Housing construction, permits hit record lows - I guess that stimulus package hasn't kicked in yet

By MARTIN CRUTSINGER
AP Economics Writer
May 19, 2009

WASHINGTON – Housing construction plunged to a record low in April as a steep drop in apartment building offset a rebound in single-family construction. Permits for new projects also hit a new low.

The Commerce Department said Tuesday that construction of new homes and apartments fell 12.8 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 458,000 units, the lowest pace on records going back a half-century.

In a disappointing sign for the future, applications for new building permits dropped 3.3 percent to a new record low annual rate of 494,000.

Economists had expected home construction and building permits to post modest increases in April as signs that the worst collapse in housing activity in the post-World War II period was drawing to a close.

Even in last month's big decline, there were some signs of stabilization. Construction of single-family homes rose 2.8 percent to an annual rate of 368,000, following a 0.3 percent gain in March and no change in February. The stability in single-family construction likely will be viewed as a hopeful sign that the three-year slide in housing could be bottoming out.

The weakness last month came in the more volatile multifamily sector where construction plunged 46.1 percent to an annual rate of 90,000 units after a 23 percent fall in March.

Housing construction fell 30.6 percent in the Northeast, the largest drop for any region. Housing starts dropped 21.4 percent in the Midwest and 21.1 percent in the South.

The West was the only region showing strength with a 42.5 percent jump in housing starts.

The National Association of Homebuilders reported Monday that its survey of builder confidence increased for the second straight month in May, reflecting growing optimism on the part of many builders.

The Washington-based trade group's index rose two points to 16, the highest reading since September. Even with the rebound, the index remains near historic lows. Index readings lower than 50 indicate negative sentiment about the market.

Still, private economists viewed rising builder sentiment as an encouraging sign.

"Record high affordability, record low mortgage rates and the government's efforts to jump start economic growth are giving potential buyers optimism to step in and take a look around," said Jennifer Lee, an economist with BMO Capital Markets.

But analysts cautioned that the wave of foreclosures hitting the market means that builders still face tough competition to sell new homes.

The nation's top three homebuilders reported financial results earlier this month that give little hope the spring selling season will be strong enough to stop the red ink.

Pulte Homes Inc. and Centex Corp., which agreed to combine this year to become the largest U.S. homebuilder, said that while their quarterly losses narrowed, they continued to be battered by falling prices and a glut of unsold homes.

D.R. Horton Inc., currently the industry's No. 1 home builder, also reported that its losses had shrunk, but the company said it still faces challenges from foreclosures, high inventory levels, tight homebuyer credit, low consumer confidence and job losses.
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All Obama, All The Time - 100 Days of Obama

100 Days, 100 Mistakes - The Official List...accept no substitutes

from Don Surber.com
April 29, 2009

The Official List
Accept no substitutes.

It is legendary, inspiring Chris Muir (see above) and cited by Jules Crittenden, Glenn Reynolds and Michelle Malkin.

It has even been imitated by the New York Post.

This is the official list of The Won’s 100 mistakes in 100 days. Please let me know of any omissions. Again, these are in no particular order and are not weighted for the seriousness of their error.

