by Calculated Risk on 8/15/2012 09:54:00 PM

First, informative reading from Bond Girl at Nemo's site: The well-known story of municipal bond defaults

And from Jim Hamilton at Econbrowser: Recent developments in oil markets

And from Tim Duy at Economist'sView: Data Dump

• At 8:30 AM ET, Housing Starts for July will be released. The consensus is for total housing starts to decrease to 750,000 (SAAR) in July, down from 760,000 in June.

• Also at 8:30 AM, The initial weekly unemployment claims report will be released. The consensus is for claims to increase to 365 thousand from 361 thousand last week. Initial weekly unemployment claims have been declining recently, and the 4-week average last week was just above the post-bubble low of 363,000.

• At 10:00 AM, the Philly Fed Survey for August will be released. This has been negative the last three months with readings of -5.8, -16.6 and -12.9. The consensus is for another negative reading of -5.0 in August (above zero indicates expansion).


Another question for the monthly economic prediction contest: