4th quarter GDP revision; January’s income and outlays, construction spending, durable goods, and new home sales

The key economic reports released during the past week were the 2nd estimate of 4th quarter GDP and the January report on Personal Income and Spending, both from the Bureau of Economic Analysis; other widely watched releases included the January report on Construction Spending, the Advance Report on Durable Goods Manufacturers’ Shipments Inventories and Orders for January, and the January report on new home sales, all from the Census Bureau…In addition, this week also saw the release the last three regional Fed manufacturing surveys for February: the Kansas City Fed manufacturing survey for February, covering western Missouri, Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Wyoming and northern New Mexico, reported its broadest composite index rose to -4 in February, up from -9 in January but down from -1 in December, indicating that a smaller plurality of that region’s manufactures saw deteriorating conditions in February than a month earlier; the Richmond Fed Survey of Manufacturing Activity, covering an area that includes Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas, the District of Columbia and West Virginia, reported its broadest composite index rose from −15 in January to -5 in February, similarly indicating that a smaller plurality of that region’s manufactures saw deteriorating condition than a month ago, while the Dallas Fed Texas Manufacturing Outlook Survey, covering Texas and adjacent counties in northwest Louisiana and southeast New Mexico, reported their general business activity composite index rose to -11.3, from last month’s -27.4, also indicating a less widespread deterioration of the Texas area economy than in January…

The week’s privately issued reports included the light vehicle sales report for February from Wards Automotive, which estimated that vehicles sold at a 15.81 million annual rate in February, up from the revised 15.00 million annual rate in January, and up from the 14.89 million annual sales rate in February a year ago, and the Case-Shiller Home Price Index for December from S&P Case-Shiller, which reported that home prices nationally during October, November and December averaged 5.5% higher than prices for the same homes that sold during the same 3 month period a year earlier, an increase which was up from the 5.1% year over year increase that they reported a month ago for the months of September, October and November, and the widely followed manufacturing purchasing manager’s survey from the Institute for Supply Management (ISM): the February Manufacturing Report On Business indicated that the manufacturing PMI (Purchasing Managers Index) fell to 47.8% in February, down from 49.1% in January, which suggests a larger plurality of purchasing managers now see worse conditions among manufacturing firms nationally..

4th Quarter GDP Grew at a 3.2% Rate, Revised from 3.3% in the Advance Estimate

The Second Estimate of our 4th Quarter GDP from the Bureau of Economic Analysis indicated that our real output of goods and services grew at a 3.2% rate in the quarter, revised from the 3.3% growth rate reported in the advance estimate last month, as personal consumption expenditures for goods and inventories grew less than was previously reported while imports grew more, more than offsetting upward revisions to personal consumption expenditures for services, fixed investment, and government…In current dollars, our fourth quarter GDP grew at a 4.93% annual rate, increasing from what would work out to be a $27,610.1 billion a year rate in the 3rd quarter to a $27,944.6 annual rate in the 4th quarter, with the headline 3.2% annualized rate of increase in real output arrived at after annualized inflation adjustments averaging 1.6%, known in aggregate as the GDP deflator, were computed from the price changes of the GDP components and applied to their current dollar change….that composite GDP deflator was revised from 1.5% in the advance estimate to 1.6% with this estimate and hence changes in prices accounted for the downward revision to GDP growth; current dollar GDP was actually revised up a bit from the advance estimate..

Remember that the news release for the second estimate GDP reports all quarter over quarter percentage changes at an annual rate, which means that they’re expressed as a change that’s roughly 4 times of that what actually occurred over the 3 month period, and that the prefix “real” is used to indicate that each change has been adjusted for inflation using price changes chained from 2017, and then that all percentage changes in this report are calculated from those 2017 dollar figures, which would be better thought of as a quantity indexes than as any reality based dollar amounts….for our purposes, the data that we’ll use in reporting the changes here comes directly from the full pdf for the 2nd estimate of 4th quarter GDP, which can be accessed directly on the BEA’s GDP landing page, which also provides links to the source data, the tables on Excel and other technical notes…specifically, we reference table 1, which shows the real percentage change in each of the GDP components annually and quarterly since the 1st quarter of 2020, table 2, which shows the contribution of each of the components to the GDP figures for those quarters and years; table 3, which shows both the current dollar value and inflation adjusted value of each of the GDP components over the last 5 quarters; and table 4, which shows the change in the price indexes for each of the components…the pdf for the 4th quarter advance estimate, which this estimate revises, is here…

