Existing home sales, reported last Thursday, were down 3.7% from February (down 6.3% in February). Wall St was thinking they would rise 0.8%. The seasonally adjusted annualized sales rate dropped to 7-month lows. The reason for struggling existing home sales is three-fold. First and most obvious is rising mortgage rates. If the Fed had not been throwing at least $80 billion per month at the mortgage market, mortgage rates would have been rising since last April and would be much higher than current mortgage rates. This would have prevented the double digit housing price inflation of the last 12 months, which to a large degree is starting to “freeze” housing market activity.