Tim Iacono's Blog

The Commerce Department reported(.pdf) that U.S. housing starts rose 2.8 percent last month, from an upwardly revised seasonally adjusted annual rate of 920,000 in February to 946,000 in April, however, this was below the consensus estimate of 955,000 that was expected, at least in part, due to better weather in the spring after a severe winter.

The Commerce Department reported that U.S. retail sales jumped 1.1 percent in March, the biggest monthly increase since September 2012, as Americans released pent-up demand that resulted from an unusually harsh winter.

This item at The Economist carried the chart below with the latest home price data that was released earlier in the week by S&P Case-Shiller. A similar chart has appeared here many times over the years, however...

The Labor Department reported that U.S. consumer prices rose 0.1 percent in February for the second straight month and that the annual rate of inflation dropped from 1.6 percent in January to just 1.1 percent last month, one of the lowest rates since 2009.

The Commerce Department reported(.pdf) that U.S. retail sales rose for the first time in three months, up 0.3 percent in February after downwardly revised declines of 0.3 percent in December and 0.6 percent in January.

The Labor Department reported that nonfarm payrolls rose by 175,000 in February after an upwardly revised gain of 129,000 in January and the jobless rate increased from 6.6 percent to 6.7 percent as more workers entered the labor force but were not able to find jobs.

Reuters reports that efforts to slow credit growth and other measures taken by the Chinese government have finally succeeded in slowing the rate of growth in property values as new home prices in 70 major cities rose...

The National Association of Realtors reported that sales of existing homes fell 5.1 percent last month, from an annual rate of 4.87 million units in December to 4.62 million in January, due in large part to bad weather and low inventory.

As with many other recent economic reports, bad weather is getting much of the blame for the result, however, there were tremendous differences in homebuilding activity across the country in January as housing starts actually...

The Commerce Department reported (.pdf) that, following a downwardly revised seasonally adjusted decline of 0.1 percent in December (originally reported as a gain of 0.2 percent), retail sales in the U.S. fell 0.4 percent in January, the largest drop in ten months and the first back-to-back decline in almost two years.