Several recent economic reports showed real growth in some areas of the economy. The green shoots famously noted by Ben Bernanke were mostly signs of optimism for the future, but lacked immediate realtime impact on our economic wellbeing. Or they were a slowing in the rate of decline (such as for auto sales), instead of actual increases. So, here is a list of signs of real growth reported within the past thirty days:

1) Housing Industry:

A dead giveaway as to the impairment of the job market can be found in the continuing claims data. Continuing claims increased by 159,000 to 6.88 million. Why the disconnect? It is really quite simple. The economy is approaching (or is at) replacement levels of activity. In other words, employers are running out of workers to lay off. If Continuing Claims were to start dropping I would be cautiously optimistic, but only if the economy began adding jobs soon after. However, we are not there yet. Face it, the economy is mired in an economic tar pit.

Like cockroaches, the idea that somehow, some way, people who can’t document their income should nevertheless be given mortgages just can’t be eradicated. The movement to resurrect this monster is gaining steam.

From Clusterstock:

By Paul Amery

What kills you, cures you, according to the UK building society, the Nationwide. Since the rapidly-deflating UK housing bubble was brought about by excessive lending on insufficient incomes, the solution must be…more of the same.

The current crisis in housing has become a laughable tragedy. Many weakly formed opinions, very little constructive thought and almost no offering of workable solutions.

We’ve tried the “let housing values fall’ plan, and as housing values fell…defaults, walk-a-ways, and foreclosures increased…consumer spending dried up…and unemployment jumped 100%. So that plan has failed.

By Simon Johnson

The commercial real estate industry would like a bailout – see my preview/links to testimony before the JEC today. This is not a surprise – even some of the most libertarian people I meet think the government should help them personally when times are bad. Is there a case treating commercial real estate as special?

Mike at Rortybomb has produced an interesting post on subprime mortgages which has gotten a lot of link love this morning. It reads in part:

If I was a degenerate crackhead who snuck into your neighborhood and mugged you for $50, the Wall Street Journal Opinion Page would want me thrown in jail. Now imagine that I’m a degenerate crackhead who took out a subprime loan to move next door to you, in an arrangement that I’m likely not going to pay off. I might not even make one payment. If I default you’ll lose 10% of the value of your home from the externality effect. Assuming your home is worth $300,000, there’s a 20% chance I default in 2 years (realistic numbers), and you lose 10%; 300,000*.2*.1 = I’ve just robbed you for $6,000 while the Wall Street Journal Opinion Page cheered me on. And that’s one house – I’ll have a dozen neighbors. Now mind you, the product was great for me – I got to smoke crack indoors, in a house I could never realistically afford, which was a big plus. The subprime lender sold my loan to a pension fund in Denmark for a nice fee. It goes in the win column for us.

Nationwide, the world’s largest building society, is now bringing back the dreaded 125% mortgage. While the lender claims these mortgages are a “niche product” designed for customers of Nationwide in negative equity, the Financial Services Authority (FSA) is looking to ban this type of lending.

From the BBC:

Due in part to various foreclosure moratoriums and also just a plain logistical backlog, a curious thing is taking place. While the number of mortgages that are seriously delinquent has been soaring, the rate of actual foreclosure repossessions is only creeping up.

Nationally, according to First American Core Logic, a big title insurance firm, the repossession rate was 0.7% in May -- up from 0.6% a year ago. At the same time the number of mortgages that are more than 90 days past due has increased to 6.5% of all mortgages -- up from 4.0% in May of 2008.

The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) publishes the results of a weekly applications survey that covers roughly 50 percent of all residential mortgage originations and tracks the average interest rate for 30 year and 15 year fixed rate mortgages, 1 year ARMs as well as application volume for both purchase and refinance applications.

The purchase application index has been highlighted as a particularly important data series as it very broadly captures the demand side of residential real estate for both new and existing home purchases.

Noam Scheiber has found out that several lobbying efforts are gearing up to do a “Harry and Louise”-style ad campaign against the Consumer Financial Protection Agency. Since I’m currently running a similar thought exercise agency out of this webpage, I’ll take this personally, and sign up to be one of the econ blogosphere point men on arguments against this agency and the good it could accomplish. There’s going to be a few trial runs to figure out the best way to talk about this over the next couple of weeks.

This is the first of a series that I will be posting to respond to inaccuracies, falsehoods and fabrications which permeate much of the discussion as it relates to housing and mortgage lending.

There is a significant amount of chatter, even on a strong site such as Seeking Alpha, regarding the issue of down payments… the skin-in-the-game concept…and the housing/foreclosure problem. There are repeated attempts to correlate the crisis and leveraging on the part of borrowers and buyers…and, the evidence does not pass scrutiny. It is simply kool-aid served to willing readers. There is a lot of extrapolation…a nice word for an educated guess…and a lot of “bobble-head” nodding…but no real evidence.

On the same day that CNN published a piece showing that U.S. banks are only pretending to help U.S. homeowners avoid foreclosure, it also published a story showing that U.S. apartment vacancies just hit a 20-year high, and are on pace to soon hit an all-time record.

Here's a rhetorical question for readers: what happens when apartment vacancy rates skyrocket? That's right, rental prices collapse. And when cash-strapped Americans can suddenly rent accommodations at very reasonable prices – and with a great selection – what happens to sales of homes? That's right, they go down.

Mortgage lenders don’t try to rework most home loans held by borrowers facing foreclosure because it would probably mean losing money, a study released yesterday by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston concludes. . . .

Professor Nunes sent me this chart comparing the Case-Shiller national housing price index with the OFHEO index for the Pacific region only. The close correlation between the two is consistent with the hypothesis of Rebecca Wilder that the "national" Case-Shiller index does not represent well the nation as a whole.

Click to enlarge:

By Eric Rothmann

Given our current economic environment, what appears to be a counter-intuitive trend has evolved. At 7.5%, the national vacancy rate for U.S. apartments is poised to broach the highest rate of 7.8% recorded in 1986 since the data has been tracked.