Housing remains in focus today, with starts rebounding to 9.3% and permits up 6%. Both of those numbers are much better than expected, and the market seems to like them early in today’s session. But they’re also not telling us the whole story. As nice as those numbers may sound, the fact is that a [...]

Folks, the latest housing numbers were released this morning. Permits were up—considering that August was a pretty dismal month as far as the markets were concerned, I’d say that’s pretty good. Unfortunately, starts fell in August to a three-month low, and that really bothers me. What’s going on in housing? Anecdotally, banks do not have [...]

Well, folks, what can I say? Today’s monthly jobs number: zero. The economy created no net jobs in August, and the unemployment rate is 9.1%. I’m disgusted. Mr. President, where are the jobs you promised us? Where is the economic recovery we were supposed to see? With all due respect for the office, you should [...]

Well, folks, what can I say? Today’s monthly employment numbers, to my surprise, were extremely disappointing. The expectation was that we’d see somewhere around 90,000 new jobs created. We got 18,000. I run a small business. Several of them, actually. I consider myself to be a pretty good example of small-business America—the group that creates [...]