Someone get senile crank Jack Welch his hemorrhoid cushion and a vodka gimlet, because he is about to lose it:
U.S. builders started construction on single-family homes and apartments in September at the fastest rate since July 2008, a further indication that the housing recovery is strengthening.
The Commerce Department said Wednesday that builders broke ground on homes at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 872,000 in September. That’s an increase of 15 percent from the August level.
Applications for building permits, a good sign of future construction, jumped nearly 12 percent to an annual rate of 894,000, also the highest since July 2008.The strength in September came from both single-family construction, which rose 11 percent, and apartments, which increased 25.1 percent.
Construction activity is now 82.5 percent higher than the recession low hit in April 2009. Activity is still well below the roughly 1.5 million rate that is consistent with healthier markets.
Man, those Chicago guys will fix all the numbers, won’t they?
srv
Rahm fooled them with all his number jumbo. Alderpeople where whining about a 500 page budget when I was in the Windy City last wek.
Hill Dweller
Gallup’s mid-Oct. economic survey has unemployment at 7.3%. SKEWED!
Reagan got unemployment down to 7.4% before his reelection, and it was “Morning in America”.
Obama has it to 7.8%, despite dealing with a much worse recession and Republican controlled states firing hundreds of thousands of public sector workers, but he is the worst President ever.
Violet
Including the election results. All the whining now is just prelude.
FormerSwingVoter
Those numbers are fake!!!!1 Just like jobs numbers, GDP numbers, unemployment numbers, inflation numbers, poll numbers, temperature numbers, carbon-dating numbers, etc etc etc…
Amazing just how many liberal conspiracies there are in all fields that have never been detected, despite working perfectly in concert, no?
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
WE DEMAND UNSKEWED HOMES!
General Stuck
That’s Obama building crack houses and bingo halls for Gramps and Tupac to blow our hard earned tax money/teatard
Culture of Truth
“those Hawaii guys” doesn’t sound nearly as threatening, does it?
SFAW
@General Stuck:
Liar! Everyone knows Obama’s a Biggie guy.
Culture of Truth
Obama just got a terrorist plotting to attack the Fed. Does that count as a massive intelligence success for which he bears responsibility?
Bruce S
The reality is, however, that huge REO housing inventories are being kept off the market artificially. Housing bubble problems are NOT over. These construction numbers are obviously accurate, but if you know anything about housing and foreclosures right now, they’re not by any means the whole story. Don’t be led by the same nitwits at CNBC who flogged Jack Welch’s insanity. I’m glad these starts are up – particularly the timing – but I’m still very worried about how the overall housing market will play out and impact the larger economy over the next two years or so. For that matter, while I and my IRA exult in the current stock market numbers, the crackpot obstructionist GOP, combined with Dem wishful thinking about some Grand Bargain, mean our fucked up politics trumping sane economic policy come January and beyond are likely to deflate current euphoria.
Just saying. (of course, these thoughts aren’t nearly as important as what some wingnut just said, blah, blah.)
Anatoliĭ Lъudьvigovich Bzyp (formerly Horrendo Slapp, Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)
I have to say, “hemorrhoid cushion” was inspired.
dr. bloor
@Culture of Truth: I dunno. Those flaming batons can be pretty menacing if you ask me.
Arm The Homeless
OT: I was reading the internals for the Marquette poll out today which has Thompson leading his opponent by 1. May I draw your attention to some not so unbelievable data:
Q14. (I’m now going to read you a list of people and organizations. Please tell me if you have a
favorable or unfavorable opinion of each of them or if you haven’t heard enough about him yet to
have an opinion.)
The Tea Party?
Favorable: 27% (pg 6)
EconWatcher
Reason 1,017 why it is critical to win this election: Whoever wins will most likely preside over a substantially stronger economy. I have this on the authority of K-thug himself.
Obama built the foundations for the recovery. But whoever wins the prize in November will get the credit, and have a good shot at holding for his party in 2016. If we don’t fall off the fiscal cliff, that is….
