FLASH: MarketWatch - "Housing bust holds down core inflation in April"

Gotta love it - housing crashes, and the market celebrates that the crash (and a glut of homes for rent keepin rents down) is keeping inflation down as consumers begin to curl up in the fetal position and the housing atm shuts down.

Yippee!!!!

Uh, someone wanna ask Japan what they think about housing crashes, a slowing economy death spiral, and asset and price deflation before putting on the party hats?

The REALLY funny thing of course about the government inflation data is the use of rents, even though home"ownership" rates near 70%. Bubblesitters and Bitter Renters you rule the roost when it comes to US inflation reporting! Keep paying less than you did the year before and we can move the US to deflation. Watch for rents to keep dropping as this massive glut of inventory is rented out, the vacancy rate soars, the illegals go home, and the economy cools.

Also, nice to see the MSM using terms like "housing bust" as fact now. Guess someone didn't read their NAR talking points.

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- A growing glut of housing on the market helped moderate U.S. consumer price increases in April, raising hopes that the Federal Reserve can declare victory over inflation.

The consumer price index increased a smaller-than-expected 0.4% in April, boosted by higher prices for energy and groceries, the Labor Department reported Tuesday.

Excluding food and energy, however, the core consumer price index rose 0.2% as expected, knocking the annual gain in the core down to a one-year low of 2.3%.

Rents and owners' equivalent rents, the biggest factors in the CPI, increased at the slowest pace in more than a year, reflecting a flood of vacant units in the rental market.

The benign figures impressed some of the most skeptical analysts.

The moderation in housing costs "is one of the most significant developments on the inflation front in a long while," wrote Stephen Stanley, chief economist for RBS Greenwich Capital Markets. If the good news persists, "then core inflation will probably turn out better than we have projected" and the Fed will have "more room to ease in the event that we are wrong" about the economy bouncing back.

And then there was this bonus headline too:

Housing market, investments wreck Home Depot profit - Expect more of the same, CEO warns