NBN Online for the week of July 17, 2006

Too Much Fed Tightening Could Jar Soft Housing Landing

With boom times starting to fade, the nation’s housing industry appears headed for a soft landing, but the Federal Reserve could inject some unexpected turbulence into the unwinding process now underway if it becomes overly aggressive in its inflation fighting efforts, according to panelists participating in a July 11 NAHB teleconference on the mid-year economic outlook.

NAHB Chief Economist David Seiders said that he has alerted the Fed to the downside risks for housing if interest rates are pushed up too far. The Fed’s mission of clamping down on inflation before it gets out of control is already having results, he said, with growth of the Gross Domestic Product slowing in the second quarter and the unemployment rate stabilizing and poised to inch upward in the period ahead.

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Lumber Prices Provided by Random Lengths

New Program Teaches English to Hispanic Construction Workers

A new educational resource from Home Builders Institute (HBI), the workforce development arm of NAHB, will help home builders improve their communications with Spanish-speaking workers.

Sed de Saber™ (“Thirst for Knowledge”) — Home Builders Edition is being developed in partnership with Retention Education, LLC, as an English as a Second Language (ESL) learning tool for the residential construction industry. It includes seven self-paced, interactive books that use Leap Frog Enterprise, Inc.™ technology to teach workers 500 vocabulary words and more than 340 phrases commonly used in home building.

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