{"id":189879,"date":"2010-02-04T20:57:00","date_gmt":"2010-02-05T01:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2010\/02\/04\/economics-update-95\/"},"modified":"2010-02-04T20:57:00","modified_gmt":"2010-02-05T01:57:00","slug":"economics-update-95","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2010\/02\/04\/economics-update-95\/","title":{"rendered":"Economics Update"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"border: 1px solid black; margin: 0px 10px; width: 400px; float: right; text-align: center;\">Click for full size<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/img690.imageshack.us\/img690\/9452\/amherstoptionarm3471524.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/img690.imageshack.us\/img690\/9452\/amherstoptionarm3471524.jpg\" bordercolor=\"white\" border=\"0\" width=\"390\" \/><\/a><br \/><span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Scary graph pr0n of the day, option ARM resets<br \/>h\/t <a href=\"http:\/\/www.calculatedriskblog.com\/2010\/01\/option-arm-recast-update.html\">Calculated Risk<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<p>Well, today is &#8220;Jobless Thursday,&#8221; and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.marketwatch.com\/story\/jobless-claims-at-highest-since-mid-december-2010-02-04?reflink=MW_news_stmp\">initial claims unexpectedly rose to 480,000<\/a>, rather than dropping as forecast, as did the rather more significant 4-week moving average, while continuing claims remained flat, though <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/\/id\/35233130\">better productivity numbers might indicate a bit of an upswing<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Additionally, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/\/id\/35235072\">factory orders rose more strongly than forecast in December<\/a>, which also is good news.<\/p>\n<p>In the class half empty\/full division. we have <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/\/id\/35239423\">home listings rising for the first time in 18 months<\/a>, which could presage a turn around in the market (full), or the fact that sellers who were trying to wait out the downturn are finally capitulating to the real estate market (empty), which would indicate further price declines ahead.<\/p>\n<p>Me, I&#8217;m a bear on this.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, over on the other side of the pond, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bankofengland.co.uk\/publications\/news\/2010\/008.htm\">Bank of England kept its benchmark rate at 0.5%<\/a>, but perhaps more significantly, it announce that it is &#8220;pausing&#8221; in its quantitative easing (printing money) through buying bonds.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not sure if they are just taking a month to survey the landscape, or if they think that recovery is, &#8220;just around the corner.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, the recent swings in global stock markets, along with the jobs number, have investors worried, which has them <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2010\/02\/04\/markets\/dollar\/index.htm\">buying up dollars<\/a>, and these concerns also <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2010\/02\/04\/markets\/oil_gold\/index.htm\">drove oil and other commodities lower<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Click for full size Scary graph pr0n of the day, option ARM resetsh\/t Calculated Risk Well, today is &#8220;Jobless Thursday,&#8221; and initial claims unexpectedly rose to 480,000, rather than dropping as forecast, as did the rather more significant 4-week moving average, while continuing claims remained flat, though better productivity numbers might indicate a bit of &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1094,1080,973,975,1135,1088,985],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-189879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaign-finance","category-currency","category-economy","category-employment","category-energy","category-real-estate","category-regulation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189879"}],"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=189879"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189879\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}