Rossputin.com Rational Thinking About Our World

This morning, the Commerce Department reported that September housing starts fell more than 10% to an annual rate of 1.19 million homes, well below the Bloomberg survey of 1.28 million homes.

Similarly, building permits fell to 1.225 million versus a Bloomberg survey of 1.285 million.

Both of these numbers are the lowest since 1993.

You can read more details of the news here:
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/september-housing-starts-fall-lowest/story.aspx?guid=%7BD50D5417%2D1922%2D452C%2D94DF%2DCEA6F8A37929%7D

[Unlike following most recent negative housing reports, stock index futures are substantially higher at the opening today, maybe because there were also inflation statistics at the same time which were in-line with expectations and because Yahoo and Intel both reported decent earnings last night.]

In any case, it still remains to be seen whether the overall economy is resilient enough to overcome the substantial drag from home prices, including the loss of employment in the home-building industry and possible effects on consumer spending.