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Save the Typewriters

New home sales tumbled in August to the slowest pace in 17 years, while the average sales price fell by the largest amount on record, demonstrating the depth of the problem that Washington is trying to solve.The Commerce Department said Thursday that new homes sales fell by 11.5 percent in August to a seasonally adjusted annual sales rate of 460,000 units, the slowest sales pace since January 1991.

It was a much bigger sales decline than the small 1 percent drop that economists had been expecting. The average price of a new home sold in August dropped by a record amount of 11.8 percent to $263,900, compared to the July average of $299,100. The median price was also down, falling 5.5 percent to $221,900.

Let’s do a little rewrite:

Paragraph One: “New typewriter sales tumbled to their slowest pace in 17 years, while the average sales price fell by the largestamount on record, demonstrating the depth of the problem that Washington is trying to solve.”

  • Maybe we don’t “need” that many typewriters … ignore the typerwriter derivatives contracts for the time being, why the heck does Washington need to solve the typewriter problem?

Paragraph Two: “The Commerce department said Thursday that the demand for homes shifted in, which is reflected by the sharp decline in prices and quantity sold.”

  • OK, so I am in dreamworld, it would be too much to ask anyone to understand such a complicated concept.

Paragraph Three: “The median typewriter price fell less severely than the average typewriter price, meaning that the impact of the downturn is being felt more by those people that were buying and selling large, fancy, many featured typewriters than those producing and consuming more down-to-earth models. Oh yeah, and no one can predict the future, except me.”

  • Now I am really in dreamworld. The point is, people want fewer new homes. And people want to own fewer existing homes. And the ones they do want are the lower priced ones. What problem is government trying to solve exactly? Should they be rescuing the typewriter industry right now?

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