Housing was OK in October

Remember as you read the following report that it is based on October data.  This was before the Housing wholesale pricing started to creep into the Houston market due to the cheap prices of oil – which is holding things down in that area…

So with this as background, off into the Housing report…

New York, December 29, 2015 – S&P Dow Jones Indices today released the latest results for the S&P/CaseShiller Home Price Indices, the leading measure of U.S. home prices. Data released today for October 2015 show that home prices continued their rise across the country over the last 12 months. More than 27 years of history for these data series is available, and can be accessed in full by going to www.homeprice.spdji.com. Additional content on the housing market can also be found on S&P Dow Jones Indices’ housing blog: www.housingviews.com.  

Year-over-Year  The S&P/Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index, covering all nine U.S. census divisions, recorded a slightly higher year-over-year gain with a 5.2% annual increase in October 2015 versus a 4.9% increase in September 2015. The 10-City Composite increased 5.1% in the year to October compared to 4.9% previously. The 20-City Composite’s year-over-year gain was 5.5% versus 5.4% reported in September.  
San Francisco, Denver and Portland continue to report the highest year-over-year gains among the 20 cities with another month of double-digit price increases of 10.9% for all three. Twelve cities reported greater price increases in the year ending October 2015 versus the year ending September 2015. Phoenix had the longest streak of yearover-year increases, reporting a gain of 5.7% in October 2015, the eleventh consecutive increase in annual price gains.   

Month-over-Month Before seasonal adjustment, the National Index posted a gain of 0.1% month-over-month in October. The 10-City Composite was unchanged and the 20-City Composite reported gains of 0.1% month-over-month in October. After seasonal adjustment, the National Index posted a gain of 0.9%, while the 10-City and 20-City Composites both increased 0.8% month-over-month. Ten of 20 cities reported increases in October before seasonal adjustment; after seasonal adjustment, all 20 cities increased for the month. 

Analysis “Generally good economic conditions continue to support gains in home prices,” says David M. Blitzer, Managing Director and Chairman of the Index Committee at S&P Dow Jones Indices. “Among the positive factors are consumers’ expectations of low inflation and further economic growth as well as recent increases in residential construction including single family housing starts. Inventories of existing homes have averaged around a five month supply for the past year, a level that suggests a fairly tight market with limited supplies. Sales of new single family homes, despite recent increases in construction, remain mixed to soft compared to the trend in existing home sales. 

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Key Point

This is the part of the press release to hone in on:  “Inventories of existing homes have averaged around a five month supply for the past year, a level that suggests a fairly tight market with limited supplies. Sales of new single family homes, despite recent increases in construction, remain mixed to soft compared to the trend in existing home sales”

We have to wonder how the data will hold up in the new year because of headwinds in the oil patch.

Call This a “Recovery Year?”

As we await Housing Data this morning, the last items of the year focus on the major trends in our Seven Major Systems of Life.

Food, shelter, communications, energy, transportation, environment, and finance.

Our www.peoplenomics.com site uses this framework (and long wave economics, etc.) to get a sense on where the world is going.

As you may know, we expect there to be one violent “last leg up” in the markets and when this occurs in 2016, we will use it to “lighten the load” and sell off a few assets that will be problematic in the future. 

Let’s talk Transportation:  Like our airplane, for example.

I mention this with purpose because of a vandalism incident against corporate planes in California that may have done north of a million dollars worth of damage to some high-end personal jets.

In a very real sense this year, the veneer of civilization has continued to thin.

Social Breakdown Promotion.

I could point to examples but an obvious one this week is actor Samuel Jackson saying of the military-aged invasion from the Middle East:  “’Muslims are the new black men’: Samuel L. Jackson empathizes with Muslim Americans and says he had hoped San Bernardino attacks were carried out by some ‘crazy white dude’ when he first heard of shootings…”

Other than being wrong and (overtly racist), I think Jackson misses the point that yes, Muslims of mostly military-aged men ARE invading Europe and the so-called moderate states in the Middle East (Saudi, Jordanians, etc.) are NOT welcoming these people.  Yet the U.S. FedGov is leaping them over people who have been waiting lawfully in line to move here.  It’s an insult to all immigrants – and most of us share those roots if we go back a ways….

It is little wonder the Left is mum on something as offensive as Jackson’s comments; it runs “counter-to-the-narrative.” 

And the narrative is what?    Create and play “white guilt” and portray the Islamic Invasion as “displaced victims.”  Yet do we see local Muslim country’s in  the Middle East embracing these people with open arms?  Hell no.  Obama, Merkel…and Paul Ryan via his budget lay-down.

Which means the smart people in the Middle East may know something and we just might be idiots.

