{"id":191217,"date":"2009-09-12T06:42:00","date_gmt":"2009-09-12T11:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/09\/12\/economics-update-a-day-late-14\/"},"modified":"2009-09-12T06:42:00","modified_gmt":"2009-09-12T11:42:00","slug":"economics-update-a-day-late-14","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/09\/12\/economics-update-a-day-late-14\/","title":{"rendered":"Economics Update (a Day Late)"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"border: 1px solid black; margin: 0px 10px; width: 410px; float: right; text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/img6.imageshack.us\/img6\/930\/darkow0909092031969.gif\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/img6.imageshack.us\/img6\/930\/darkow0909092031969.gif\" bordercolor=\"white\" border=\"0\" width=\"400\" \/><\/a> <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">H\/t <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ritholtz.com\/blog\/2009\/09\/at-of-the-woods\/\">The Big Picture<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<p>The University of Michigan survey showed an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.marketwatch.com\/story\/consumer-sentiment-improves-in-early-sept-umich-2009-09-11\">improvement in consumer sentiment<\/a>, hitting 70.2, exceeding forecasts of 68.0.<\/p>\n<p>In wholesale,  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.forbes.com\/feeds\/afx\/2009\/09\/11\/afx6875161.html\">inventories have fallen to a 3 year low<\/a>, indicating that there is little push to restock, though wholesale sales actually rose.<\/p>\n<p>In retail, the fact that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/\/id\/32788276\">video game sales fell for the 6<sup>th<\/sup> straight month<\/a> is worrying:  When consumers, specifically hard core video gamers, do not feel comfortable purchasing video games, they don&#8217;t feel comfortable purchasing <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">anything<\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile across the pond(s), we have<\/p>\n<p>Japan&#8217;s growth in Q2 being <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/hostednews\/afp\/article\/ALeqM5gEvNSKAZlxlW6nAdZDj3_V06OR_g\">revised down to 2.3% from a 3.7%<\/a> annualized rate, though <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601109&amp;sid=a.CfVUrpskgY\">domestic cargo volumes in Russian indicate a recovery is imminent there<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, in the folks with more petro-dollars than brains department, Dubai&#8217;s sovereign wealth fund, Istithmar World, has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601109&amp;sid=aB7Po3XKk7HI\">stopped making investments<\/a>, probably because they are having problems covering their losses.<\/p>\n<p>In real estate, <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2009\/09\/10\/real_estate\/august_foreclosures\/index.htm?postversion=2009091011\">repossessions dropped 12.7% in August<\/a>, but foreclosure filings fell only 0.5% and the number of people defaulting.<\/p>\n<p>My guess is that this is some of the banks out there are already overwhelmed with REOs and don&#8217;t want to acknowledge the bottom line hit, so they are letting things slide right now.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2009\/09\/11\/markets\/oil.reut\/index.htm\">Oil falls below $70 on demand recovery doubts &#8211; Sep. 11, 2009<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601110&amp;sid=arY.4Stj7yvA\">crude oil finished the week below $70\/bbl<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>In currency, the dollar index, a basked of currencies against which the USD is measured, <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2009\/09\/11\/markets\/dollar\/index.htm\">fell to a 1-year low<\/a>, in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601087&amp;sid=alG28.ZvON3c\">longest sting of losses in the index<\/a>, 6 days, since March.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2009\/09\/11\/markets\/gold\/index.htm\">gold ended the day above $1000\/ox<\/a> (Troy), which might make for happy gold bugs, but I&#8217;m inclined to say that it is time to cash in and get Yen or Euro.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>H\/t The Big Picture The University of Michigan survey showed an improvement in consumer sentiment, hitting 70.2, exceeding forecasts of 68.0. In wholesale, inventories have fallen to a 3 year low, indicating that there is little push to restock, though wholesale sales actually rose. In retail, the fact that video game sales fell for 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":[1080,973,1135,1004,1188,1088,1089,1033],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-191217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-currency","category-economy","category-energy","category-finance","category-japan","category-real-estate","category-recession","category-russia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191217"}],"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=191217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191217\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}