Growth of real personal consumption expenditures (PCE), the largest component of GDP, was revised from a 2.8% growth rate to an overall 3.0% growth rate in this 2nd estimate…that aggregate growth rate figure is the reult of deflating the 4.84% growth rate in the dollar amount of consumer spending with the PCE price index, which indicated consumer inflation grew at a 1.8% annual rate in the 4th quarter, which was revised from the 1.7% PCE inflation rate reported a month ago….after revised inflation adjustments, real consumption of durable goods grew at a 3.2% annual rate, revised from the 4.6% growth rate shown in the advance report, and added 0.25 percentage points to GDP, as real growth at an 7.3% rate in consumption of recreational goods and vehicles accounted for more than 80% of the durable goods growth, and offset a small decrease in real consumption of automobiles….in addition, real consumption of nondurable goods by individuals grew at an 3.3% annual rate, revised from the 3.4% growth rate reported in the 1st estimate, and added 0.47 percentage points to the 4th quarter’s economic growth rate, as growth in real consumption of groceries, clothing and footwear, gasoline, and other non-durable goods all contributed…at the same time, consumption of services grew at a 2.8% annual rate, revised from the 2.4% growth rate reported last month, and added 1.36 percentage points to the final GDP tally, as a 6.0% growth rate in real health care services accounted for more than half of the 4th quarter services growth…

Meanwhile, seasonally adjusted real gross private domestic investment grew at a 0.9% annual rate in the 4th quarter, revised down from the original 2.1% growth estimate reported last month, as real private fixed investment grew at a 2.5% rate, revised up from the 1.7% growth rate reported in the advance estimate, while inventory growth turned negative, after being a small positive in the first estimate…real investment in non-residential structures now indicates growth at a 7.5% rate, revised up from the 3.2% growth rate previously reported, while real investment in equipment shrunk at 1.7% rate, reversed down from the 1.0% growth rate shown a month ago….meanwhile the quarter’s investment in intellectual property products was revised to indicate growth at a 3.3% rate, up from the 2.1% growth rate previously reported, while at the same time real residential investment was shown to be growing at a 2.9% annual rate, more than double the 1.1% growth rate shown in the previous report….after those revisions, the increase in investment in non-residential structures added 0.23 percentage points to the 4th quarter’s growth rate, while the decrease in investment in equipment subtracted 0.08 percentage points from the quarter’s growth rate, while growth in investment in intellectual property added 0.18 percentage points to the growth rate of 4th quarter GDP, and the increase in residential investment added 0.11 percentage points to the growth of GDP…..for an easy to read table as to what’s included in each of those GDP investment categories, see the NIPA Handbook, Chapter 6, page 3…..

At the same time, growth in real private inventories was revised from the originally reported $82.7 billion in inflation adjusted growth to show that inventories grew at an inflation adjusted $66.3 billion rate…since that came after inventories had grown at an inflation adjusted $77.8 billion rate in the 3rd quarter, the change in real inventory growth from the 3rd to the 4th quarter was revised from a rounded $5.0 billion positive change to an $11.4 billion negative change, and hence subtracted 0.27 percentage points from the 4th quarter’s growth rate, revised from the 0.07 percentage point addition to GDP from inventory growth reported in the advance estimate….however, since negative growth of inventories indicates that less of the goods produced during the quarter were left in a warehouse or sitting on the shelf, their decrease at a $11.4 billion rate meant that real final sales of GDP were actually greater by that amount, and hence real final sales of GDP grew at a 3.5% rate in the 4th quarter, revised from the real final sales 3.2% growth rate shown in the advance estimate, and barely down from the real final sales growth rate of 3.6% in the 3rd quarter, when higher inventory growth was a major factor the quarter’s 4.9% GDP growth rate……

The previously reported increase in real exports was revised a bit higher with this estimate, while the previously reported increase in real imports was revised higher by somewhat more, and as a result our net trade was a smaller addition to GDP growth than previously reported…our real exports grew at a 6.4% rate, revised from the 6.3% rate reported in the first estimate, and since exports are added to GDP because they are part of our production that was not consumed or added to investment in our country, their growth added 0.69 percentage points to the 4th quarter’s growth rate, up from the 0.68 percentage point addition shown in the previous report….meanwhile, our real imports increased at a 2.7% rate, revised from the advance estimate’s 1.9% figure, and since imports are subtracted from GDP because they represent either consumption or investment added to an other GDP component that shouldn’t have been because it was not produced here, their increase subtracted 0.37 percentage points from 3rd quarter GDP, revised from the 0.25 percentage point subtraction shown last month….thus, our improving trade imbalance added a net 0.32 percentage points to 4th quarter GDP, revised from the 0.43 percentage point addition that had been indicated by the advance estimate..