In fact, it is widely reported that there are sections of European countries which have become effectively  “off-limits” to Western law enforcement in communities that have absolutely no interest in assimilation.  They are springing up to spawn children and wage a demographic battle of the sort the Catholic Church engaged(s?) in via limitations on birth control.

So – if you’re keeping count – Attacks of the Have-Nots on the assets of the Haves are going up.  And legions of Have-Nots are being sent to take over “Rome” from the inside out by setting up their own communities and simply out-populating and then out-voting the previous majority power-holders.

It’s slow, but it works.

I’m pretty sure it doesn’t hurt the invasion operation to America have an Muslim advisor to the likely-next President of the US.  This assumes, of course, that the republican old-guard will play into the moderate pap and broker the convention to run a wet dishrag and aristocratic put-up (like Jeb Bush) up for election in lieu of a Trump who might run with a Cruz (or better Carson) and really shake up the old-boy network in DC.  But with people like Ryan in the GOP, what are core values, anymore?

The “Invisible Collapse of 2015” is seen in Housing.  As we detailed yesterday, there we see the use of “green-speak” to subvert a desire for a bigger and better home/

In Finance, we see how there were no winners in 2015.  We note (with some disgust) that JP Morgan is reported ready to increase interest paid to big depositors, but not little ones like you and me, in January.  Unless, that is, YOU happen to have an institution-sized account…

I don’t think this is in Common Core (In fact, I’d bet it’s not) but there should be a portion of curriculum that teaches what?

Small = Screwed

On the Environmental front, we have disaster in slow motion out in California where a massive methane leak is totally uncontained and there’s no prospect of fixing it.  The corporate press has managed to downplay the hell out of this – to keep we the people in the dark, which is their mission (beyond keep America divided against it self, so these other subtexts can be played out without objection).

If you do a Google News search (here) you will see a lot of local/regional media, and some cover4age of the FAA no-fly zone, but do you see a lot of network coverage?  Nope.  If we did, it would only take a few seconds to figure out this is more of a greenhouse gas problem than all the USA and then we start wondering why volcanoes are not all under arrest or being taxed to death to “save the world from global warming…”

NSS – can’t have that globalist tax play blowing up, now, can we?

Communications is covered in the Sunspot comments in the Coping Section (which follows) which leaves only a few comments on Energy and Food.

Energy is in trouble, but it is also telling us something, says my consigliore: For the first timed in memory, the price of Brent (European) crude oil was lower than West Texas Intermediate (WTI) on the spot market yesterday.

I opined that it likely had something to do with Iran threatening to dump huge amounts of oil onto the Western market.  Or, the facts are starting to emerge about the West funding ISIS and that’s where the oil flow from Turkey is coming front – and it is something the Russians don’t like…

In fact, the U.S. Corporate (sell-out) press doesn’t like to be reminded of stories from 2014 like “U.S. Trained ISIS Forces At Secret Jordan Base.”

I hope to God you’re awake enough by now to figure that deafening silence is the MSM’s in-kind contribution to the Clinton campaign, because she was SecState behind some of these shenanigans. My consigliore is not so sure:

“In part:  But I think it goes deeper:  What that that may be telling us is that Europe will begin its decline this time well before the U.S.  So if we see that Europe sinks into decline in the second half of ‘16, then you’ll likely be right about the next U.S. collapse coming in Q1-Q2 of 2017…”

Shit.  I don’t want to be right…I’m sick of being right so often lately…but there it is.

Food – last but indispensably food.

There are two food stories that matter to most people as 2015 draws to an end.

First, the MSM stories about what is ahead for food in 2016.  Here’s a pretty good NPR story and here is one from Forbes.

But the REAL STORY IN FOOD has to do with GMO labeling.  This came up in our “Christmas chat” with some of our Peoplenomics.com subscribers down in Ecuador.

They mentioned how many foods that come from the US to Ecuador (and other places in South and Central America) have labels on then reading Trans-Genetica or GMO.

So the REAL food story of 2016 is that the Corporate-owned press continues to support corporate goals in the U.S. to keep GMO labeling off all foods.  This “mission” is handled by those influence-selling law firms in Washington that I whine about along with their Legions of Lobbyists who dole out the favors and campaign contributions.

Rest assured, I don’t expect any of the national MSM to take this on in the Year-End Wrap-Ups.  There’s simply too much ad money at stake to “do the right thing” on GMO labeling here in the land of the Lobbyistas working in concert with the Obamanistas as others who spout loose “Change!”

2016 promises to be worse, such that in a short two or three years, these will be looked at as the “Good Old Days.”

And that my friend, is how Rome falls this time around.  That and the latest moves on Gun Control which we’ll get into in the Coping section, next this morning.