Free Republic

Q1 Real GDP was released by the BEA this morning. It was a mixture of disappointment and good news (for retailers). Real GDP grew by 2.5% (annualized), but analysts were expecting 3.0%. So, this was a swing and a miss. According to the BEA, “The acceleration in real GDP in the first quarter primarily reflected an upturn in private inventory investment, an acceleration in PCE, an upturn in exports, and a smaller decrease in federal government spending that were partly offset by an upturn in imports and a deceleration in nonresidential fixed investment.” Personal consumption expenditures rose 3.2% in Q1,...

Residential construction shot up significantly in March as homebuilders broke ground on the most multi-family homes in seven years, a report from the Commerce Department showed Tuesday. Housing starts rose 7 percent from upwardly revised levels reported in February to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of about 1.04 million units, according to the Commerce Department, almost 47 percent higher than levels reported in March 2012. Construction activity significantly outpaced projections from economists polled by Bloomberg, which put starts closer to 930,000. Starts reported in March also inched toward what economists consider a more normal level of about 1.5 million annual...

he USA is experiencing an investor-related housing recovery via foreclosure sales, flipping and investors. But as foreclosure discounts normalize, will the housing market continue to recover? Probably not if the deleveraging occurs in the housing market. According to the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) released this morning, mortgage applications fell -3.76% from the previous week. Purchase applications fell -5.15% (NSA) while refinancing applications fell -3.27%. Tight credit still prevails along with negative equity and a glue-like employment recovery. The share of applications that are for refinancing fell slightly to 76.9%. The only product that actually grew was government Adjusted Rate Mortgages...

Every year, employment drops by almost 3 million during January. While the drop was worse than 2012, it is on par with the drops in 2010 and 2011. Of course, the Census Bureau whips out the old X-12 ARIMA smoothing models (maybe even the new and improved X-13!) and produces this much more palatable chart. Phew! That is much better for the media (and economy cheerleaders like Mark Zandi) to tout. Thanks to the ARIMA smoothing model, employment INCREASED by +157.000! As my students know, I like the raw, unsmoothed numbers. All the smoothed numbers tell you is … over...

Housing starts climbed above the lowest points since 1960. That shows you how dreadful the housing market has been since peaking (locally) in September 2005. One-unit starts rose 8.07% in December while multiple unit starts (aka, apartments) rose 20.28%. As we already know, homebuilder confidence remain flat even though starts are improving, particularly apartment starts. Meanwhile, the number of Americans filing first-time claims for unemployment insurance payments fell more than forecast last week to the lowest level in five years, pointing to further improvement in the labor market. Applications for jobless benefits decreased by 37,000 to 335,000 in the week...

Open source house design community WikiHouse demonstrated their construction system at Milan Design Week, providing a visual update on the project. Their goal is to make it possible for anyone to download and print a timber structure using a CNC milling machine, and then fit the pieces together to build an affordable house ready for cladding, wiring, insulation and plumbing...

FREEPORT, Ill.—Titan International Inc. has laid off about 60 workers at its plant in Freeport because of slumping demand for construction tires. The cuts are the last in a series of layoffs that began shortly before the November election at the company's three U.S. tire plants, according to Titan CEO Maurice Taylor Jr. All the cutbacks are part of the firm's construction tire segment. Quincy, Ill.-headquartered Titan's tire factories in Bryan, Ohio, and Des Moines, Iowa, also experienced layoffs during the past two months, about 90 between the two facilities, Taylor said...

For the second day in a row, the Obama adminstration criticized Israel on Tuesday for its decision to build new housing units in the northern Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo, often wrongly described by anti-Israeli media as an "illegal settlement in east Jerusalem". “We are deeply disappointed that Israel insists on continuing this pattern of provocative action,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters. “These repeated announcements and plans of new construction run counter to the cause of peace. "Israel’s leaders continually say that they support a path towards a two-state solution, yet these actions only put that goal further...

If you wanted to know all about the Big Bang, you'd ring up Carl Sagan, right ? And if you wanted to know about desert warfare, the man to call would be Norman Schwarzkopf, no question about it. But who would you call if you wanted the top expert on American usage, to tell you the meaning of the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution ? That was the question I asked A.C. Brocki, editorial coordinator of the Los Angeles Unified School District and formerly senior editor at Houghton Mifflin Publishers -- who himself had been recommended to me...

