Negative economic news on parade

I warned you! I told you there would be a lot of negative economic news this week. Here's your executive summary:

• The pace of January new home sales nationwide, despite the biggest decline in median prices in three years, fell to a nearly 13-year low.
• The nation's largest luxury homebuilder, Toll Brothers, swung to a quarterly loss on a 23% plunge in its sales.
• Fannie Mae, America's biggest guarantor of home mortgages, posted a $3.6 billion quarterly loss.
• The euro rose to a new all-time high against the dollar. Now, granted, "all-time" only means "since 1999," when the euro came into being as a going concern, but still. It takes a buck and a half to buy a euro now.
• Orders for durable factory goods are down more than 5% in the latest monthly report from the Commerce Department, more than was expected by Wall Streets analysts, apart from a few who are perched on ledges regarding the traffic below.
• Crude oil traded above $100 a barrel this morning after gushing two bucks higher still on Tuesday.
• Heinz Co. is playing ketchup (thank you) after posting flat earnings. I just threw this in for seasoning.

Small wonder that Fed head Ben Bernanke, testifying Wednesday morning before the House Financial Services Committee, sent new coded messages that the Fed will cut interest rates again at its March 18 meeting. He will do the same thing Thursday before the Senate Banking Committee, if that's your idea of a good time. This is not an exhaustive list of all the bad economic news Wednesday, yet I am exhausted, so I'll stop here, except for a few remarks about why you shouldn't fret none about this. You see, most of this stuff doesn't really tell us anything new, and not only that but Hawaii even benefits from some of it. The higher the euro goes, the better for us. How much do we buy from Europe? You can be moved to sobs if you own the local Volvo dealership, granted, but apart from that a high euro puts European vacations into the "really expensive" column and maybe some mainlanders will decide they like the Costa del Kihei more. Low interest rates can take some of the edge off Hawaii's housing prices, which haven't fallen back all that much, unlike prices in many mainland locations. Even the new official state economic forecast, with its several "more worserer" revisions, is mainly good news. The inflation forecast for 2008 has been raised two tenths to 4%, but that's pretty darn low compared to the 4.8% increase seen in the Honolulu CPI in 2007. Economic growth speed is now expected to be only a little better than 1%, but it beats outright recession. Similarly, wage and salary job growth expectations have been powered a tenth, to 1.4%, but that's still growth. Hawaii's economic glass is half full.