Friday, 5 October 2012
Thursday, 20 September 2012
Major CD Announcement
Dear Carpe Diem Regulars:
Over the next several days, there will be some major changes taking place for the Carpe Diem blog. After six years, almost 10,000 posts, and more than 8 million visits and almost 12 million page views using the Blogger platform, Carpe Diem will become a WordPress blog at a new website.
Starting within the next few days, Carpe Diem will be exclusively hosted by The American Enterprise Institutes's new AEIdeas website, which also features Jimmy Pethokoukis's blog as well as other AEI blog "channels" by topic (Economics, Foreign and Defense Policy, Politics and Public Opinion and Society and Culture). Many of the AEI scholars and fellows now regularly blog in the topic areas of the AEIdeas blog including Charles Murray, Andrew Biggs, Marc Thiessen, Michael Auslin, Mackenzie Eaglen, Dani Pletka, Nick Schulz, Karlyn Bowman, Alex Pollock, Ken Green and Arthur Brooks, among others.
Here’s how the relocation of Carpe Diem will affect you:
1. If you have the current Carpe Diem website bookmarked, you’ll be automatically re-directed to the new website and you won’t need to do anything. (Here's a direct link to the new Carpe Diem website.)
2. If you subscribe to the daily email updates of Carpe Diem posts, you should still receive those emails with a summary of posts over the last 24 hours from the new AEIdeas website.
3. If you regularly (or occasionally) leave comments on Carpe Diem, you can still easily make comments at the new AEI website, by providing a name and email address (the email address won’t be published). The comments at the AEIdeas website are moderated before appearing on the AEI website, and I’ll do my best to help with the moderation process to be sure your comments appear as quickly as possible.
4. All of the 9,000 posts in the Carpe Diem archives have been moved to the new AEIdeas website, so they will still be available and searchable by key word.
5. If you follow Carpe Diem by RSS feed, here's the link to the new Carpe Diem RSS feed.
Thanks for your loyal readership and I hope you continue to follow Carpe Diem at its new home!
Over the next several days, there will be some major changes taking place for the Carpe Diem blog. After six years, almost 10,000 posts, and more than 8 million visits and almost 12 million page views using the Blogger platform, Carpe Diem will become a WordPress blog at a new website.
Starting within the next few days, Carpe Diem will be exclusively hosted by The American Enterprise Institutes's new AEIdeas website, which also features Jimmy Pethokoukis's blog as well as other AEI blog "channels" by topic (Economics, Foreign and Defense Policy, Politics and Public Opinion and Society and Culture). Many of the AEI scholars and fellows now regularly blog in the topic areas of the AEIdeas blog including Charles Murray, Andrew Biggs, Marc Thiessen, Michael Auslin, Mackenzie Eaglen, Dani Pletka, Nick Schulz, Karlyn Bowman, Alex Pollock, Ken Green and Arthur Brooks, among others.
Here’s how the relocation of Carpe Diem will affect you:
1. If you have the current Carpe Diem website bookmarked, you’ll be automatically re-directed to the new website and you won’t need to do anything. (Here's a direct link to the new Carpe Diem website.)
2. If you subscribe to the daily email updates of Carpe Diem posts, you should still receive those emails with a summary of posts over the last 24 hours from the new AEIdeas website.
3. If you regularly (or occasionally) leave comments on Carpe Diem, you can still easily make comments at the new AEI website, by providing a name and email address (the email address won’t be published). The comments at the AEIdeas website are moderated before appearing on the AEI website, and I’ll do my best to help with the moderation process to be sure your comments appear as quickly as possible.
4. All of the 9,000 posts in the Carpe Diem archives have been moved to the new AEIdeas website, so they will still be available and searchable by key word.
5. If you follow Carpe Diem by RSS feed, here's the link to the new Carpe Diem RSS feed.
Thanks for your loyal readership and I hope you continue to follow Carpe Diem at its new home!
National Home Sales Snapshot from DQ News
Click to enlarge.
The median home sales price increased nationally by 7.8% above a year ago in the most recent 30-days sales period, which is the highest year-over-year increase during the last six weeks of data displayed above, and reflects a pattern of gradually increasing median home price increases (from 5.3% in mid-August), even though the median price has remained flat at about $200,000.
Quotation of the Day: The Fallacy of Redistribution
From Thomas Sowell's column today (emphasis mine):
The history of the 20th century is full of examples of countries that set out to redistribute wealth and ended up redistributing poverty. The communist nations were a classic example, but by no means the only example.
In theory, confiscating the wealth of the more successful people ought to make the rest of the society more prosperous. But when the Soviet Union confiscated the wealth of successful farmers, food became scarce. As many people died of starvation under Stalin in the 1930s as died in Hitler's Holocaust in the 1940s.
