From Holden:

If you’re not familiar with John Prine then that headline just whizzed by your ears.

In my never-ending* search for my Bush Boom I notice today that Consumer Prices are up (and although the article below calls the increase “modest” the increase in the CPI is double we saw in August) and housing starts are down. Neither of these developments are conducive to the discovery of my Bush Boom.

Consumer prices rose by a modest 0.2 percent in September as a decline in prices for new cars and airline fares helped to temper a rise in costs for medical care, gasoline and fuel oil.

The rise in the Consumer Prices Index, the government’s most closely watched inflation barometer, came after prices edged up by 0.1 percent in August, the Labor Department reported Tuesday.

Excluding energy and food prices, which can swing widely from month to month, “core” prices rose by 0.3 percent in September, up from a 0.1 percent gain in August and the largest increase April, a worrisome sign. A sharp increase in lodging prices was a main factor in the rise in core prices last month.

The overall CPI figure showing a 0.2 percent increase in September matched economists’ expectations. The 0.3 percent rise in core prices, however, was slightly bigger than the 0.2 percent increase some economists were forecasting.

[snip]

In another report, housing construction fell by 6 percent in September to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.898 million units, the Commerce Department said. The decline — steeper than analysts were expecting — followed a 1.8 percent rise in housing activity in August, which turned out to be stronger than initially estimated.

*Actually, the search for my Bush Boom will end November 3.