{"id":189753,"date":"2010-02-17T09:14:00","date_gmt":"2010-02-17T14:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2010\/02\/17\/economics-update-88\/"},"modified":"2010-02-17T09:14:00","modified_gmt":"2010-02-17T14:14:00","slug":"economics-update-88","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2010\/02\/17\/economics-update-88\/","title":{"rendered":"Economics Update"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.marketwatch.com\/story\/mortgage-applications-fell-21-last-week-mba-2010-02-17?dist=beforebell\">Mortgage applications fell last week<\/a>, with home purchases leading the way relative to refinancing on the way down.<\/p>\n<p>Even so, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/idUSTRE60O3ES20100217\">housing starts rose sharply<\/a>, though as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.calculatedriskblog.com\/2010\/02\/housing-starts-increase-slightly-in.html\">Calculated Risk notes<\/a>, a lot of this is likely from home builders trying to complete houses in time before the latest round of housing tax credits expire at the end of April.<\/p>\n<p>In the world of actually making stuff, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/idUSTRE61G2VL20100217\">US industrial output rose more than expected in January<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>In the &#8220;looming train wrecks&#8221; category, the <a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB10001424052748703444804575071542235270442.html?mod=rss_whats_news_us&amp;utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wsj%2Fxml%2Frss%2F3_7011+%28WSJ.com%3A+What%27s+News+US%29\">newly released minutes from the Fed&#8217;s January meeting show increasing confidence in the economy<\/a>, it appears that there are some strong voices for the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601068&amp;sid=achJxbTG5DHM\">Federal Reserve to significantly shrinking their balance sheet<\/a>, would would likely result in a significant, probably in excess of 50 basis points (\u00bd%), increases in mortgage rates, which would make an already shaky real estate market even more problematic.<\/p>\n<p>In any case, the news on housing starts and industrial output drove both <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2010\/02\/17\/markets\/oil\/\">oil<\/a> and the <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2010\/02\/17\/markets\/dollar\/index.htm\">dollar<\/a> is higher.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mortgage applications fell last week, with home purchases leading the way relative to refinancing on the way down. Even so, housing starts rose sharply, though as Calculated Risk notes, a lot of this is likely from home builders trying to complete houses in time before the latest round of housing tax credits expire at the &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1038,1080,973,1135,1004,1088,1089],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-189753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-budget","category-currency","category-economy","category-energy","category-finance","category-real-estate","category-recession"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189753"}],"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=189753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189753\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}