1. $787 billion for a 6.1% shrinkage of the U.S. economy. Hope. Change. Panic.
2. Not fighting the release of CIA photos. Al-Qaida smiles.
3. The Bow
4. Saying it is not a bow.
5. Saying he looked forward to working with “president” Jacques Chirac – 2 years after Chirac left office. The White House said, oh, that was in reference to Chirac being head of a foundation…6. Saying there’s no pork in the stimulus. Yes there is.
7. Appointing tax cheat Tim Geithner.
8. Appointing under investigation Bill Richardson.
9. Appointing tax cheat Tom Daschle.
10. Appointing Marc Rich and terrorist pardoning Eric “Nation of Cowards” Holder.
11. Appointing Janet “Man Caused Disasters” Napolitano.
12. Appointing Hilda Solis (OK, her husband has the tax liens).
13. Appointing anti-Semitic Charles Freeman Jr.
14. Appointing tax cheat Ron Kirk.
15. Appointing fund-raising cheat Gary Locke.
16. Appointing under investigation Adolfo Carrion.
17. Who is that sneaking out the back door?
18. Putting Larry Summers to sleep. More TOTUS and cowbell.
19. Making the SEALs hold their fire initially — costing them 2 days.
20. The $100 million budget cut.
21. Pretending to be unaware of the Tea Parties.
22. Politicizing the Census. An attempt that failed. I think.
23. Armenian genocide? Never heard of it.
24. Taking crap from Danny Ortega.
25. Apologizing to Muslims, whom the US helped.
26. Apologizing to France — what, for saving her twice?
27. Apologizing for liberating Iraq.
28. A handshake instead of a kiss from Carla Bruni.
29. Shaking hands with the anti-American Hugo Chavez.
30. Accepting an anti-American tome from Chavez.
31. Buzzing New York City for a photo op. Nice panic.
32. Burning 9,000 gallons of fuel for an Earth Day photo op.
33. Flying his green pizza chef 850 miles from St. Louis to the White House. More carbon big-footing to promote green.
34. Believing that pizzas harm the environment.
35. Most expensive inauguration. Ever.
36. Embracing what he dismissed in the campaign as the largest middle-class tax ever.
37. Fighting coal– which provides half the nation’s electricity.
38. Appointing Dr. Sunjay Gupta as surgeon general, only to kick him to the curb once lefties complained.
39. Having no surgeon general to advise on the swine flu.
40. Annette Nazareth appointed but resigned because of… tax reasons.
41. Laughing at problems so much that Steve Kroft asked, “Are you punch drunk?”
42. Lifting travel restrictions on Cuba with nothing in return.
43. The Holy See turned down 3 candidates for ambassador, including Caroline Kennedy. Are there any pro-life Democrats left?
44. Having Georgetown cover Christ’s name when The Won used that Catholic university as a backdrop for a speech.
45. That’s up, Mr. President.
46. Bumping his head on the Marine One helicopter.
47. Banning offshore oil again.4
48. Funding abortions overseas.
49. Using the word “crisis” 25 times in a speech, then later complaining that people are too negative about the economy.
50. Letting Nancy Pelosi write the $787 billion “stimulus’ plan.
51. Relying on Tim Geithner to explain it.
52. Putting Joe Biden in charge of making sure the stimulus money is not — wink, wink, nudge, nudge — misspent.
53. Setting the Oval Office thermostat at 80.
54. Going to a press conference without a TelePrompTer. I… Uhh… Umm… Could you repeat the question?
55. Using a TelePrompTer at a press conference. Big boys don’t need training wheels.
56. Opening a press conference with: “Good evening, everybody. Please be seated. Before I take your questions tonight, I’d like to speak briefly.” 1,228 words later he took his first question.
57. Ethics waivers.
58. Going after Rush Limbaugh.
59. Going after Rick Santelli.
60. Going after Jim Cramer.
61. Trying to run the Census out of the White House.
62. Adopting the motto: “Never waste a good crisis.”
63. Writing a love letter to Vlad and Dmitry.
64. Throwing Poland under the bus.
65. Throwing Tibet under the bus.
66. Throwing Israel under the bus.
67. Taking Cuba out from under the bus.
68. Ticking off Switzerland by having his tax cheat go after the tax cheats in Switzerland. Cognitive dissonance.
69. Saying: “Karzai has a bunker mentality.”
70. Reaching out to the Taliban.
71. Iran has plans to Marine One helicopters.
72. Explaining his refusal to work with Republicans with the words: “I won.”
73. Having a BlackBerry that can easily be hacked by the Chinese.
74. Saying to the people of Peoria: “If Congress passes our plan, this company will be able to rehire some of the folks who were just laid off.” CEO: No. There will be more layoffs.
75. He gave a gift to the “wrong region” to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
76. Making the president of Brazil change his meeting so O’Bama could celebrate St. Patrick’s Day.
77. Telling the American people: “You can’t take a trip to Las Vegas or go down to the Super Bowl on the taxpayers’ dime.” Vegas convention bookings nosedive.
78. Serving $100-a-pound wagyu — on the taxpayers’ dime.
79. Sending a “reset” button to Russia, presumably to diss the last 70 years of America standing up to communism.
80. Having the “reset” button say “overcharged.”
81. Taking a 4-day holiday weekend before signing “emergency” legislation.
82. Stiffing Chicago for nearly $2 million for that Election Night party.
83. Telling Caroline Kennedy she would, you know, make, um a good, you know, senator.
84. Bombing Pakistan.
85. Sending the bust of Sir Winston Churchill back to the British.
86. Telling reporters privately: “President Obama has accomplished more in 30 days than any president in modern history.”
87. Walking into a White House window thinking it was a door.
88. Signing an order that doctors must perform abortions, in violation of the Hippocratic Oath.
89. Signing earmarks while denouncing them.
90. Adding signing statements while denouncing them.
91. Quadrupling the deficits, while denouncing them.
92. Considering having the VA charge veterans for service-related injuries.
93. Thanking himself in a Teleprompter malfunction.
94. Heckuva job, Tim.
95. Trade war with Mexico over 97 trucks.
96. Saying his bowling is “like the Special Olympics.”
97. Saying he didn’t know the AIG bonuses were included in the bailout package he signed.
98. Banning the press from covering his acceptance of a press association award.
99. Skipping the Gridiron Club dinner.
100. Picking a special economics board to help him in the “emergency” that did not meet.
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100 Days of the Poser Presidency - bleh!

