm sure!):

The net worth of households and non-profit organizations dropped $1.52 trillion during the period from April 1 to June 30 of this year, according to the report released Friday. The new figure, $53.50 trillion, represents a 2.8 percent decline from the previous quarter..

Asset International analyzed the benefit and retirement plan assets, this isn't too good either:

US corporate defined benefit and defined contribution plans had combined assets of $5.32 trillion as of June 30, a 6.8% drop from three months earlier.

As of June 30, while corporate DB plan assets amounted to $2.05 trillion, down 5.4% from the previous quarter, corporate DC plan assets came to $3.27 trillion, down 7.5%, as reported by Pensions & Investments. Meanwhile, total assets in state and local government retirement funds were $2.56 trillion, down 8.2%, while the federal government’s retirement funds totaled $1.311 trillion, down 1%.

Sunday Morning Comics - Bubble Dreams Edition

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Brought to you by campaign contributions - This year's election choices are guaranteed to not give you one.
Cup O' Joe

 

Good Morning! Rise and Shine! Get that Cup O' Joe...
break out the O.J....hang out with the pooch...time to check out the Funnies.

 

 


Cartoonist: Tom Toles

 

Rally to Restore Sanity

 


Cartoonist: Joel Pett

 

The Economics of Ecology

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The summer of 2002 was a drought year in the Klamath Basin.

An estimated 70,000 salmon died that year after the Bush administration "ignored its own federal biologists and divert more water from the Klamath River for farm irrigation". According to documents, the decision was made because the farmers generally voted Republican. The Bush Administration then went on to order that water continue to be diverted for another eight years.

Only 24,000 fall chinook spawned naturally in the Klamath in 2004, followed by 27,000 last year.

The analysis from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service identified low water flows as a prime culprit in a major salmon kill on the Klamath River in 2002.
Because it takes several years for salmon to reach peak reproducing age, the effects of this huge fish-kill only started in 2005 when the National Marine Fisheries Service abbreviated the commercial salmon season. It cut the income of west coast fishermen "by 50 percent".
California and Oregon indian tribes, that have depended on salmon fishing for thousands of years, also had their fishing quotas cut back by as much as half.

It's easy to look at this example as an exception based on petty politics, but that would require you to overlook five centuries of political and economic policy.

When you look around the global environment today you will see nearly every animal species, large and small, in trouble. It doesn't matter if they live on land, water, or air.

Major Site Administration News

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Folks, we are on a new server! Please leave a comment or email via the main contact form of any problems, page loads, access to your accounts.

Feedback on the new server as well as the site is greatly appreciated! We should now have the resources to make a lot of changes to the site itself.

If you can't get through at all, the gmail is oak.robert.

Below is the reason for the move. We're on a VPS with Wired Tree for all geek readers.

HUH? or Help for Underwater Homeowners in the U.S.

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We desperately need constructive vs. destructive solutions. Imagine the economic stimulus effect of 15 million hardworking, voting, home owning, American households with reduced debt service and tangibly increased expendable income over the next 5 years…

Tapping on the Walls of The Echo Chamber or “HUH?”

By On Porpoise

“The walls of the echo chamber can sometimes keep out fresh voices and new ways of thinking…”

— Barak Obama 11-26-08

Imagine this:

* Oval Office September 2010. Rahm Emanuel seated with President Obama.
* Emanuel: “Pardon me Mr. President – What the hell is that?”
* Obama: Pauses – listens intently – a “tap, tap, tap” is audible in the distance.
* Emanuel: “Dammit! They’re tapping on the walls of our echo chamber!”

In his NY Times column of September 5, 2010, Pulitzer Prize winning Princeton economist Paul Krugman yearns for the Obama administration to rediscover the virtues of “intellectual clarity and political will” – as prerequisites for proposing essential stimulus measures to reinvigorate the struggling U.S. economy.

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