Spin -- Tuesday, June 16, 2016

When I saw the headline, I was confused. That was not the story I had read an hour earlier. Here's the headline: U.S. Building Permits Soared to Their Highest Level in Nearly Eight Years -- a BloombergBusiness headline. But then this lede:

The U.S. home-building industry enjoyed its best two months in more than seven years as it headed into its busiest season, even as it began work on fewer houses last month following an April surge.

While housing starts declined 11.1 percent to a 1.04 million annualized rate, it followed April’s revised 1.17 million pace to cap the best back-to-back readings since the last two months of 2007, the Commerce Department reported Tuesday in Washington. The median estimate of 81 economists surveyed by Bloomberg called for 1.09 million. Permits for future projects climbed to the highest level in almost eight years, indicating activity will probably pick up.

The data show the residential real estate market was sustaining gains after sporadic advances earlier in the year that reflected bad weather and a slump in overall U.S. growth. Hiring momentum and bigger paychecks amid still-cheap borrowing costs are brightening Americans’ moods and could lift home purchases in the second half of 2015.

" ... even as it began work on fewer houses last month ..."
" ...while housing starts declined 11% ..."
" ... activity will probably pick up."

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The Fed

Which brings us to Janet Yellen.

Any sign of inflation? No. None. Nada. Zilch.

Any sign of recovery? Hardly.

Any reason to raise rates? No.

But let's check GDPNow, updated June 11, 2015, and in real-time:

The GDPNow model forecast for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the second quarter of 2015 was 1.9 percent on June 11, up from 1.1 percent on June 3. The nowcast for second-quarter real consumer spending growth was revised up from 2.1 percent to 2.4 percent following last week's release on motor vehicle sales from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, and from 2.4 percent to 2.9 percent following this morning's retail sales report from the U.S. Census Bureau.

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New Link

I can't recall if I've highlighted this link before. If not, it caught my eye this morning. Lots of graphs. 538.