Finally, there was also an upward revision to real government consumption and investment in this 2nd estimate, as the growth rate for the entire government sector was revised from a 3.3% rate to a 4.2% rate…however, real federal government consumption and investment was seen to have grown at a 3.2% rate from the 3rd quarter in this estimate, revised down from the 2.5% growth rate reported in the advance estimate, as real federal outlays for defense grew at a 0.4% rate, revised from the 0.9% growth rate shown previously, and added 0.02 percentage points to 4th quarter GDP, while all other federal consumption and investment grew at a 4.7% rate, revised from the 4.8% growth rate shown previously, and added 0.13 more percentage points to 4th quarter GDP growth….note that government outlays for social insurance are not included in this GDP component; rather, they are included within personal consumption expenditures only when such funds are spent on goods or services, indicating an increase in the output of those goods or services….meanwhile, real state and local consumption and investment grew at a 5.4% rate in the quarter, which was revised up from the 3.7% growth rate reported in the 1st estimate, and added 0.58 percentage points to the growth of 4th quarter GDP, as a real increase in state and local investment at a 19.1% annual rate accounted for 0.36 percentage points of that addition to GDP….

Personal Income Rose 1.0% in January, Personal Income Taxes Rose 6.0%, Personal Spending Rose 0.2%, PCE Price Index Rose 0.3%

The January report on Personal Income and Outlays from the Bureau of Economic Analysis includes the month’s data for our personal consumption expenditures (PCE), which accounts for more than 70% of the month’s GDP, and with it the PCE price index, the inflation gauge the Fed targets, and which is used to adjust that personal spending data for inflation to give us the relative change in the output of goods and services that our spending indicated…in addition, this release reports our personal income data, disposable personal income, which is income after taxes, and our monthly savings rate…however, because this report feeds in to GDP and other national accounts data, the change reported for each of those metrics is not the current monthly change; rather, they’re reporting seasonally adjusted amounts expressed at an annual rate, ie, they tell us how much income and spending would change over a year if January’s change in seasonally adjusted income and spending were extrapolated over an entire year…however, the percentage changes are computed monthly, from one month’s annualized figure to the next, and in this case of this month’s report they give us the percentage change in each annualized metric from December to January..

Hence, when the opening line of the news release for this report tell us “Personal income increased $233.7 billion (1.0 percent at a monthly rate) in January..“, they mean that the annualized figure for seasonally adjusted personal income in January, $23,615.4 billion, was $233.7 billion higher, or nearly 1.0% higher than the annualized personal income figure of $23,381.7 billion extrapolated for December; the actual, unadjusted monthly change in personal income from December to January is not even given…at the same time, annualized disposable personal income, which is income after taxes, rose by more than 0.3%, from an annual rate of $20,589.2 billion in December to an annual rate of $20,656.7 billion in January…the monthly contributors to the change in personal income, which can be viewed in detail in the Full Release & Tables (PDF) for this release, are also annualized…in January, the primary contributors to the seasonally adjusted $233.7 billion annual rate of increase in personal income were an annualized $92.2 billion increase in government social benefits to persons, which included a $47.7 billion annualized increase in social security benefits, an annualized $78.7 billion increase in interest and dividend income, and an annualized $43.4 billion increase in wages and salaries…meanwhile, annualized disposable personal income was only up 0.3% due to a $166.2 billion annualized increase in personal income taxes…

For the January personal consumption expenditures (PCE) that will be included in 1st quarter GDP, BEA reports that they increased at an annual rate of $43.9 billion, or by more than 0.2%, from a $19,010.3 billion annual rate in December to a $19,054.2 billion annual rate in January; at the same time, the December PCE figure was revised up from the originally reported $19,001.7 billion annual rate, while November PCE was revised up from $18,867.8 billion to $18,883.6 billion, revisions that were already incorporated into this week’s 4th quarter GDP estimate (this report, although usually released a business day later than the GDP release, is computed concurrently)….total personal outlays, which includes interest payments and personal transfer payments in addition to PCE, rose by an annualized $54.3 billion to a $19,877.4 billion annual rate in January, which left total personal savings, which is disposable personal income less total outlays, at a $779.3 billion annual rate in January, up from the revised $766.0 billion in annualized personal savings in December… as a result, the personal saving rate, which is personal savings as a percentage of disposable personal income, rose to 3.8% in January, up from the December savings rate of 2.7%, and well above the 3.3% savings rate for 2022..

