Home Prices Are Rising. Is That Recovery, or a Bubble? Home prices are still rising according to the latest NAR data showing a monthly gain of 1.3% and 9.9% year to year increase in December. That’s consistent with a wide variety of home price measures,
Tag Archives: Lee Adler
December Real Retail Sales Worse Than Headline Number
The retail sales headline number for December rose 0.2%, beating the market consensus of a flat month. As usual, the featured number was a seasonally adjusted, made up number, also not adjusted for inflation. The mainstream media noted the solid gain, but worried
Big Picture Employment Trend Remains Crappy
I have previously shown how the headline number for non farm payrolls overstated the weakness in December jobs growth. That was about how the pundits and the media are often misled by their slavish devotion to seasonally adjusted data.
ISM Non Manufacturing New Orders Collapse
After the ISM’s manufacturing new orders for December showed some life last week we had reason to expect a good report from the Non Manufacturing (services) sector. It didn’t happen.
WSJ is All Wet on Construction Spending
On Thursday, the Commerce Department reported the widely ignored monthly Construction Spending report for November. Did you notice it? I didn’t think so. But boy, was the WSJ having an orgasm or what!