The first U.S. multi-family condo built of used shipping containers is slated to break ground in Detroit early next year. Strong, durable and portable, shipping containers stack easily and link together like Legos. About 25 million of these 20-by-40 feet multicolored boxes move through U.S. container ports a year, hauling children’s toys, flat-screen TVs, computers, car parts, sneakers and sweaters. But so much travel takes its toll, and eventually the containers wear out and are retired. That’s when architects and designers, especially those with a “green” bent, step in to turn these cast-off boxes into student housing in Amsterdam, artists’...

Some architects believe that in order to build the sustainable cities of the future, we need to look back to the log cabin era and build “skyscrapers” out of wood. Just over a century ago, the architects and engineers who invented the skyscraper set us on the path to becoming an urban world. Tall buildings of concrete and steel helped make urban density—and the increased sustainability that comes with it—possible. But the buildings themselves come at a heavy, and often hidden, environmental price. Concrete and steel are some of the most energy-intensive materials on the planet. The manufacture and transport...

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) – The FDNY is at a high-rise under construction in Midtown where a crane has collapsed. The call came in around 2:30 p.m. Monday at the building on West 57th Street. The top of the crane, about 75-stories up, could be seen dangling down from the luxury building. WATCH LIVE: CBS 2 | LISTEN NOW: 1010 WINS | WCBS 880 All residents of buildings on West 57th Street between Sixth and Seventh avenues have been ordered to move to lower floors. All others have been told to avoid the area. There is no falling debris, but the...

It's the eight-legged discovery of the millennium! An endangered species of spider not seen in more than three decades unexpectedly appeared in Northwest San Antonio two weeks ago. Biologists and science buffs, rejoice. There's just one downside if you're an area commuter: The spider, no bigger than a dime, showed up in the middle of a $15.1 million highway underpass project on Texas 151 at Loop 1604. And in this particular case of nature vs. man-made road, the arachnid wins. The highway project is on hold indefinitely. SNIP . . . No other spiders have been spotted in the hole...

Photos are from: The World Trade Center: A Tribute by Bill Harris Requiem World Trade Center: Once Upon a Time in New York City by Hideaki Sato

The U.S. State Dept. today revealed that it has begun searching for contractors to design and build a new embassy compound at The Hague in The Netherlands, a project that could cost as much $210 million, according to its own estimates. Development of the 10-acre site will include a new office building, Marine security guard quarters, shops annex, utility building, "perimeter security, vehicle and pedestrian access control facilities, utility building, surface parking and a vehicular emergency egress bridge," according to a solicitation that U.S. Trade & Monitor located via routine database research. State's Bureau of Overseas Building Operations first will...

TransCanada Corp. said Monday it plans to begin building a major portion of the Keystone XL oil sands pipeline despite the Obama administration's decision to reject a key permit for the project. The company told the State Department in a letter Monday that it will begin construction of a section of the pipeline that runs from Cushing, Okla., to refineries on the Gulf Coast. The stand-alone portion of the project, which TransCanada dubbed the Gulf Coast Project, will cost $2.3 billion and will be completed in mid-to-late 2013, according to the company. The project must still receive other regulatory approvals....

<p>Giant projects such as the reconstruction of 1 World Trade Center, or Freedom Tower (pictured), always end up costing more than the original estimates because “that’s just part of the way the world works,” Mayor Bloomberg said yesterday.</p> <p>“It would be really naive on any big project to say it’s never going to come in for more,” Bloomberg said.</p>

Single-family originations will likely dip in 2012 because of fewer refinances, according to Frank Nothaft, chief economist at Freddie Mac. The market will see a refinance burnout, Nothaft said, with a dwindling pool of eligible borrowers and higher mortgage rates by the second half of 2012. Nothaft projects $1.3 trillion in single-family mortgage originations in 2011, compared to $1.14 trillion in 2012 and $1.07 trillion in 2013. The Freddie Mac projections for 2012 come as a Pew Research Center study showed a record-low number of adults married in the U.S. About 51% of all adults were married as of 2010,...

Made In America (Video of home built entirely of American made products)

Pyongyang's construction drive said to kill hundreds of college students 2011-11-29 14:26 North Korean college students have reportedly died in a spate of accidents at construction sites amid intense efforts by Pyongyang to prepare for a milestone political event next year, a source familiar with the issue said Tuesday. The alleged accidents sparked rumors that an estimated 200 college students have died at various construction sites in the North's showcase capital city of Pyongyang, the source said. He did not elaborate on the alleged deaths and asked not to be identified, citing the issue's sensitivity. The development comes as the...