{"id":188109,"date":"2010-12-10T20:31:00","date_gmt":"2010-12-11T01:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2010\/12\/10\/consumer-sentiment-and-exports-surge\/"},"modified":"2010-12-10T20:31:00","modified_gmt":"2010-12-11T01:31:00","slug":"consumer-sentiment-and-exports-surge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2010\/12\/10\/consumer-sentiment-and-exports-surge\/","title":{"rendered":"Consumer Sentiment and Exports Surge"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/img839.imageshack.us\/img839\/4733\/usdchartpr0n.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/img839.imageshack.us\/img839\/4733\/usdchartpr0n.png\" style=\"float: right; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px;\" width=\"440\" \/><\/a>Both <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/idUSTRE6B95R020101210\">good pieces of news<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"color: blue;\"><p>A rise in U.S. consumer confidence to its highest in six months and a much bigger-than-expected contraction in the country&#8217;s trade deficit pointed to a firmer economic recovery on Friday.<\/p>\n<p>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n<p>Consumer sentiment in December rose to its highest level since June and was at its third-highest since the start of 2008, according to a Thomson Reuters\/University of Michigan survey. Government data showed U.S. exports in October rose a robust 3.2 percent while imports declined slightly.<\/p>\n<p>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n<p>The survey&#8217;s preliminary December reading for consumer sentiment came in at 74.2, up from 71.6 in November. That was above the median forecast of 72.5 among economists polled by Reuters.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This is unalloyed good news.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s particularly good news because we are in the Christmas shopping season that accounts for a disproportionate amount of consumer spending.<\/p>\n<p>My guess is that the the exports are helped by the general trend down with the dollar over the past month. (see graph pr0n)<\/p>\n<p>In an odd way, if Obama&#8217;s disastrously bad tax <del>capitulation<\/del> compromise may actually help our economy if it convinces the currency markets to go short on the dollar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Both good pieces of news: A rise in U.S. consumer confidence to its highest in six months and a much bigger-than-expected contraction in the country&#8217;s trade deficit pointed to a firmer economic recovery on Friday. \u2026\u2026\u2026 Consumer sentiment in December rose to its highest level since June and was at its third-highest since the start &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[973,1016,1089],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-188109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","category-international-commerce","category-recession"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188109"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188109\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}