(Photoshop credit: Nice Deb)

from Michelle Malkin.com
By Michelle Malkin
April 29, 2009

My syndicated column commemorates Barack Obama’s 100 days with the Scare Force One story as a take-off point. Imagine if this fiasco had happened under George Bush’s watch. It would have made the Left’s incessant carping over the “fake plastic turkey,” Mission Accomplished banner, and My Pet Goat incidents look like nothing.

We now know thanks to WCBS in NY that the feds knew the “mission” would cause panic and that they went ahead with the secret plans, anyway. There are still a lot more unanswered questions about what happened in the skies above New York City. I have filed two FOIA requests with the Office of the Secretary of Defense and Joint Staff FOIA Requester Service Center seeking more info, including the flight manifests; communications that would shed light on the origin of the “mission,” and copies of any and all photos taken on the taxpayer-subsidized journey. Let’s have some of that vaunted transparency Barack Obama is always talking about.

100 days of reckless photo-op hubris

by Michelle Malkin

Creators SyndicateCopyright 2009

Come on, who’s surprised? The White House-engineered photo-op of low-flying Air Force aircraft that caused terror in New York City this week epitomizes the Age of Obama. What better way to mark 100 days in office than with an appalling exercise in pointless, taxpayer-funded stagecraft.

The superficiality, the unseriousness, the hubris, the obliviousness to post-9/11 realities: They were trademarks of the Obama campaign and they are the tattoos on his governance.

He never leaves home without his teleprompter. All the Obama world’s a stage. Or a world ready to be staged.

So, is it any wonder he would staff his White House Military Office with a clueless paper-pusher who saw nothing wrong with spending inordinate government resources – and recreating 9/11 havoc — to update Air Force One publicity shots? And who planned, believe it or not, to do the same in Washington, D.C., next month, where 53 passengers and 6 crew members on board American Airlines Flight 77, and 125 military and civilian personnel inside the Pentagon were murdered by the 9/11 jihadists?

All for some damned publicity shots.

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100 Days of Me - All Me, All the time -

from American Thinker
by Rick Moran
April 29, 2009

Obama's 'Managerial Brilliance'

Well yeah, if you listen to David Brooks whose glowing ecomiums to the president's "tremendously effective, efficient managerial administration" on a recent Charlie Rose show just rose up and bit him in the arse when the crazy-stupid prank of flying an Air Force One mockup so low that it panicked half of New York revealed his hero's incompetence.

Andy McCarthy writing at the Corner marking Obama's 100 days in office:

"...cabinet tax woes, "who hid the Geithner plan?", the apology tours, our national cowardice on race, the DHS secretary who is bird-dogging conservatives in search of the next man-caused disaster (when she isn't slandering Canada over 9/11), Iran and North Korea on the nuclear march, the State Department that can't translate "reset" into Russian, the redistribution by day and wagyu steak by night, the disclosure of interrogation tactics to our terrorist enemies (and coming soon, prisoner-abuse photos that even Democrats concede will increase the danger to our troops and our country), the 48-hour flip-floperoo on criminal investigations of Bush officials, etc., etc."

"Now the Obama administration frightens the living daylights out of lower Manhattan - causing building evacuations by people who though a second 9/11 was underway - just so they can have an Air Force One photo op (imagine the carbon footprint!) and it's like Obama had nothing to do with it. If you read the news accounts, it's all Louis Caldera, who was summoned to the woodshed "to hear the President's displeasure" (as the WSJ put it) from Rahm Emanuel. Why do I think that if this had happened during the last administration, no one would know the name of the guy running the "White House Military Office"?"

