June 10, 2008 | posted by Michael Baxter in IABN |

It’s another of those days of conflicting evidence.  Imagine economic news sat on a pair of kitchen scales: good one side, bad the other.  This morning, the weights seem to balance on both sides. 

House prices are crashing: the latest evidence to support this claim came from the Royal Institution of Charted Surveyors, which released its May housing survey this morning.  The RICS monthly surveys are, in our opinion, the best guides out there for measuring the underlying strength in the housing market – so the release of this report is always significant, and this time round, well, read the article further down.

Actually, it is debatable whether news of falling house prices is good or bad.  But there’s no debate over the last data on inflation at the factory gate.  It’s awful, see below.

But on the other side of the scales, retail sales saw a surprise pick up in May.  Meanwhile, from the US, news broke to suggest  the US housing market may be reaching turning point.    The US market seems to be running around a year or so ahead of the UK, so this provides room for optimism.

But to get the stories told how they should be, read the next few articles.