The lead of the Arkansas Realtors Association report on April housing sales:

The number of homes sold in Arkansas decreased by 10 percent over a year ago while the average price of those homes sold rose by 8.3 percent. The average price of the homes sold in the 43-county area surveyed by the Association increased from $138,642 in April 2011 to $150,153 in April 2012.

"It is interesting to see that although the number of units sold for April fell in Pulaski, Washington and Benton Counties the price per unit increased-a whopping 26.6% in Washington and 11.5% in Benton County," said Amy Glover Bryant, Director of Communications for the statwide association. "According to some of the Realtors I've spoken to over the last week, this could be indicative of a number of things. It is possible that some of the excess inventory has been sold off, that there are fewer foreclosures or that the higher priced homes are selling better. They've also mentioned that in many cases they are getting multiple offers on the same listing. All in all, this month's stats bode well for sellers."

Or who knows what?

Full report here.

Pro Publica has posted a useful chart on how the states are spending money received in a $2.5 billion settlement with big banks in a lawsuit over foreclosure practices.

Here's the link.

Credit to Attorney General Dustin McDaniel, whose settlement of some other class action lawsuits has drawn negative attention. Here, it appears that Arkansas has done better than many states in directing the money to homeowners.

• BRING ON THE PADDLE: George Bush wants to punish us some more.

George W. Bush is writing a book on his strategies for boosting economic growth.

Thank you, sir, may I have another?

This just in from Judge/Rev. Wendell Griffen:

ARKANSAS INTERFAITH ALLIANCE

PRESS ADVISORY

WHO: Dr. James Forbes, Pastor Emeritus of Riverside Church in New York City and Professor Emeritus at Union Theological Seminary

WHERE: New Millennium Baptist Church, 21 Lakeshore Drive, Little Rock, AR

WHEN: Wednesday, May 16th at 7 p.m.

WHAT: The Arkansas Interfaith Alliance is hosting a FAITH ADVOCATES FOR JOBS NATIONAL KICKOFF event. This national campaign showing the faith community’s concern about unemployment and the loss of jobs in the United States began in Washington D.C. in January. Little Rock is one of five cities over this year that will launch this campaign to call on the faith community to offer hope to those who are unemployed through direct ministries and through public policy. Dr. Forbes and the Rev. Dr. Paul Sherry (formerly the President of the United Church of Christ) will speak during the event.

Joe Nocera is worth a read today on the huge trading loss by JPMorgan Chase. In short, CEO Jamie Dimon was wrong and President Obama and allies were right in trying to increase regulation of the big banks. Enjoyment at his embarrassment has been termed 'dimonfreude.'

As Michael Greenberger, a law professor at the University of Maryland — and a former official at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission — explained in an e-mail that landed in my in-box early Friday morning, it is quite likely that the loss would never have occurred if Dodd-Frank’s proposed rules about derivatives had been in place. For starters, if the trades turn out to be proprietary trades — and we don’t yet know if they are — they would have been forbidden under the Volcker Rule.

But even if JPMorgan wasn’t trading for its own account, the transparency Dodd-Frank mandates would have alerted the markets and “losses would not have piled up opaquely,” Greenberger wrote. The Federal Reserve would have seen the trades, and would likely have forced JPMorgan to back away from them.

The Arkansas Realtors Association reports that Arkansas home sales were up 1 percent in March over the same month a year ago and average prices were up 4 percent, based on the 43 counties the group follows. For the first quarter, the number of sales was up 6 percent and price up 3 percent.

More details here.

The Arkansas report on April state tax revenue take again edges toward the bright side.

Gross revenues are $200 million ahead of last year for the first 10 months of the budget year and $123 million, or 2.5 percent, above forecast.

On a percentage basis, April looked even rosier. Income was up 5.1 percent over last year and 5.9 percent above forecast.

Here's the full report.

