The recession ain’t over yet, apparently. The housing-related sectors of the economy led us down, and will have to stabilize before we can stop the slide. The May good news diffusion index slipped to 33.3 on a very poor housing starts report.
Privately-owned housing starts in April 2009 were at an annual rate of 458,000. This is 12.8 percent below the revised March 2009 estimate of 525,000. This is bad, very bad. It’s only saved from being completely disastrous by the relatively stable-to-positive signs in the single-family components of starts and permits.
The rest of the month’s reports include the preliminary first quarter GDP release and the advance report on durable goods orders, neither which we should expect to much good news in, and the now very critical May 25th report on new home sales.
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