As you know, before January’s personal consumption expenditures can be used in the 1st quarter GDP computation, they must first be adjusted for inflation to give us the real change in consumption, and hence the real change in goods and services that were produced for that consumption….that’s done with the price index for personal consumption expenditures, which is shown in Table 5 in the pdf for this report, which is a chained price index based on 2017 prices = 100….that PCE price index rose from 121.451 in December to 121.870 in January, giving us a month over month PCE inflation rate of 0.344995, which BEA rounds down to a 0.3% increase in reporting it in the text and tables here….then, applying that 0.344995% inflation adjustment to the increase in January PCE shows that real PCE fell by 0.1137% in January, which the BEA reports as a 0.1% decrease….note that when those PCE price indexes are applied to a given month’s annualized PCE in current dollars, it gives us that month’s annualized real PCE in those same chained 2017 dollars, which are the means that the BEA uses to compare one month’s or one quarter’s real goods and services produced to that of another….that result is shown in table 7 of the PDF, where we see that January’s chained dollar consumption total works out to $15,635.0 billion annually, 0.1131% less than December’s $15,652.7 billion, statistically the equivalent of the real PCE increase we just computed…

However, to estimate the impact of the change in January PCE on the change in GDP, the change from December doesn’t help us much, since GDP is reported on a quarterly basis…thus we have to compare January’s real PCE to the the real PCE of the 3 months of the fourth quarter….while this report shows PCE for all those amounts monthly, the BEA also provides the quarterly annualized chained dollar PCE for those three months in table 3 of the pdf for the 4th quarter GDP report, where we find that the annualized real PCE for the 4th quarter was represented by 15,574.9 billion in chained 2017 dollars)….when we compare January’s real PCE representation of 15,635.0 billion to the 4th quarter real PCE figure of 15,574.9 billion, we find that real PCE is growing at a 1.55% annual rate so far in the 1st quarter….that’s a rate that means that even if January’s real PCE does not improve during February and March, growth in PCE would still add 1.07 percentage points to the growth rate of 1st quarter GDP…

Construction Spending Fell 0.2% in January after December and November Spending Were Revised Higher

The Census Bureau’s report on January construction spending (pdf) estimated that January’s seasonally adjusted construction spending would work out to $2,102.4 billion annually if extrapolated over an entire year, which was 0.2 percent (±0.8 percent)* below the revised annualized estimate of $2,105.8 billion for construction spending in December, but 11.7 percent (±1.5 percent) above the estimated annualized level of construction spending of January last year…the December spending estimate was revised from the $2,096.0 billion annual rate figure published a month ago to $2,105.8 billion, while November’s annualized construction spending was revised from $2,078.3 billion to $2,082.9 billion…since those figures are already annualized, the combined upward revisions of $14.4 billion to November and December construction spending figures would be averaged over the 3 months of the 4th quarter and therefore raise the quarter’s annualized construction spending by about $4.8 billion across the GDP components it is source data for, and would thus conservatively imply an upward revision of about 0.05 or 0.06 percentage points to fourth quarter GDP when the third estimate is released at the end of March, assuming there are no major changes to or imbalances in the previously applied inflation adjustments…

A further breakdown of the different subsets of construction spending is provided in a Census summary, which precedes the detailed spreadsheets:

  
• Private Construction Spending on private construction was at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $1,623.4 billion, 0.1 percent (±0.7 percent)* above the revised December estimate of $1,622.3 billion. Residential construction was at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $900.8 billion in January, 0.2 percent (±1.3 percent)* above the revised December estimate of $899.1 billion. Nonresidential construction was at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $722.6 billion in January, 0.1 percent (±0.7 percent)* below the revised December estimate of $723.2 billion.
  