How can that be? It is not complicated. You can only confiscate the wealth that exists at a given moment. You cannot confiscate future wealth -- and that future wealth is less likely to be produced when people see that it is going to be confiscated. Farmers in the Soviet Union cut back on how much time and effort they invested in growing their crops, when they realized that the government was going to take a big part of the harvest. They slaughtered and ate young farm animals that they would normally keep tending and feeding while raising them to maturity.
We have all heard the old saying that giving a man a fish feeds him only for a day, while teaching him to fish feeds him for a lifetime. Redistributionists give him a fish and leave him dependent on the government for more fish in the future.
If the redistributionists were serious, what they would want to distribute is the ability to fish, or to be productive in other ways. Knowledge is one of the few things that can be distributed to people without reducing the amount held by others. That would better serve the interests of the poor, but it would not serve the interests of politicians who want to exercise power, and to get the votes of people who are dependent on them.
Wednesday, 19 September 2012
Wednesday Afternoon Links
1. Markets in everything: WiFi enabled, multi-color, energy efficient LED light bulb that you control with your iPhone.
2. "Patchwriting" is more common than plagiarism, and just as dishonest. I guess that's what happened to me, see recent CD post.
3. Almost half (46.3%) of Irish residents buy private health insurance, despite "free" national health insurance.
4. Thanks to the commodity boom, 2012 graduates from the South Dakota School of Mines make more on average than Harvard grads, $56.7k vs. $54.1k.
5. New website archives every TV news program since 2009, and it’s now online and searchable for free.
6. Russia has vast new diamond field containing "trillions of carats," enough to supply global markets for next 3,000 years.
7. Airlines add service in North Dakota's oil patch: Delta to add two daily Minneapolis-Williston flights, United to add three flights from Denver to Williston.
2. "Patchwriting" is more common than plagiarism, and just as dishonest. I guess that's what happened to me, see recent CD post.
3. Almost half (46.3%) of Irish residents buy private health insurance, despite "free" national health insurance.
4. Thanks to the commodity boom, 2012 graduates from the South Dakota School of Mines make more on average than Harvard grads, $56.7k vs. $54.1k.
5. New website archives every TV news program since 2009, and it’s now online and searchable for free.
6. Russia has vast new diamond field containing "trillions of carats," enough to supply global markets for next 3,000 years.
7. Airlines add service in North Dakota's oil patch: Delta to add two daily Minneapolis-Williston flights, United to add three flights from Denver to Williston.
The Year of the "Plow Horse Housing Recovery"
Some key reports today on architecture billings, existing home sales, and new residential construction provide additional evidence that a U.S. housing recovery is underway:
1. Reuters -- "A leading indicator of U.S. construction activity rose last month to its best level in five months, indicating that demand for design services is expanding, an architects' trade group said on Wednesday. The Architecture Billings Index (ABI) rose 1.5 points to a reading of 50.2 in August, according to the American Institute of Architects. Any reading above 50 indicates an increase in demand for architects' services. The ABI is considered a predictor of U.S. construction activity nine to 12 months ahead. A separate measure of inquiries for new projects rose 0.9 points to 57.2, the group said."
MP: Both the Billing Index (ABI) and the New Projects Inquiry Index have risen in each of the last three months, and the ABI was at the highest level last month since March, while the inquiry index in August was the highest in six months.
2. Existing U.S. home sales surged in August by 7.8% over July, marking the highest monthly increase in home sales in a year, according to today's National Realtors Association (NAR) report. Compared to last August, home sales this year were 9.3% higher, and last month's increase was the 14th consecutive year-over-year increase in home sales. The median home sales price in August was $187,400, a slight decrease from July's median price of $187,800, but above last August's median price of $171,200 by 9.5%. According to the NAR, "The last time there were six back-to-back monthly price increases from a year earlier was from December 2005 to May 2006. The August increase was the strongest since January 2006 when the median price rose 10.2 percent from a year earlier."
Other positive signs from today's report include: a) a reduction in the share of distressed sales in August this year (22%) compared to last year (31%), b) a reduction in the median marketing time from 92 days in August 2011 to 70 days last month (almost one-third of homes sold in August were on the market for less than a month), and c) a drop to only a 6.1 month supply of homes in August at the current sales pace, which except for a 6.0 month supply in January is the lowest inventory level of existing homes for sale since April of 2006.
3. Associated Press -- "U.S. builders started work on more homes in August, driven by the fastest pace of single-family home construction in more than two years. The increase points to steady progress in the housing recovery.
The Commerce Department said Wednesday that construction of homes and apartments rose 2.3 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 750,000 last month. That's up from 733,000 in July, which was revised lower from last month's initial estimate. Single-family housing starts rose 5.5 percent to an annual rate of 535,000 homes, the best pace since April 2010."
MP: Single-family home starts last month were the highest for the month of August since 2008, and were 27% above last year, marking the largest year-over-year increase since April 2010. Further, the number building permits issued in August was 24.5% above permits in the same month last year. In both July and August, building permits were above 800,000 in each month, and it's been four years since there has been more than 1.6 million permits issued in a two-month period.