If that pace keeps up, there might be somewhere near sufficient growth money to pay for the state's estimated portion — on the low end — of an expected enormous rise in Medicaid spending. If none of the money is used for anything else. (I say the previous with tongue somewhat in cheek. There will be other demands for money; pressure will be great to cut spending in some areas, the question being which unfortunate class gets cut first.)

A harmonic convergence in NY Times op-eds this morning.

There was Paul Krugman on Mitt Romney's call for young people to get an education, borrow money from their parents and start a business.

The first thing you notice here is, of course, the Romney touch — the distinctive lack of empathy for those who weren’t born into affluent families, who can’t rely on the Bank of Mom and Dad to finance their ambitions. But the rest of the remark is just as bad in its own way.

I mean, “get the education”? And pay for it how? Tuition at public colleges and universities has soared, in part thanks to sharp reductions in state aid. Mr. Romney isn’t proposing anything that would fix that; he is, however, a strong supporter of the Ryan budget plan, which would drastically cut federal student aid, causing roughly a million students to lose their Pell grants.

Then there was Thomas Edsall, talking about research into the empathy among liberals and conservatives. Liberals tend to be more empathetic, the research indicates, not necessarily a good thing politically. Where a liberal might see a needy person deserving of a break (favorable tax treatment, universal health care), a conservative might see a deadbeat free-rider. So you formulate a message to appeal to the swing voters. For example, you have Republican Rep. Paul Ryan, anti-tax in just about every iteration, who supports tax increases for the poorest working Americans. They are now exempt from federal income taxes, but not a full range of other taxes that disproportionately burden limited incomes. Depict them as undeserving deadbeats, however, and you might overcome the empathetic tendencies of swing voters.

Ryan also merits a profile today for his emergence as leader of Republican economic theory (trickle-down, still).

The Arkansas unemployment rate in March dropped to 7.4 percent from 7.6 percent the month before. Workforce up by more than 6,000 jobs from the previous month and 26,000 from the same month a year ago.

Full report here.

Here's a thought-provoking piece out today from Esquire, discussing the ways the Baby Boomer generation has swallowed a bigger and bigger slice of the economic pie over the years, even as educated young folks struggle, put off marriage and children, or even are forced to move back in with mom and dad.

Before you start railing against these young ninnies with their degrees in basket weaving, consider this quote: "In 1984, American breadwinners who were sixty-five and over made ten times as much as those under thirty-five. The year Obama took office, older Americans made almost forty-seven times as much as the younger generation." Numbers like that have nothing to do with who has a liberal-arts degree.

The state says the unemployment rate in January dropped to 7.6 percent from 7.8 percent the month before on rising total employment. More than 1.277 million employed was the highest figure since 2009, the state said. Report here.

Arkansas home sales in January dipped a bit more than 1 percent against the same month a year earlier, according to a report from the Arkansas Realtors Association. Average prices were up 7.66 percent, however.

Recommended reading in New York Times. The evidence mounts that the Obama stimulus package helped the U.S. economy. That hasn't stopped Republican howling, of course. It is howling silent on what the alternatives were — except for still more tax cuts. See Britain for how the government spending cut strategy worked. Not.

I'm still a Krugmanite. The failing was not enough stimulus.

Sad story in Eureka Springs' Lovely County Citizen about a secretary, Judie Robinson, who lost her job of 45 years at the state Forestry Commission in the layoffs required by the agency's insolvency when illegal funds transfers were stopped:

She was fired by letter. It arrived with postage due.

State Rep. Bryan King, who met with Robinson last week at a news conference in Eureka Springs, said he takes issue with Shannon on several levels.

"I object to the way they treated her termination," said King. "They should have made a reasonable effort for a face-to-face notification, if he were man enough."

King also objects to Shannon's handling of the commission, its finances and its personnel policies, saying Shannon should have notified state lawmakers of the budget shortfall, that he tried to pass the buck in the blame game, he muzzled his employees, and he misused funds.