"Economists are pessimists: they've predicted 8 of the last 3 depressions."
--Barry Asmus

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Wednesday, November 17, 2010

The Envelope, Please...

The numbers are now in, so let's see how things shape up.

First off, CPI. Remember how we were looking for a 0.4% increase (0.1% core increase)? Well, the official report shows only a 0.2% increase (and no change in the core). The good news here is that inflation didn't destroy as much of your wealth in October. The bad news is that fuel and electricity hurt your pocketbook. But we beat expectations, and the Street likes that sort of thing. If you want to drill into the details, you can find them on the Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Price Index page.

Housing starts got beat like a jobber, though. We were looking for 590,000 new starts for October, and we only saw 519,000. That's... well, that's not great. But we did see a 1% increase in building permits, so things are looking up for future months. More details can be found on the US Census Bureau's website.

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