statistics

Housing Starts Down 31.1% from 1 Year Ago

Submitted by on

Building permits dropped 8.3% from September and are down 38.4% from one year ago.

Housing Starts are 6.3% down from September and 31.1% from a year ago. When one goes to Single Family homes dropped 12% from August.

from Census

Considering what's going on and how flooded the market is, I would have expected these numbers to be even lower frankly.

Don't like what the data says? Hell, Stop Collecting it! BEA to stop tracking Foreign investments in the U.S.

Submitted by on

The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA)

Here is the graph of FDI from BEA:

FDI

As you can see Foreign companies are buying US assets extensively so why would the United States not track this very important statistic?

Economy in Crisis writes in Burying the Money Trail:

With the U.S. no longer following the foreign money trail, the American public will cease to have the ability to track the rapid sell-off of America’s best companies to foreign interests, essentially burying the problematic fact that America is for sale.

The American Manufacturing Trade Action Coalition, along with 38 other organizations issued a press release about the BEA decision to not track this vital statistic:

It turns out we're all wrong about "inflation" - GDP deflator vs. PPP vs. CPI

Good discussion of the difference between "inflation" and "purchasing power" as used in economic statistics, over at Naked Capitalism. Be sure you read the comments as well.

It turns out when pointy-headed economists and bureaucrats say "inflation", it doesn't mean what you and I think it does. Stupid us! We're really concerned about "purchasing power."

Oh.