Posted on 05/03/2015 12:09:23 PM PDT by Kaslin
Economists have been overly optimistic on the majority of economic reports for going on six months.
Today the Bloomberg Consensus estimate for construction spending was for a 0.4% gain. The actual result was a decline of 0.6%.
Construction spending once again defied expectations. March construction spending dropped 0.6 percent against expectations of an increase of 0.4 percent. On the year, construction spending was up 2.0 percent, down from February's annual increase of 2.7 percent. Both residential and public building declined. While weather can still be blamed for some of the decline, a basic weakness in the building sector was apparent.
Private residential spending dropped 1.6 percent on the month with both single family and multi-family homes declined. In addition, residential construction excluding new homes, which captures home remodeling, also declined after gains in the previous two months. Nonresidential private construction provided a ray of sunshine -- it advanced 1.0 percent on gains in the office, manufacturing, and health care sectors.
Public construction was down for a third straight month to its lowest level since February 2014. State and local government spending, the much larger portion of public construction, dropped in both February and March while Federal Government construction retreated after an 8.6 percent surge in the previous month.
Construction Spending
Construction Spending Percent Change From Year Ago
Four Key Reasons Economists are Perplexed
Those key points undoubtedly explain why economists are so perplexed with all this weakness.
Busier than beavers here. But we’re usually the exception.
Take a drink...
Economists are delusional. We have been and are in a depression. Our fiat currency is worthless and heading for a collapse. And the world is drifting towards war.
Real people live in the real world. They know this and have to deal with it. Economists live in a fantasy world and are constantly perplexed.
and yet new construction on staten island is laughable. One family for 600k and up.
Pretty soon will be forced to move even with very good income to a place where my skills will get 10 an hour instead of 35
Why wont you cooperate with the lie?!?!?
Millenials working multiple jobs at $12 an hour will be buying houses?? And when would those foreclosures become a crisis, if they were stupid enough to take on that debt?
the economy’s performance has been unexpected to me since 2008.
now that i have established my credentials, please give me a $150k/yr economist job.
...and just leave the bottle, we're on a roll.
That is totally surprising and unexpected. No economist would have guessed that adding to the cost of labor through Obamacare and other expanded FedGov mandates would result in a long-term reduction of demand for labor. I’m shocked, shocked I say, to hear this news every single month since Obama seized power.
Well at least the construction of bunkers for big time bankers is up.
*drink*
the sad fact is:
the worse the economy gets, the better our chances of retaking the presidency in 2016
the more riots there are, we the better our chances of retaking the presidency in 2016
I hate to be sitting here hoping for bad things to happen, but that’s basically the position these commie morons have put us in.
Good plan, but the Pubbies will still find a way to screw the pooch.
Clearly the official expectors need further training.
Thirty five an hour sounds good still but it is only $72800 if you are paid for forty hours a week for every week of the year. Adjusted for inflation it is far LESS than the $7700 a year salary I earned back in 1970 as a twenty six year old high school grad with a Navy electronics certificate. A really nice house in the Carolinas back then cost about one twentieth of what you are quoting on Staten Island now. I know of one twenty seven year old fresh from college with a degree in banking, finance and real estate who was hired at a starting salary of nine thousand plus company car, expense account and other fantastic benefits in Columbia, South Carolina in 1971. That was worth far, far more than thirty five an hour now. I overheard a conversation last week between two men in the automobile business about plans to hire college graduates who will buy used cars on line and be paid ten dollars an hour. That is nowhere close to the value of the 1963 minimum wage of $1.25 an hour.
As Grandpa would have said, “Iffen this here ain’t no depression I shore ain’t got a notion what it is.”
you are right. We are screwed. I saved some working 80 hours a week for about three years. Three years of my life lost for what amount to a 15 percent down payment.
The relationship may end because I am thinking of moving to PA where I can get a mansion for 150k. or rent for 400
Rent for four hundred sounds good. I own my own place without a mortgage, otherwise I would be sunk. I have a neighbor a quarter mile away who owns a house ten miles from here which he wants to clean out and rent it out. He lives alone in a storage building (no joke) which he converted into a mini dwelling. At the same site he has a small camper trailer which he rents out to a fifty year old single man for one twenty a WEEK. There is nothing decent around this little town for less than one thousand a month rent. Single wide mobile homes rent by the week for one fifty or so. Old motels are converted to weekly rentals for a hundred and more per week for a rathole. I could make money on rentals but I tried it once and I think I would rather go hungry. Hard to believe I once rented a three bedroom brick house for seventy a month.
Economy is dead.
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