{"id":190042,"date":"2010-01-13T19:03:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-14T00:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2010\/01\/13\/economics-update-103\/"},"modified":"2010-01-13T19:03:00","modified_gmt":"2010-01-14T00:03:00","slug":"economics-update-103","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2010\/01\/13\/economics-update-103\/","title":{"rendered":"Economics Update"},"content":{"rendered":"
Click for full size<\/p>\n
\n

<\/a> H\/t Calculated Risk<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n

The Federal Reserve has released its “Summary of Commentary on Current Economic Conditions”, better known as the “Beige Book”, and there has been a small improvement<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I’m not sure where the improvement is, since transportation indices continue to disappoint, with the American Association of Railroads’ report on carload traffic showing the lowest level since 1988<\/a>, and if goods aren’t moving, then people aren’t buying.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile the trend in mortgages, with refinancing increasing and mortgages for purchases falling, continued this week<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Overseas, the GDPs of Britain<\/a> and Germany <\/a>both suffered the largest drop since before the 2nd<\/sup> World War, -4.8% and -5.0% respectively, while in Japan, machinery orders fell sharply in November<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In the world of US government finance, the US budget deficit doubled year over year in December<\/a>, which probably had something to do with bond prices being mixed<\/a>, with the 10-year bond falling slightly, and the 30-year bond rising slightly. (Yields move in the opposite direction of prices)<\/p>\n

In energy, oil fell below $80\/bbl<\/a>, on reports of increasing US fuel inventories.<\/p>\n

In currency, the <\/span>dollar was mixed<\/a>, down slightly versus the Pound and Euro, but up slightly versus the Yen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Click for full size H\/t Calculated Risk The Federal Reserve has released its “Summary of Commentary on Current Economic Conditions”, better known as the “Beige Book”, and there has been a small improvement. I’m not sure where the improvement is, since transportation indices continue to disappoint, with the American Association of Railroads’ report on carload …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[973,984,1004,1188,1088,1089,1035],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-190042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","category-europe","category-finance","category-japan","category-real-estate","category-recession","category-transportation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190042"}],"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=190042"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190042\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}