Violet
@Arm The Homeless: Hilarious. That number is the One True Constant. It crossed time, space, culture, countries. Just over a quarter of the world is really stupid. At all times.
catclub
@Culture of Truth: was the terrorist white? If so, then intelligence failure.
Ding dong
Jack welch isin ecuador per his twitter feed. Ecuadors got a high growth rate and is run by a true left winger. We are talking strong trade union roots leftie.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
Once more: Projection. The Republicans are fixing the numbers any way they can, therefore Democrats must be doing it as well.
Xenos
The Lance Armstrong of American business accuses everybody else of cheating. Typical.
Lurking Canadian
@Culture of Truth: They’ll say he set the whole thing up to play Wag the Dog and distract people from Benghazi, or Fast ‘n’ Furious, or whatever bullshit is currently on their minds.
Jay in Oregon
@catclub:
And if he’s a right-wing extremist type who’s spent too much time listening to Glenn Beck and Ron Paul, then he’s a lone wolf who is obviously not representative of conservatives in America.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Culture of Truth:
That depends on whether Governor Rick Perry (R-TX) cops a plea or not.
PeakVT
@Xenos: Heh. Good analogy.
Forum Transmitted Disease
Uncouth, but I wish that the esteemed Mr. Welch could meet a few real Chicago thugs.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@Bruce S: Not even close. You won’t see any kind of stability until at least 2015, but the banks could drag this on even longer.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@EconWatcher:
QFT.
Reagan wasn’t all that popular in his 1st term. The mythmaking that Americans really liked him set in after the economy started expanding during his 2nd term. The GOP’s worst nightmare is that the same thing happens with Obama. Worse yet, Obama when he leaves office will be much younger than was Reagan and if he leaves riding a crest of popularity he will be around for many years to smack down the Republicans every time they try to take credit for things that went well on his watch, much like Bill Clinton did at the DNC this year. We could enjoy a decade or more of having two popular ex-Presidents gracing the scene and commenting on our affairs, both of them Democrats, and the Republicans will have George W Bush.
burnspbesq
@Culture of Truth:
That’s not news. We’ve known about Ron Paul for a long time.
RaflW
@EconWatcher: This actually has me really worried. If Mittens wins, he and the awful Republican fantasy-policy world will get the ‘credit’ for a recovery that’s been (slowly) under way for half of Obama’s term.
Though I suspect Mittens could fuck a recovery up quite quickly. So there is that.
SFAW
@RaflW:
Yeah, he’d strip out the assets, leverage a ton of debt, then sell the country to China.
Although I guess the “leverage a ton of debt” and “sell to China” are, in practical terms, the same thing. Just as long as he can make his don’t-need-to-pay-no-taxes-on-cap-gains-Bitches! billions from the deal.
Bruce S
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
Yup. It’s not pretty.
Grumpy Code Monkey
Building in our neighborhood has definitely picked up, and not just in the “value” section. Lots that sat vacant for years are now being built on, and most of them have “Sold” signs on them. Even some of the existing homes are starting to move. Things started to happen in the spring, but the pace has really picked up in the last couple of months.
This is just a little east of the Austin metro area, for reference.
JustRuss
Purely anecdotal, but this weekend my wife and I met a contractor who builds stores for large retail chains. In 2009 he almost went bankrupt. Now he’s got 3 projects going simultaneously.
I have an old friend who’s in the convention and promotions business. He’s doing twice the volume he was last year.
Sorry Welch, but we’re turning the corner, go back to your gold-plated retirement.
gene108
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Reagan wasn’t popular because the economy was bad.
Reagan was very likeable per what I’ve read from news accounts 30 or so years ago.
In short, people wanted to like him and support him, but the hard facts of a bad economy made people hesitant to trust him.
The parallels between Obama and Reagan on that account are very similar. People would want to support Obama, because they find him likeable, but they just don’t feel good about the economy.
This is one reason Republicans have worked so hard to screw things up, because Obama has all the charisma to really rebuild the Democratic brand.