Free Republic

ew orders for manufactured durable goods in September increased $19.6 billion or 9.9 percent to $218.2 billion, the U.S. Census Bureau announced today. This increase, up four of the last five months, followed a 13.1 percent August decrease. Excluding transportation, new orders increased 2.0 percent. Excluding defense, new orders increased 9.1 percent. Uh huh. The table inside is amusing. Nondefense aircraft was up 2,640.7% on the month. No, I didn't spit coffee on my keyboard and short it out, that's really the number. And that might have something -- just a wee bit -- to do with the headline figure....

Today the economic news was mostly bad. Q2 GDP was revealed to be only 1.3% rather than the expected 1.7%. Now, THAT is a major swing and a miss! Durable goods orders fell -13.2% in August. Another big swing and a miss. At least initial jobless claims fell to 359,000 from an upwardly revised figure of 385,000. The expectation was for 375,000 initial jobless claims. But claims of this size is still terrible given that the recession ended in June 2009. Note that the Carter/Reagan recessions were actually two recessions. So the combination of the two Carter/Reagan recessions was 22...

Despite fears that the housing market is ready to collapse, demand for homes remain hot. The supply of new homes at the current sales pace narrowed to 4.0 months, the lowest since October.