Greetings-
First reading after the first time home buyer tax credit expired… If you give a guy $8,000 to buy a condo, he might, otherwise forget it.
New Home Sales…just released lowest on record…300,000 and the revisions to March and April combined were -150,000 making the net number an increase of only 150,000. YIKES.
In May, new home sales sunk to the lowest level since at least 1963, when the Census Department began keeping records. They fell to an annualized rate of 300,000, down 33% compared to April. This number is much worse than the 405,000 new sales economists expected. Unlike existing home sales, new home sales more fully take into account the loss of the home buyer credit. Clearly, the housing market has taken note.
Today's report is bad in pretty much every way imaginable. Not only did May's sales set a new all-time low, but March and April were also revised downward significantly. March fell from 439,000 to 347,000 sales, and April fell from 504,000 to 446,000. If you use the previous estimate for April, home sales would actually have fallen by 40%.
Some checks and balances thankfully-
June 23 (Bloomberg) -- A New Orleans federal judge lifted the six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling imposed by President Barack Obama following the largest oil spill in U.S. history. Drilling services shares jumped on the news.
Obama temporarily halted all drilling in waters deeper than 500 feet on May 27 to give a presidential commission time to study improvements in the safety of offshore operations. More than a dozen Louisiana offshore service and supply companies sued U.S. regulators to lift the ban. The U.S. said it will appeal the decision.
U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman yesterday granted a preliminary injunction, halting the moratorium. He also “immediately prohibited” the U.S. from enforcing the ban. Government lawyers told Feldman the ban was based on findings in a U.S. report following the sinking of the Deepwater Horizon rigoff the Louisiana coast in April.
All the best,
Leon
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