Comment - Let's us make an obvious statement; economic measurements come in three varieties - leading, coincident and lagging.  Among the lagging indicators are the inventory sales ratio, loans, unemployment rate, and price indexes.  Leading indicators tell us where we are going, coincident indicators tells us what is happening now and laggards help us precisely measures what just happened.

In recent weeks we have been subjected to a tidal wave of housing news focusing on the lagging indicators.  In particular, the press has been highlighting rising inventories as charted below (housing's inventory to sales ratio), foreclosure/defaults (housing's loan data) as measured in the chart above, real estate broker layoffs and office closings (housing's unemployment rate) and falling median home prices (housing's price indexes).

All of these are lagging indicators.  They help us measure the extent of the housing slowdown.  So far it looks worse than initially thought.  What these measures do not do is tell us where housing is going.  That, unfortunately, is how these indicators are being portrayed.  They are signs of what has happened, not of what is to come.

Examples of leading indicators are interest rates (Fed policy), building permits, homebuilder stock prices and surveys.  In total they suggest housing has, or is, bottoming.

One of the reasons many miss a turn in markets and economies is the lagging indicators are the most emotionally appealing.  You don't need an economics degree to understand unemployment rates, rising inventories and falling prices.  They even come with personal stories.  We see them and believe they are telling us what is coming, not what just happened.

Leading indicators of permits, surveys, relative stock price performance and central bank policy are cold unemotional abstraction.  They come with charts and statistics.  We see them, crinkle our forehead, and ask what they mean.

• The Denver Post -  Colo. loses foreclosure title
  Rate hasn't fallen; other areas in nation have caught up
  Colorado's reign as the nation's foreclosure leader may be nearing an end - but not because the foreclosure rate here is declining. Rather, foreclosure activity is picking up strongly in many other areas of the country. Nevada, Michigan and Georgia all reported higher rates of foreclosure filings per household than Colorado in January, according to a report Monday from RealtyTrac, a provider of foreclosure data based in Irvine, Calif.
• New York Business - Foreclosure filings soar in Brooklyn, Queens
  rapid rise in foreclosure rates could cost thousands of mostly low- and middle-income New Yorkers their homes.  The number of homes in foreclosure rose 18% in the last six months of 2006 compared with the same period of 2005, according to data from RealtyTrac. More worrisome is the fact that filings tabulated by Profiles Publications show that 100 homes in both Brooklyn and Queens are entering the foreclosure process each week -- double the numbers of a year ago.

• The Los Angeles Times - It's their default position
  It's a foreclosure, something flush times early this decade had pushed to the brink of extinction. In December 2004, there were about 12 foreclosures a week in Riverside and San Bernardino counties. In December 2006, there were 123.