Real Estate

July's bad news in new home sales is even worse than it first appears. The seasonally adjusted annual rate of 276,000 units is bad enough. That is an all-time low since records have been kept and 12% lower than June's annual rate. It's also lower than what analysts predicted by about the same percentage. The lazy business press is running with those figures. But, as has been the case so many…

Here's how the Associated Press's Martin Crutsinger and Daniel Wagner reported the housing portion of their Tuesday report on the day's economic news ("Factories aid bumpy recovery, housing still weak"): Single-family home construction, which represented nearly 80 percent of the market, fell 4.2 percent. And requests for building permits, considered a good sign of future activity, slid 3.1…

Ed Schultz on Thursday blamed Republicans for all the unemployed people living in America today.As he began the most recent installment of the "Ed Show" on MSNBC, the host said, "The Republican Party has been on a crusade against the middle class and the poor for the last 30 years. We're now seeing the wreckage of that race to the bottom line culture."He disgracefully continued, "Today a…

Earlier today, NB's Lachlan Markey covered Bill O'Reilly's interview with the Fox Business Channel's Charles Gasparino.In that interview, Gasparino confirmed what the New York Post reported in April of last year, namely that "GE Execs Encouraged CNBC Staff to Go Easy on Obama."The suits at GE, including Chairman Jeff Inmelt, had a clear motivation for encouraging their reporters to lighten up,…

There are quite a few shaky assertions in Alan Zibel's Associated Press report yesterday about Freddie Mac's latest quarterly loss ($6 billion), its latest bailout installment request to the U.S. Treasury ($1.8 billion), and the cumulative taxpayer bailout amounts that have been paid out to Freddie Mac and big sister Fannie Mae thus far ($148.2 billion) -- too many to cover in a blog post. So I'…

As media predictably pound the table for Congress to allow the Bush tax cuts to expire, an interesting analysis by Washington Post contributor Robert J. Samuelson should raise a caution flag.Higher taxes inhibit couples from having children which in other developed nations has led to longterm economic paralysis.In a western civilization that got drunk on entitlement programs in the previous…

Bad economic news just keeps piling up. Today, the news about jobless claims from the AP:Initial requests for jobless benefits rose last week to their highest level since April, a sign that hiring remains weak and some companies are still cutting workers.The Labor Department said Thursday that new claims for unemployment insurance rose by 19,000 to a seasonally adjusted 479,000. Analysts had…

Thanks to Shirley Sherrod, Andrew Breitbart, and the NAACP, political journalists have supposedly discovered the importance of "context" (though they strangely seem to lost interest once fuller context items like this and this became known). It would be helpful if such an interest in full context would legitimately and consistently spread to business reporting. Full context would include looking…

George Will on Sunday accused Barack Obama of being an expert at selling snake oil.As the Roundtable segment of ABC's "This Week" began, host Jake Tapper asked Will if the President's claim Republicans "are peddling that same snake oil that they've been peddling now for years" will resonate with voters this November.Will marvelously responded, "No, because he is an expert on snake oil." "This is…

On Friday's Rick's List, CNN's Rick Sanchez attacked conservative economic policy, singling out the right's support for lower tax rates, and complained that "we in America are so easily led to go against our own interests.... you would find that at least half...[are] pulling for the rich guy." Sanchez also belittled conservative talk show hosts: "Many...don't even have a college degree" […

Apparently, Fannie and Freddie are the new Batman and Robin. At least they seemed more like heroes than villains in a July 6 ABC News story about the troubled housing market. Reporter Rich Blake gave the government sponsored enterprises (GSEs) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac credit for "propping up" the flailing housing sector: "As perplexing and disturbing as this economic brainteaser may…

Obama's home loan modification program was talked up by the bailout-friendly news media as a potential "ray of light" for struggling homeowners. But on June 21, Associated Press reported the mortgage assistance program is "falling flat." The broadcast networks supported the mortgage modification and housing bailout when Obama launched it in 2009, after criticizing Treasury Secretary…

The man who predicted the bursting of the housing bubble as well as 2008's economic collapse says that what happened in the markets around the world today is just the next stage in the financial crisis."The first stage was this massive re-leveraging of the private sector that led to the financial crisis and which has responded now with a massive re-leveraging of public sectors with budget…

While questions swirl about the ins and outs of the Securities and Exchange Commission charges against Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS), and the eventual result is no clearer. According to CNBC "Mad Money" host Jim Cramer, after the release of several e-mails from Goldman traders, including Fabrice Tourre, who described the investments at the firm "like Frankenstein," the investment bank finds…