It’s About Making Babies!

We know the government publishes lists of numbers to ‘report’ what the economy is doing.

We used to hear about how many were unemployed – how many were receiving unemployment checks, which isn’t the same thing. There are many reasons for people to be out of work, but not be eligible, or choose not to request, benefits.

Then the statistic became the number filing for benefits during a week’s span. And we stopped hearing about the ‘hard core’ unemployed, those unemployed when their benefits ran out. This is a more volatile number – it changes with the whim of the market place, and doesn’t really reflect the number out of work, only whether the ‘big boys’ are filling more jobs than they shuck off like dirty socks.

Yesterday I heard Paul Harvey tout the rabid increase in sales of existing homes in September – up 5 point something percent. A record increase. With no breakdown of how many of those sales were foreclosures, how many had been empty for a time, how many sold for less that 70% of their purchase price or construction cost. With all the commercials about ‘flip and grow rich’, I have to wonder how many house sales were investment properties, vs. family homes. That is, how many of the thousands of house sales during September reflect a family selling their home for a reasonable return – somewhere near their cost to acquire and upgrade the property.

That – the number of families that sold their homes for a reasonable return – would indicate whether someone contemplating selling their home could expect good results.

It is a shame there isn’t a statistic breakdown to identify the ‘flipper’ sales vs. foreclosure and foreclosure pressured sales, vs. sales where the property value fell dramatically since purchase.

To count as ‘family home’ I think the statistic should only include houses occupied by the seller for a minimum of two years.

And I would like to know how many CRA-mortgaged housing units were bought and sold in September, how many were forced sales or sold after foreclosure.

I think there is wide latitude to suspect Paul Harvey’s ’5.x%’ jump in family housing to be less than optimistic.

Frank W. James writes Corn, Beans, Spent Brass, An Empty Page, and a Deadline. He summarizes the CRA/Jimmy Carter/Bill Clinton path to the bad loans crisis (he overlooked some of the reports that Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae funds trickled into a few Democratic Presidential hopeful pockets).

Sharon Astyk writes Casaubon’s Book, possibly the most contrary perspective from conservative, gun rights advocate, agribusiness farmer Frank W. James. Sharon’s premise is that the crisis today has been coming, and is part of the slide into an era of expensive energy – Peak Oil. Peak Oil predicts that by 2012, world demand will be consuming more oil than can be produced – the end of cheap energy, probably a dramatic shortfall of needed oil from what can be available. By 2012, many families will be unable to pay the utility bill, and will be living ‘off the grid’.

Sharon’s take is that economies grow as subsistence workers, farmers and others, begin working the entry level factory work force. Only now, rising cost of oil is raising food prices, and the entry level workers that had been driving economic growth are now starving, and what wages they earn go solely to food, instead of fueling the local economy. And the shrinkage is rising to the top.

It seems both summaries explain a lot. Does Sharon’s view of global food prices vs. rising oil prices happen to support her explanation, or is her explanation what it is, *because* of her premise? I don’t think it matters, both explanations are very worthwhile to consider.

But Frank may have started a bit late in his timeline. I recall President Lyndon B. Johnson announcing his ‘war on poverty’. And I think the CRA that Jimmy Carter signed was a followup to the Democrat’s favored child, the war on poverty. I also recall, during that era, when NASA funds were threatened, that an engineer showed how many people you could feed with $1,000,000 spend on NASA – with no tangible product, you fed a bunch of families – who spend their money and kept businesses going, feeding those workers and retailers, etc. $1,000,000 spend on welfare fed fewer people, the cost of getting that money to the people ate up a bunch of the money, and the low income of the recipients meant the money was spent on food and shelter, with very little contributed to either the economy or tax revenue. Since that time I have always know the need to care for those in need, but that government programs are disabling to the recipients, and a poor value for the nation.

But do check out these well thought out summaries.