Maven: Missing the Big P

And so it was that Robert Toll got a chance to pontificate to his heart's delight, effectively uninterrupted, in this morning's Wall Street Journal about how Toll Brothers(TOL Quote) is expanding into cities, where he says approval processes are easier, while maintaining suburban business. He also claims that we are "bounding along the bottom" of the housing market and blames much of the weakness in the market on Hurricane Katrina.

The Business Press Maven takes issue with all of these claims, but in a Q&A format, even the great and mighty me would have trouble making that clear. Investors: Be aware. And beware.

One final bracingly insightful thought this morning: As you know, The Business Press Maven was right as rain in screaming to the skies in the first half of 2006 how badly the business media were misreading FOMC notes.

In short: The business media became unreasonably positive, wedded to the fact that somewhere in the FOMC notes were hints that interest rates were going down.

For the second half of the year, coverage was pretty good. Today -- and somewhat ironically -- the business media seem too negative. Only the delusional could have realistically expected a responsible Federal Reserve to cut interest rates at this meeting. But read some of the coverage, such as this effort in The New York Times, and you get the sense that there wasn't much new in the FOMC notes: "With only minor changes, the statement echoed the same message that central bankers have sounded since August."

Minor changes? Au contraire. The Fed's acknowledgment of a "substantial cooling" in the housing market is big stuff. No, it does not mean an immediate lowering of rates. No decent Fed would do that, at least until inflation and oil prices had more safely stabilized. But it is clearly meant to set the stage.

It is also, in the end, despite casual reaction from both the media and markets, enough to dry the tears on a guy's keyboard.