Slumping housing data again showed the U.S. economic recovery for what it was worth, as pending home sales fell sharply in November, according to UPI. The National Association of Realtors said pending home sales, which predicts home buying one and two months down the road, dropped 16 percent from October, which immediately acted as a hip check against encouraging data from manufacturers. The Institute of Supply Management said manufacturing grew for the fifth consecutive month in December. Soon after, the The Commerce Department said factory orders beat expectations by rising 1.1 percent in November. But the drop in pending home sales beat expectations by a considerable margin, even if it was consistent with slower outlays for construction and a declining improvement in home prices. "We thought it would drop 2 percent. When you see 16 percent, the first thing you say is, what the heck happened here?" said Jennifer Lee of BMO Capital Markets, The New York Times reported Wednesday. What happened, indeed. In a breakdown of the data, pending sales dropped 26 percent in the Northeast, 26 percent in the Midwest, 15 percent in the South and 3 percent in the West. NAR Chief Economists Lawrence Yun, who predicted sales would slow down following a flurry of home buyers catching up with the federal tax credit, said sales would recover in the spring, when the spike provided by the tax credit leveled out. Putting that into perspective, housing market analyst Mike Larson at Weiss Research told The Washington Post, "the stabilization of the labor market is a heck of a lot more important than the temporary juicing of the housing market," which points back to the good news from factories, which could turn into a resurgence in the labor market -- a more organic recovery for commerce, including housing and retail. In market movement Wednesday, the Nikkei 225 index added 0.46 percent, while the Shanghai composite lost 0.85 percent. The Hang Seng index in Hong Kong rose 0.62 percent, while the Sensex in India added 0.08 percent. In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 lost 0.06 percent. In midday trading in Europe, the FTSE 100 in Britain lost 0.25 percent, while the DAX 30 in Germany slipped 0.1 percent. The CAC 40 in France shed 0.09 percent, while the pan-European DJ Stoxx 50 slid 0.13 percent. -- SPA