Do you think any of his worshipping flock of media sycophants will mention this at tonight's press conference? Or the fact that he has been so busy planning for this "100 days of Me" celebration that he hasn't bothered to fill vital posts at Treasury or HHS with a bank crisis and Swine Flu crisis looming? Probably get some questions about his wife, his dog, and how things are going to be swell once all those trillions of dollars he's spent are redistrbuted to the "right people."
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Economy shrinks at 6.1 percent pace in 1Q = everything is still going south

from Don Surber.com
April 29, 2009

AP: “The jobless rate is now at a quarter-century high of 8.5% and is expected to hit 10% by the end of this year…

“…It will probably rise a bit higher in early 2010 before starting to slowly drift downward. Still, the Fed predicts unemployment will stay elevated into 2011, and economists don’t think it will return to normal — around a 5 percent jobless rate — until 2013.”

Hope. Change. Hope the change don’t kill the economy.

I thought the $787 billion stimulus package, passed with only two Republican votes, was supposed to cure all this.

President Obama said we had to quadruple the national deficit in order to save our economy.

And yet, Jeanine Aversa of the AP reported:

1. The economy dropped at a pace of 6.1% in the first quarter — worse than the 5% that was expected.
2. Unemployment is at 8.5%, its highest in a quarter-century.
3. Spending on home building fell 38%, the biggest drop in 29 years.
4. Businesses cut spending on equipment and software by 33.8% — the biggest drop in capital spending in 51 years.
5. U.S. exports plunged 30% — the worst first quarter in 40 years.

Aversa: “Even if the recession were to end this year, the economy will remain feeble and unemployment will keep climbing, government officials and analysts say.”

Democrats wanted a recession. Here it is.
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Here is the AP article

from CTcentral.com
by JEANNINE AVERSA
AP Economics Writer
April 29, 2009

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The economy shrank at a worse-than-expected 6.1 percent pace at the start of this year as sharp cutbacks by businesses and the biggest drop in U.S. exports in 40 years overwhelmed a rebound in consumer spending.

The Commerce Department's report, released Wednesday, dashed hopes that the recession's grip on the country loosened in the first quarter. Economists surveyed by Thomson Reuters expected a 5 percent annualized decline.

Instead, the economy ended up performing nearly as bad as it had in the final three months of last year when it logged the worst slide in a quarter-century, contracting at a 6.3 percent pace. Nervous consumers played a prominent role in that dismal showing as they ratcheted back spending in the face of rising unemployment, falling home values and shrinking nest eggs.

In the January-March quarter consumers came back to life, boosting their spending after two straight quarters of reductions. The 2.2 percent growth rate was the strongest in two years.

Still, the consumer rebound was swamped by heavy spending cuts in virtually every other area.

Businesses cut spending on home building, commercial construction, equipment and software, and inventories of goods. Sales of U.S. goods to foreign buyers plunged as they retrenched in the face of economic troubles in their own countries. Even the government trimmed spending. It was the first time that happened since the end of 2005.

The sharp cuts underscore the toll the housing, credit and financial crises - the worst since the 1930s - are having on the country. The recession, which began in December 2007, has taken a big bite out of national economic activity and snatched 5.1 million jobs.

However, the recent outbreak of the swine flu, which started out in Mexico and has spread to the United States and elsewhere, poses a new potential danger. If the flu stifles trade and forces consumers to cut back further, those negative forces would worsen the recession.

Before the flu outbreak, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said the recession could end this year if the government succeeds in stabilizing the shaky financial system and getting banks to lend again.

In recent weeks, Bernanke and his colleagues had cited "tentative signs" of the recession easing in some consumer spending, home building and other reports. Finance officials from the U.S. and other top economic powers meeting here last week also saw some hopeful signs for the global economy.

Spending on home building fell at a 38 percent annualized rate, the most since the second quarter of 1980. Businesses cut spending on equipment and software at a 33.8 percent pace, the most since the first quarter of 1958. Inventory reductions shaved 2.79 percentage points off overall first-quarter economic activity.

U.S. exports plunged at a rate of 30 percent, the biggest drop since the first quarter of 1969, reflecting the crimped appetite of struggling foreign buyers. The government also cut spending 3.9 percent, the most since the end of 1995.

Even if the recession were to end this year, the economy will remain feeble and unemployment will keep climbing, government officials and analysts say.

The jobless rate is now at a quarter-century high of 8.5 percent and is expected to hit 10 percent by the end of this year. It will probably rise a bit higher in early 2010 before starting to slowly drift downward. Still, the Fed predicts unemployment will stay elevated into 2011, and economists don't think it will return to normal - around a 5 percent jobless rate - until 2013.
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