Bottom Line: The evidence continues to accumulate pointing to a gradual, but steady housing recovery that is underway in the U.S. As with any economic or housing recovery, it can be expected that the improvements in the U.S. housing market will be somewhat choppy at times. But the fact that most of the main housing indicators (existing-home sales, new home sales, pending sales, housing prices, asking prices, home affordability, etc.) are showing gradual, but consistently positive signs of improvement would support the growing consensus that a sustainable housing recovery is underway.
Brian Wesbury et al. at First Trust have described the slowly improving U.S. economy as the "plow horse economy," which keeps moving gradually forward despite the pessimistic media reports of "gloom and doom." Perhaps it would also be appropriate to describe the ongoing recovery in the U.S. real estate market as the "plow horse housing recovery" - which keeps making gradual, but steady improvements month after month.
1. Reuters -- "A leading indicator of U.S. construction activity rose last month to its best level in five months, indicating that demand for design services is expanding, an architects' trade group said on Wednesday. The Architecture Billings Index (ABI) rose 1.5 points to a reading of 50.2 in August, according to the American Institute of Architects. Any reading above 50 indicates an increase in demand for architects' services. The ABI is considered a predictor of U.S. construction activity nine to 12 months ahead. A separate measure of inquiries for new projects rose 0.9 points to 57.2, the group said."
MP: Both the Billing Index (ABI) and the New Projects Inquiry Index have risen in each of the last three months, and the ABI was at the highest level last month since March, while the inquiry index in August was the highest in six months.
2. Existing U.S. home sales surged in August by 7.8% over July, marking the highest monthly increase in home sales in a year, according to today's National Realtors Association (NAR) report. Compared to last August, home sales this year were 9.3% higher, and last month's increase was the 14th consecutive year-over-year increase in home sales. The median home sales price in August was $187,400, a slight decrease from July's median price of $187,800, but above last August's median price of $171,200 by 9.5%. According to the NAR, "The last time there were six back-to-back monthly price increases from a year earlier was from December 2005 to May 2006. The August increase was the strongest since January 2006 when the median price rose 10.2 percent from a year earlier."
Other positive signs from today's report include: a) a reduction in the share of distressed sales in August this year (22%) compared to last year (31%), b) a reduction in the median marketing time from 92 days in August 2011 to 70 days last month (almost one-third of homes sold in August were on the market for less than a month), and c) a drop to only a 6.1 month supply of homes in August at the current sales pace, which except for a 6.0 month supply in January is the lowest inventory level of existing homes for sale since April of 2006.
3. Associated Press -- "U.S. builders started work on more homes in August, driven by the fastest pace of single-family home construction in more than two years. The increase points to steady progress in the housing recovery.
The Commerce Department said Wednesday that construction of homes and apartments rose 2.3 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 750,000 last month. That's up from 733,000 in July, which was revised lower from last month's initial estimate. Single-family housing starts rose 5.5 percent to an annual rate of 535,000 homes, the best pace since April 2010."
MP: Single-family home starts last month were the highest for the month of August since 2008, and were 27% above last year, marking the largest year-over-year increase since April 2010. Further, the number building permits issued in August was 24.5% above permits in the same month last year. In both July and August, building permits were above 800,000 in each month, and it's been four years since there has been more than 1.6 million permits issued in a two-month period.
Bottom Line: The evidence continues to accumulate pointing to a gradual, but steady housing recovery that is underway in the U.S. As with any economic or housing recovery, it can be expected that the improvements in the U.S. housing market will be somewhat choppy at times. But the fact that most of the main housing indicators (existing-home sales, new home sales, pending sales, housing prices, asking prices, home affordability, etc.) are showing gradual, but consistently positive signs of improvement would support the growing consensus that a sustainable housing recovery is underway.
Brian Wesbury et al. at First Trust have described the slowly improving U.S. economy as the "plow horse economy," which keeps moving gradually forward despite the pessimistic media reports of "gloom and doom." Perhaps it would also be appropriate to describe the ongoing recovery in the U.S. real estate market as the "plow horse housing recovery" - which keeps making gradual, but steady improvements month after month.
Tuesday, 18 September 2012
Year of the Recovery: August Home Sales Boom
1. Wisconsin home sales increased 20.3% in August, median sales price by 2.9%.
2. Kalamazoo MI housing market shows highest sales volume since 2007, August home sales were up 14%, average sales price by 7.5%.
3. Louisville area home sales up 26% in August over last year, median sales price by 3.7%.
4. Chicago-area home sales increased 26.5% in August above last year, and were the highest August sales total since 2007.
2. Kalamazoo MI housing market shows highest sales volume since 2007, August home sales were up 14%, average sales price by 7.5%.
3. Louisville area home sales up 26% in August over last year, median sales price by 3.7%.
4. Chicago-area home sales increased 26.5% in August above last year, and were the highest August sales total since 2007.
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