• Public Construction In January, the estimated seasonally adjusted annual rate of public construction spending was $479.0 billion, 0.9 percent (±1.5 percent)* below the revised December estimate of $483.5 billion. Educational construction was at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $101.5 billion, 0.7 percent (±3.1 percent)* below the revised December estimate of $102.3 billion. Highway construction was at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $150.1 billion, 2.1 percent (±3.6 percent)* below the revised December estimate of $153.3 billion.

As you can tell from that summary, construction spending would input into 3 subcomponents of GDP; investment in private non-residential structures, investment in residential structures, and into government investment outlays, for both state and local and Federal governments…however, getting an accurate read on the impact of January’s construction spending reported in this release on 1st quarter GDP is difficult because all figures given here are in nominal dollars and as you know, data used to compute the change in GDP must be adjusted for changes in price…moreover, there are multiple price indexes for different types of construction listed in the National Income and Product Accounts Handbook, Chapter 6 (pdf), so in lieu of trying to adjust for all of those types of construction separately, we’ve opted to just use the producer price index for final demand construction as an inexact shortcut to make the needed price adjustment and come up with an estimate… that index showed that aggregate construction costs were up 0.3% in January, after they had risen by 0.1% in December but had fallen by 0.1% in November…

On that basis, we can estimate that January construction costs were roughly 0.4% more than those of November, and about 0.3% more than October, and of course, 0.3% more than December…we’ll then use those percent increases to inflate the lower priced spending figures for each of the 4th quarter months and compare them to January, which is arithmetically the same as deflating January construction spending, for purposes of comparison.…this report gives annualized construction spending in millions of current dollars for the 4th quarter months as $2,105,791 in December, $2,082,923 in November, and $2,058,903 in October….thus to compare January’s annualized construction spending of $2,102,434 million to our ‘inflation adjusted’ figures of the fourth quarter, our calculation is: (2,102,434 / ((( 2,105,791 * 1.003) + (2,082,923 * 1.004) + (2,058,903 *1.003)) / 3) = 1.00619918, hence indicating that adjusted for inflation, construction spending in January was up 0.62% vis a vis that of the 4th quarter, or up at a 2.50% annual rate….to then figure the potential effect of that estimated change on GDP, we take the difference between the 4th quarter “inflation adjusted” spending average and January’s inflation adjusted basis as a fraction of inflation adjusted 4th quarter GDP, and find that January construction spending is rising at a rate that would add about 0.26 percentage points to 1st quarter GDP, if in the unlikely event we see no further change in real construction over the next two months..

January Durable Goods: New Orders Fell 6.1%, Shipments Fell 0.9%, Inventories Rose 0.2%

The Advance Report on Durable Goods Manufacturers’ Shipments, Inventories and Orders for January (pdf) from the Census Bureau reported that the value of the widely watched new orders for manufactured durable goods fell for the 3rd time in four months, decreasing by $18.0 billion or 6.1 percent to $276.7 billion in January, after the value of December’s new orders was revised from the $295.6 billion reported last month to $294.7 billion, now indicated to be 0.3% less than November’s new orders, revised from the insignificant increase previously reported….

The volatile monthly new orders for transportation equipment drove the January new orders decrease, as new transportation equipment orders fell $17.4 billion or 16.2 percent to $89.8 billion, on a 58.9% decrease to $13,732 million in the value of new orders for commercial aircraft, even as the value of new orders for defense aircraft rose 2.6% to $4,351 million…. excluding orders for transportation equipment, other new orders fell 0.3%, while excluding just new orders for defense equipment, new orders fell 7.3%….at the same time, new orders for nondefense capital goods less aircraft, a proxy for equipment investment, rose $98 million or about 0.1% to $73,720 million…

Meanwhile, the seasonally adjusted value of January shipments of durable goods, which will be included as inputs into various components of 1st quarter GDP after adjusting for changes in prices, decreased in value by $2.4 billion or 0.9 percent to $279.0 billion, the fourth decrease in five months, after the value of December shipments was revised from from $282.2 billion to $281.461 billion, now down 0.6% from November….a decrease in the value of shipments of transportation equipment was responsible for the January shipments decrease, as they fell $2.9 billion or 3.3 percent to $86.3 billion, due to a 23.0% decrease in shipments of commercial aircraft…however, excluding shipments of transportation equipment, other shipments rose 0.3%, and the value of shipments of nondefense capital goods less aircraft rose 0.8% to $74,772 million, after the value of December’s shipments of capital goods was revised from $74,160 million to $74,158 million, still 0.1% higher than in November…

