ECONOMY CONTINUES TO SUCK….The latest:
Orders for big ticket items from U.S. factories plummeted in August, new homes sales continued dropping and weekly jobless claims jumped to their highest level since the 2001 terrorist attacks.
…Factory orders in August dropping by 4.5 percent — twice the expected rate — and weekly applications for unemployment benefits jumping by 32,000, to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 493,000.
[New] home sales, meanwhile, fell by 11.5 percent in August compared with the same month a year ago, signaling that the U.S. real estate market continues to slump. The inventory of unsold homes — one barometer of when the market might begin to turn around — rose to nearly 11 months, more than doubled the median supply in 2006.
The fall in durable goods orders included a 6 percent decline in purchases of machinery and a more than 8 percent decline in purchases of autos and auto parts.
More on the housing market here. There’s little evidence that we’re close to a bottom, which is bad news for the bailout bill, since its size depends very directly on just how much further housing prices have to fall.
