US housing has bottomed...yeah right

Housing Inventory Build Worsens
Another interesting article from the BIG PICTURE that punches holes in the theory that the US housing market has turned the corner and is not affecting other sectors of the US economy. Click on the link above to read the full article. Below is one of the lovely graphs from the article I just had to reproduce here for aesthetic reasons. Click here for the interactive version from the WSJ, hours of fun to be had playing with this... well maybe not hours but at least a few minutes.


Just to add to the issue of firms laying off workers in all kinds of other industries, how about the 8,800 Dell announced would be canned last week or Prudential's decision to shut down their equities research operations in 5 countries including the US affecting 420 jobs. Surely if anyone is doing well it's the Institutional brokers? Incidentally I had been working at Prudential just less than a year when they decided to shut down their Australian operations back in 1998. Should have seen the writing on the wall.