{"id":191089,"date":"2009-09-25T20:17:00","date_gmt":"2009-09-26T01:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/09\/25\/economics-update-146\/"},"modified":"2009-09-25T20:17:00","modified_gmt":"2009-09-26T01:17:00","slug":"economics-update-146","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/09\/25\/economics-update-146\/","title":{"rendered":"Economics Update"},"content":{"rendered":"
Click for Full Size<\/p>\n
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<\/a> Blah, blah, blah!<\/span><\/div>\n

Well, let’s lead with housing sales, since it gives me an opportunity to start with one of my pet peeves: Journalists pumping up news as better than it is.<\/p>\n

CNN leads with New home sales rise for 5th<\/sup> straight month in August<\/a>,which sounds good, sales went from a seasonally adjusted annual rate (SAAR) of 429K, up from July’s 426K, so what’s the problem?<\/p>\n

Well the problem is that the forecast was for 440K, and a 3K gain is about \u00be%, nothing to phone home about, and as Calculated Risk so ably notes<\/a> when he looks at the numbers and declares that sales were flat, “This is a slight increase from the revised rate of 426 thousand in July (revised from 433 thousand<\/span>).” (emphasis mine<\/span>)<\/p>\n

So there was an increase relative to the revised<\/span> figure, but a drop when compare initial figure to initial figure, and in any case, an honest description for this would be “flat”, or “down slightly”, not a hed screaming a 5th<\/sup> straight month of increase.<\/p>\n

In either case, we are still seeing week demand for manufactured goods, as evidenced by the <\/span>2.4% drop in durable goods orders<\/a>, though the Truck Tonnage Index rose in in August<\/a>, which compares to the drop in rail traffic I reported 2 days ago<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In the world of finance, banks losses in big mofo loans, the so-called syndicated loans, tripled in 2009<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In energy, revelations regarding Iran’s nuclear program and potential sanctions pushed oil up<\/a>, though it is still well below $70\/bbl, and in currency, the dollar fell broadly<\/a>, hitting a 7\u00bd month low vs the Yen, and remaining near the 1-year low vs the Euro that it hit a few days ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Click for Full Size Blah, blah, blah! Well, let’s lead with housing sales, since it gives me an opportunity to start with one of my pet peeves: Journalists pumping up news as better than it is. CNN leads with New home sales rise for 5th straight month in August,which sounds good, sales went from a …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1080,973,1135,974,1088,1089],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-191089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-currency","category-economy","category-energy","category-hack-journalism","category-real-estate","category-recession"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191089"}],"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=191089"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191089\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}