Ask AP: Importance of housing starts, honeybees

American farmers have long worried about the declining population of honeybees, a key crop pollinator. But honeybees originally came from Europe, so can't U.S. farms get by without them — with a little help from good old American bugs whose ancestors were here before Columbus?

A reader's curiosity about native and non-native pollinators inspired one of three questions in this edition of "Ask AP," a weekly Q&A column where AP journalists respond to readers' questions about the news.

(enlarge photo) In this Tuesday, Dec. 11, 2001 file photo, an oversized $100 'Patriot Bond' is on display at the Treasury Department in Washington. A reader-submitted question about where are people putting the money they get from the stocks and mutual funds they're selling off is being answered as part of an Associated Press Q&A column called 'Ask AP'. (AP Photo/Jacqueline Roggenbrodt)

If you have your own news-related question that you'd like to see answered by an AP reporter or editor, send it to newsquestions@ap.org, with "Ask AP" in the subject line. And please include your full name and hometown so they can be published with your question.

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My question is about one of the major economic indicators: "housing starts."

There are about 106 million occupied homes in the U.S., and the country's population is just over 300 million. That puts less than three people in each occupied home — which makes it sound like we don't need too many more homes.

If the country has nearly all the homes it needs, don't we reach the point where housing construction figures stop being a meaningful measure of the nation's economic health?

Kevin Andrews

Atlanta

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Residential construction is not a very large piece of the economy overall, so it's not on its own a huge driver of the U.S. economy. But housing starts are closely watched because they tend to be a leading indicator of where the rest of the economy is heading.

When housing starts begin to plummet, that tends to indicate that problems are on the way.

Housing starts are also a bellwether for employment, as a sharp decline in new construction leads to job losses among construction workers, trade contractors and others involved in the business of building and selling new homes.

In terms of needing more homes: The U.S. adds about three million people a year, which translates into a little more than a million new housing units needed each year to keep up. In the latest government data on housing starts, released Wednesday, construction of new homes and apartments fell 4.5 percent in October to an annual rate of 791,000 units.

Alex Veiga

AP Real Estate Writer

Los Angeles

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Since honeybees are an alien, invasive species in North America, having been introduced by European settlers, why are such dire consequences feared if they're dying off? Wouldn't whatever was here before them just take over the job of pollinating flowers again?

Bob Nichol

Wilmington, N.C.

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While honeybees are a non-native species, they have become the workhorse of American agriculture because they are such generalists, pollinating all sorts of flowers and plants. Most native pollinators — such as bumble bees — are specialists that don't do as well with modern American agriculture, where they may need to pollinate various types of crops at different points in the growing season, said Laurie Davies Adams, director of the Pollinator Partnership.

And native pollinators are in trouble also. In 2006, The National Academy of Sciences found declining populations of several bee species, as well as some butterflies, hummingbirds and bats. (Yes, bats. They're in the pollination business, too.)

For example, scientists fear that one California bee, Franklin's bumblebee, is either already extinct or close to it. Thousands of bats in New England have succumbed to a new disease.

Seth Borenstein

AP Science Writer

Washington

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With markets falling, where are people putting the money they get from all the stocks and mutual funds they're selling off? Surely not in the shaky banks — and seemingly not in overseas markets, since they're also in reverse.

So, where to go? Under the mattress, perhaps?

Carolyn Rohdenburg

Wilmington, N.C.

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Most of that money has been going into investments seen as safe havens — in this downturn, that's primarily been government Treasury bonds, and to a lesser degree bank savings and checking accounts, and certificates of deposit. (It's hard to quantify how much people are actually putting under mattresses.)

According to TrimTabs Investment Research, investors pulled nearly $142 billion from stock and bond mutual funds in September and October. TrimTabs projects an additional $82 billion will flow out in November, the most since TrimTabs began keeping such records in 1996.

Even normally safe money-market mutual funds have been hurt — when fears arose about the safety of those investments in mid-September, investors pulled out some $170 billion in a seven-day period.

Where has all the money gone? Over the last two months, a whopping $832 billion flowed into government securities, primarily short-term Treasury bills — considered one of the safest assets around.

"People were basically putting money under the electronic equivalent of a mattress," said Madeline Schnapp, TrimTabs' director of macroeconomic research. T-bills' recent popularity reduced yields to record lows for three-month and six-month bills.

In other cases, money taken out of the markets has ended up in bank accounts and CDs.

While some have been putting cash into gold and silver — seen as the ultimate safe-haven investments — there's been no mass movement, evidenced by declining precious metals prices. "If there was such a move, you'd see that reflected in the price of gold and silver, and that is just not happening," Schnapp said.

Meanwhile, the government will soon be paying back investors as short-term T-bills mature, creating a new round of decisions by investors on where to put their money.

Mark Jewell

AP Personal Finance Writer

Boston

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Have questions of your own? Send them to newsquestions@ap.org.

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