Economic Growth -- GDP

Revised figures show 4.9% inflation-adjusted GDP growth back in Q3 (July-September). That follows a 3.8% growth rate in Q2.

Common Cents

President Bush shrinks federal pay raises

Federal workers living in more expensive regions of the country will get much smaller pay raises than scheduled under an executive order from President Bush, who said Wednesday that the proposed raises were unacceptably high.

There's more:

This year, Bush's order means that federal government workers scheduled to receive location pay differentials will now receive a total pay raise of 3 percent, not 15 percent, on average.

Go figure.

Housing Markets

New home sales in October were reported to have been 728,000 (annualized). That was below Wall St. expectations. September's figure was revised down to 716,000.

Existing home sales in October were reported to have been 4.97 million units (annualized). That was in line with Wall St. expectations and slightly below September's figure of 5.03 million units.

Obviously home sales are way down on year-over-year bases.

Drilling for Dollars and Sense

Here's a good albeit terse article regarding an American energy company's acquisition of an ownership interest in what might be a huge foreign source of natural gas and liquid hydrocarbons.

No, Chomsky, we're neither discussing Iraq nor Halliburton. The company is called Apache and the energy is located in Chile.