Author Archive
Media and Market Overreact As Usual to Weaker Housing Data

The mainstream financial media breathlessly proclaimed the worst housing data in x months this morning, on the release of the Commerce Department’s monthly new home sales data. I won’t go… Read more
Mainstream Media Gets It Wrong; In Unintentional Truth-Telling, NAR Shows House Market Strengthening

NAR data for May confirms earlier data from CoreLogic, Dataquick, and Department of Numbers.com that housing prices continued to make new 12 month highs in May and that, contrary to the mainstream… Read more
Bernanke Successfully Re-Inflating Housing, Unbeknownst To Shiller

Adapted from the Wall Street Examiner. There were two major housing data releases today. One of them is important. The other was a misleading misdirection play, as it usually is. Due to its… Read more
Builder Indexes Down In April, But Trend Is Still Up

The dark and dirty job of pointing out that the NAHB Housing Market Index present conditions index is up 11 points versus last April and traffic is up 5 points falls to me, I guess. The mainstream… Read more
ISM in Wonderland Media Reporting Versus Reality–Which Do You Prefer?

Originally posted at the Wall Street Examiner. The big economic news story on Monday was the ISM Purchasing Managers Index. The headline number was only mildly positive, but it was enough so that… Read more
Interpreting The Head-Scratching Unemployment Claims Data

Adapted from The Wall Street Examiner. Actual, not seasonally adjusted, initial unemployment claims totaled 319,349 last week, according to the Department of Labor tabulation of weekly data… Read more
CoreLogic Data Shows House Price Declines Slowing

CoreLogic’s data for January closed house sales (mostly November contracts) shows a year over year decline of 3.1% nationally. the month to month decline was 1%. However, the 12 month rate of… Read more
Deconstructing The “Massive Beat” in Employment Data

The headlines are blaring of a massive surge in January employment that blew away analysts expectations. Frankly, I find it hard to believe that any analysts would not have expected this “news.”… Read more
IN CASE OF SHILLER, BREAK (Out This Article)

The Case Shiller housing price index was released this morning and, as usual, it’s getting lots of media attention. I have no problem with that, except for one minor detail. It is a worthless and… Read more
No Truth Coming From Mortgage Bankers Ass.

From the Wall Street Examiner. Apparently the MBAss. (Mortgage Bankers Association) didn’t like the fact that someone in the financial blogo-wackosphere actually had the temerity to make use of… Read more
