New pending home sales data for May indicate that April’s 11.2% plunge was a one-month fluke likely caused by the onset of higher gas prices and a struggling job market. The 8.2% increase reported by the National Association of Realtors marks the largest spike since November 2010, with Indianapolis, Seattle, Houston and a few other markets seeing significant turnarounds. A Barclays report suggests this is a sign to expect a housing market rebound, but other analysts say a better indicator of sustained improvement are lower delinquency rates that lead to foreclosures. For more on this continue reading the following article from The Street. Home sales saw a promising turnaround in May. The National Association of Realtors reported that pending home sales jumped 8.2%. The index, which looks at homes in the process of closing, rose to an 88.8 reading in May from a revised 82.1 reading in April. T Complete article…

Consumers and small wine stores would be losers if proposal is approved

A survey of wine drinkers conducted by the University at Buffalo School of Management has found that 54 percent say they are opposed to a New York State proposal to sell wine in supermarkets.

In a survey of more than 5,000 households, 42 percent of those opposing wine sales in supermarkets cited “negative impact on small businesses” as their reason for doing so. Other reasons included reduction of wine selection (19 percent), likely end of personalized services (15 percent), end of a unique shopping experience at specialty stores (11 percent), perceived unfairness of competition (8 percent), potential for abuse/unhealthy buying behavior due to wider availability (7 percent) and loss of jobs in a troubled economy (4 percent).

Of those who support the proposal, 87 percent favored it for shopping convenience. Ano

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US News lists 10 things you should always buy in bulk as follows:

1. Toilet Paper2. Soap and Shampoo3. Alcohol4. Office Supplies5. Toothbrushes/Toothpaste6. Vitamins7. Cell Phone Minutes8. Non-Perishable9. Blank CDs and DVDs10. Detergent

Here’s what we do with each of these:

• Toilet Paper – We buy in bulk at Costco. Saves time AND money.
• Soap and Shampoo – Three months ago Walmart had a buy one, get one free deal on liquid soap. We bought them out of stock. We still have enough soap left for a few months.
• Alcohol – We save by not drinking alcohol.
• Office Supplies – Yes and no on this one. The key: just make sure you don’t buy too much just to get a deal. We have four years’ worth of envelopes and a decade of staples because we bought in bulk.
• Toothbrushes/Toothpaste – I haven’t purchased a toothbrush in years — my dentist gives me a new one every six months.

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IT IS a modern glass and steel structure in downtown Manhattan, but the biggest tenant of 140 Broadway could almost have come from the pages of a Charles Dickens novel. The eight top partners of Brown Brothers Harriman (BBH) share an office, the Partners’ Room, sitting at two rows of antique desks, overlooked by a painting of the firm’s stern-faced founders. “As befits a general partnership, this lack of individual offices promotes sharing of ideas and ensures there can be no secrets,” says Digger Donahue. The firm’s unstuffy managing partner revels in its history. Founded in the early 19th century, it arranged America’s first initial public offering and, as owner of a fleet of ships, once held a monopoly on mail delivery to Britain.

BBH is clearly not your typical 21st-century Wall Street firm—and not only because it is hard to imagine Jamie Dimon or Vikram Pandit agreeing to bunk up with half a dozen lieutenants. Private partn

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THROUGH the first half of the year, one factor after another weighed on the American economy, disappointing forecasters (and workers) who’d been looking forward to 4% or so GDP growth. Patience, countenanced Ben Bernanke; when these temporary factors—bad weather, high petrol prices, seismic disasters, and so on—eased off, growth would bounce back. But as the months wore on, it seemed like temporary negative factors might be dragging down expectations and threatening to set of another summer swoon.

That worrisome outcome is not entirely out of the question, but it is looking less likely by the day. Japan’s post-disaster economic slump seems to be ending, and American firms impacted by the disruption of supply chains are gearing back up. High automobile prices, due again to supply disruptions, dragged down auto purchases and pushed up inflation, but these trends too seem to be reversing. Pet

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