At the same time, the value of seasonally adjusted inventories of durable goods, also a major GDP contributor, rose for the sixth consecutive month, increasing by $1.2 billion or 0.2 percent to $527.6 billion, after the value of December’s inventories was revised from $527.0 billion to $526.5 billion, now up 0.3% from November….higher valued inventories of transportation equipment was responsible for the January increase, rising $1.3 billion or 0.8 percent to $169.0 billion, while the value of inventories other than transportation equipment was statistically unchanged at $358.6 billion…

Finally, unfilled orders for manufactured durable goods, which are probably a better measure of industry conditions than the widely watched but quite volatile monthly new orders, rose for the thirteenth of the last fourteen months, increasing by $2.4 billion or 0.2 percent to $1,395.5 billion…that increase followed a 1.3% increase to $1,393,054 million in December, which was previously reported as a 1.3% increase to $1,393.4 billion…a $3.5 billion or 0.4 percent increase to $899.8 billion in the value of unfilled orders for transportation equipment was responsible for the January unfilled orders increase, while the value of unfilled orders other than those for transportation equipment orders was 0.2% lower at $495,606 million…the unfilled order book for durable goods is still 9.1% above the level of last January, with unfilled orders for transportation equipment 15.3% above their year ago level, led by a 22.0% increase in the backlog of orders for commercial aircraft…

NB: for those who are interested in seeing graphs relating to this release, FRED at the St Louis Fed offers graphs of 445 different durable goods data sets…to change what is displayed on any graph, (ie, dollars, percent, etc) click the edit button and then click the edit line 1 tab and make your selection from the units menu…to change the displayed line graph into a bar graph, click the edit button and then click the format tab…

New Home Sales Reported Higher in January After 3 Prior Months Revised Lower

The Census report on New Residential Sales for January (pdf) estimated that new single family homes were selling at a seasonally adjusted pace of 661,000 homes annually in January, which 1.5 percent (±19.9 percent)* above the revised December annual sales rate of 651,000, and 1.8 percent (±19.4 percent)* above the estimated 649,000 annual rate that new single family homes were selling at in January of last year….the asterisks indicate that based on their small sampling, Census could not be certain whether January new home sales rose or fell from those of December, or even from those of a year ago, with the figures in parenthesis representing the 90% confidence range for reported data in this report, which has the largest margin of error and is subject to the largest revisions of any census construction series….with this report; sales of new single family homes in December were revised from the annual rate of 664,000 reported a month ago to an annual rate of 651,000, while new home sales in November, initially reported at an annual rate of 580,000 and revised up to a 615,000 rate with the last report, were revised lower to a 607,000 a year rate with this report, and while October’s new home sales rate, initially reported at an annual rate of 679,000 and revised from a 672,000 to a 676,000 a year rate last month, were revised to a 670,000 rate with this release..

The annual rates of sales reported here are seasonally adjusted after extrapolation from the estimates of canvassing Census field reps, which indicated that approximately 57,000 new single family homes sold in January, up from the estimated 49,000 new homes that sold in December and the 47,000 that sold in November….the raw numbers from Census field agents further estimated that the median sales price of new houses sold in January was $427,500, down from the median sale price of $465,600 in December and down from the median sales price of $430,500 in January a year ago, while the average January new home sales price was at $420,700, up 1.8% from the $ 413,100 average sales price in December, but down 2.6% from the average sales price of $432,100 in January a year ago….a seasonally adjusted estimate of 456,000 new single family houses remained for sale at the end of January, which represents a 8.3 month supply at the January sales rate, same as the revised 8.3 months of new home supply now indicated for December….for graphs and additional commentary on this report, see the following two posts by Bill McBride at Calculated Risk: New Home Sales at 661,000 Annual Rate in January and New Home Sales at 661,000 Annual Rate in January; Median New Home Price is Down 15% from the Peak, which in turn links to his real estate newsletter post on this report…

(the above is the synopsis that accompanied my regular sunday morning news links emailing, which in turn was mostly selected from my weekly blog post on the global glass onion…if you’d be interested in receiving my weekly emailing of selected links, most of which are picked from the aforementioned GGO posts, contact me…)