Talk about your summertime blues. Obama’s “recovery summer” is driving the economy to unprecedented depths. So bad people are talking about when Herbert Hoover ran things back in 1929.
How bad? The housing market’s worst-on-record June for new construction was followed by its worst-on-record July. In each case, the year-over-year decline from 2009, when what I have been calling the POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid economy since the middle of 2008 supposedly hit its trough, was about 10%. In what are usually two of the best months of the year for builders, in a nation with almost 130 million housing units, construction began on barely over 100,000 new ones. That’s about 65% lower than the 1959-2007 average for the same two months.
An economist quoted by the Associated Press on August 19 described the construction situation for office buildings, malls, and hotels in three words: “Dead, dead, dead.”