{"id":190306,"date":"2009-12-11T17:20:00","date_gmt":"2009-12-11T22:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/12\/11\/economics-update-119\/"},"modified":"2009-12-11T17:20:00","modified_gmt":"2009-12-11T22:20:00","slug":"economics-update-119","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/12\/11\/economics-update-119\/","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:\/\/img682.imageshack.us\/img682\/4408\/msnbcsurvey0084698.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/img682.imageshack.us\/img682\/4408\/msnbcsurvey0084698.png\" bordercolor=\"white\" border=\"0\" width=\"390\" \/><\/a> <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Surprise!  Geithner and Bernanke:<br \/>As popular as a case of the Clap.<br \/>H\/t <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ritholtz.com\/blog\/2009\/12\/survey-geithner-bernanke-ratings-near-madoff-levels\/\">Calculated Risk<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/img693.imageshack.us\/img693\/6707\/foodstamps2792353.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/img693.imageshack.us\/img693\/6707\/foodstamps2792353.png\" bordercolor=\"white\" border=\"0\" width=\"390\" \/><\/a><br \/>And ore Americans than ever are on food stamps, h\/t <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nakedcapitalism.com\/2009\/12\/guest-post-are-food-stamps-the-soup-lines-of-this-great-recession.html\">Naked Capitalism<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<p>Well, we have a bunch of good news on the consumer front, with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601087&amp;sid=ayO_r6UMlxeY&amp;pos=2\">retail sales growing by 1.3% in November<\/a>, more than the 0.6% forecast, and the Reuters\/University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index <a href=\"http:\/\/www.marketwatch.com\/story\/consumer-sentiment-soars-in-early-dec-2009-12-11\">rose to 73.4 in early December, up from 67.4 last month, and well above the forecast of 69.0<\/a>, which is all very good, since the holiday season is a huge part of retail sales, but the Discover Financial Services survey <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/hostednews\/afp\/article\/ALeqM5hu0Gqmi2Dx9M_QZYQnowECFnQwLA\">is showing that consumers are looking to slash their spending by 15%<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Yeah, I&#8217;m confused too.<\/p>\n<p>I would also note that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601012&amp;sid=aFbqGE.lEdi0\">the number of people collecting food stamps hit a record<\/a>, 37.2 million, which raises the question if, &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/maxkeiser.com\/2009\/12\/10\/derivatives-suspensions-and-food-stamps\/\">food stamps are the soup lines of this Great Depression<\/a>?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>We are now seeing some rumblings of inflation on the other side of the pond, with <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/2\/hi\/business\/8407699.stm\">UK factory input prices rising at fastest pace in a year<\/a>, 4%:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\">Input prices gained by 4% last month from November 2008, and by 0.4% from October.<\/p>\n<p>Output prices &#8211; the prices of goods leaving UK factories &#8211; rose 2.9% on the year, the fastest pace since February. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\">Output prices &#8211; the prices of goods leaving UK factories &#8211; rose 2.9% on the year, the fastest pace since February.<\/span> <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So we are likely going to have some of the central banks out there, most likely the ECB, panicking and jacking up rates at just the wrong time.<\/p>\n<p>Still, the retail sales numbers <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2009\/12\/11\/markets\/dollar\/index.htm\">drove the dollar rises to a 2-month high<\/a>, though interestingly enough, <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2009\/12\/11\/markets\/oil\/\">oil fell for the 8<sup>th<\/sup> straight day<\/a>, to $69.87\/bbl, which is kind of odd, increased consumer sales implies increased demand, but a rising dollar may trump that in the mind of oil speculators.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Click for full size Surprise! Geithner and Bernanke:As popular as a case of the Clap.H\/t Calculated Risk And ore Americans than ever are on food stamps, h\/t Naked Capitalism Well, we have a bunch of good news on the consumer front, with retail sales growing by 1.3% in November, more than the 0.6% forecast, and &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1080,973,1135,984,1004,1200,1089,985],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-190306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-currency","category-economy","category-energy","category-europe","category-finance","category-inflation","category-recession","category-regulation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190306"}],"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=190306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190306\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}