{"id":191414,"date":"2009-08-19T17:28:00","date_gmt":"2009-08-19T22:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/08\/19\/economics-update-165\/"},"modified":"2009-08-19T17:28:00","modified_gmt":"2009-08-19T22:28:00","slug":"economics-update-165","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/08\/19\/economics-update-165\/","title":{"rendered":"Economics Update"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/img13.imageshack.us\/img13\/2176\/abijuly20097628109.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/img13.imageshack.us\/img13\/2176\/abijuly20097628109.jpg\" style=\"margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;\" width=\"400\" \/><\/a>Well, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/businessNews\/idUSTRE57I2IC20090819?feedType=RSS&amp;feedName=businessNews\">mortgage applications rose this week<\/a> as rates fell 23 basis points (0.23%), not too surprising.<\/p>\n<p>The Architecture Billings Index, one of the leading indicators of future construction activity, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.calculatedriskblog.com\/2009\/08\/aia-architecture-billings-index-shows.html\">rose in July<\/a>, (click pic for full size) but remained below 50, indicating continued contraction roughly 12 months out.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, we are seeing <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601068&amp;sid=aRdctuhKM03w\">near record drops in producer prices in Germany<\/a>, adding more weight to the idea that the current concern should be deflation, not inflation.<\/p>\n<p>Energy is kind of confusing, with <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2009\/08\/19\/markets\/oil.reut\/index.htm\">prices falling below $69\/bbl today<\/a>, largely on a 5% drop in prices in Chinese stocks, but prices <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601110&amp;sid=axhthc48qN0Y\">rise to nearly $72\/bbl tomorrow<\/a> on reports of shrinking inventories.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s an international dateline thing.  The drop was at market close in New York, and the increase was from places where it is tomorrow.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601085&amp;sid=aeOlkEPiNtUk\">dollar is down on optimism about the world economy<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Well, mortgage applications rose this week as rates fell 23 basis points (0.23%), not too surprising. The Architecture Billings Index, one of the leading indicators of future construction activity, rose in July, (click pic for full size) but remained below 50, indicating continued contraction roughly 12 months out. Meanwhile, we are seeing near record drops &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1080,973,1135,1004,1088],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-191414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-currency","category-economy","category-energy","category-finance","category-real-estate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191414"}],"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=191414"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191414\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}