We can add realtors to the list of those who are angry with Jay Powell. The housing market continued its perplexing slump in October, according to a broad section of data encompassing everything from construction to sales of existing homes. We have been told since Economics 101 that the central bank is, well, central, therefore it is easy to infer causation from mere correlation.

The Fed is “raising rates” but unlike what’s taught in schools the FOMC doesn’t control all that much. Very little in the modern diagram. But because monetary officials claim to be tightening and now the housing market is clearly within a slump we shouldn’t ignore that correlation does not mean causation.

After all, we begin this study under false (mainstream) pretenses.

The housing market is stumbling through its longest slump in four years, as the divergence between a booming U.S. economy and weakening home sales that many had dismissed as temporary now looks poised to continue.

We can add real estate to a very different list, too, one that would contain an actual as opposed to imaginary economic boom. Already included on it are automobiles (people buy lots of autos during a boom), capex-starved businesses (firms build and borrow in a boom), and now the housing sector. If the economy was booming, people would be buying and building houses. A lot of them.

First, the slump. According to the National Association of Realtors (NAR), the level of resales in October 2018 rebounded by only a small amount from the multi-year low in September. The estimated number of transactions was 5.22 million (SAAR) last month up only marginally from 5.15 million the month before. November is merely the second worst month in three years.

Year-over-year, resales have fallen in each of the last eight straight and in nine out of the past ten. You easily notice those on the chart above and maybe miss the prior inflection which shows up far earlier in the summer/autumn of 2015.