No we don't - you are living in times when people haven't a clue as to what hard times are really like. We have a chance our economy can be saved - but boy is it decreasing by the day as the two sides squabble.
Amazon earnings just out and great. The crises is at the door knocking and if democrats and republicans sit in a corner with their trossers down around their ankles trying to piss futher than the other....... then we are screwed.
steve
U.S. Economy: Sales of New Homes, Durable Goods Orders Tumble
By Shobhana Chandra and Bob Willis
Jan. 29 (Bloomberg) -- Prospects for an economic recovery this year dimmed after reports today showed new-home sales collapsed, durable-goods orders slumped and a record number of Americans collected unemployment benefits.
“There really isn’t any hiding place in this economy,” said Nigel Gault, chief U.S. economist at IHS Global Insight in Lexington, Massachusetts.
Orders for goods designed to last several years fell in December for a fifth month, the longest slide since comparable data began in 1992, the Commerce Department said today in Washington. Sales of new homes fell to an annual pace of 331,000, a rate that would take more than a year to clear the glut of unsold properties.
Today’s figures may heighten Federal Reserve officials’ concern, expressed yesterday after their policy meeting, about a “significant” danger the economy won’t start recovering until 2010. The intensifying housing crisis will also make it harder for President Barack Obama to arrest the industry’s decline with proposed tax breaks and steps to slow mortgage foreclosures.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 Stock Index slid 2 percent to 856.31 at 11:56 a.m. in New York. Shorter-dated Treasuries were little changed with the two-year note yielding 0.90 percent.
The Labor Department said the number of Americans collecting jobless benefits soared to a record 4.776 million in the week ended Jan. 17. Along with the slump in durable-goods orders, the figures reflect efforts by companies from General Motors Corp. to Caterpillar Inc. to downsize amid a pullback in both domestic spending and demand from overseas.
‘Lots of Pain’
“There is lots of pain,” Ward McCarthy, a principal at Stone & McCarthy Research Associates in Skillman, New Jersey, said in a Bloomberg Radio interview. The economy was “deteriorating over the course of the fourth quarter and that deterioration has continued into the first quarter,” he said, anticipating that the unemployment rate may exceed 9 percent for the first time since 1983.
Gault said that the economy’s contraction may be as deep in the first quarter of 2009 as it was in the previous three months. The Commerce Department may report tomorrow that gross domestic product fell by an annualized rate of 5.5 percent in the fourth quarter, the most since 1982.
The decline in sales of new houses last month exceeded the median estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News that called for a drop to a 397,000 pace.
2008 Drop
For the full year, purchases of new houses fell a record 38 percent to 482,000, the fewest since 1982, Commerce said. The median price for all of 2008 fell 7 percent, the most since 1970, to $230,600.
The supply of homes at the current sales rate jumped to a record 12.9 months’ worth in December. That is more than twice as much as the five-to-six months supply that the National Association of Realtors has said is consistent with a stable market.
Sales of new houses dropped in all four regions, led by a 28 percent decrease in the Northeast and a 20 percent slump in the West.
The shrinking real-estate market is costing more and more jobs, from banks and homebuilders to manufacturers and retailers.
Caterpillar Inc., the world’s largest maker of bulldozers and excavators, this week said it’s cutting 20,000 jobs and this year’s profit and sales will trail analysts’ estimates.
Job Cuts
Home Depot Inc., the world’s largest home-improvement retailer, will cut 7,000 jobs, or 2 percent of its workforce, and exit its design showroom business, the company said.
Orders for long-lasting goods dropped 2.6 percent last month, exceeding the 2 percent decrease foreseen by economists surveyed, the Commerce report showed.
For all of 2008, orders for durable goods slumped 5.7 percent, the biggest decrease since the 2001 recession.
Automobile bookings decreased 5.2 percent last month and orders for commercial aircraft dropped 44 percent.
Boeing Co., the world’s second-biggest commercial-airplane maker, yesterday said a drop in travel and tight credit signals customers may continue to cancel or defer orders in 2009. The Chicago-based company reported a fourth-quarter loss and said it plans to cut 10,000 jobs. It also disclosed that a customer canceled all 15 of its orders for the new 787 Dreamliner plane.
More Closings
GM, which already closed most of its 22 plants in North America this month, said it’ll eliminate shifts in the second quarter at plants in Ohio and Michigan, cut about 2,000 jobs, and reduce output at 13 other U.S. and Canadian factories. Chrysler LLC, Ford Motor Co. and Toyota Motor Corp. are also scaling back North American production.
Ford, the only U.S. automaker not tapping federal loans, said today it used up $5.5 billion in cash in the fourth quarter and will tap a revolving credit line after the worst annual performance in its 105-year history.
The Fed yesterday left the benchmark interest rate as low as zero and said it was prepared to purchase Treasury securities to resuscitate lending should circumstances warrant such action. Policy makers also warned that inflation may recede too quickly and that downside risks to growth “are significant.”
To contact the report on this story: Shobhana Chandra in Washington at schandra1@bloomberg.net; Bob Willis in Washington at bwillis@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: January 29, 2009 12:03 EST |
