{"id":191481,"date":"2009-08-13T17:26:00","date_gmt":"2009-08-13T22:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/08\/13\/economics-update-169\/"},"modified":"2009-08-13T17:26:00","modified_gmt":"2009-08-13T22:26:00","slug":"economics-update-169","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/08\/13\/economics-update-169\/","title":{"rendered":"Economics Update"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"border: 1px solid black; margin: 0px 10px; width: 410px; float: right; text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/img23.imageshack.us\/img23\/3530\/retailaugustyoy8458527.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/img23.imageshack.us\/img23\/3530\/retailaugustyoy8458527.jpg\" bordercolor=\"white\" border=\"0\" width=\"400\" \/><\/p>\n<p><\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/img23.imageshack.us\/img23\/1209\/retailaugreal8462746.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/img23.imageshack.us\/img23\/1209\/retailaugreal8462746.jpg\" bordercolor=\"white\" border=\"0\" width=\"400\" \/><\/a> <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Retail sales numbers courtesy of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.calculatedriskblog.com\/2009\/08\/retail-sales-decline-slightly-in-july.html\">Calculated Risk<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<p>It&#8217;s Jobless Thursday, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.workforcesecurity.doleta.gov\/press\/2009\/081309.asp\">initial claims rose by 4,000 to 558K<\/a>, with the 4 Week moving average increasing to 565K from 556.5K, and continuing claims, falling by 141K to 6.2 million, though for the latter, I&#8217;m not sure how much is people exhausting claims and moving to extended benefits, and how much is people finding work.<\/p>\n<p>My money is on a negative interpretation of the data, what with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.calculatedriskblog.com\/2009\/08\/retail-sales-decline-slightly-in-july.html\">retail sales falling in July<\/a>. (see graph pr0n)<\/p>\n<p>In Europe, <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2009\/08\/13\/news\/international\/europe_economy.reut\/index.htm?postversion=2009081304\">Germany&#8217;s and France&#8217;s GDP both rose at an annual rate of 0.3%<\/a>, which has people shouting that they&#8217;ve left the recession, but a recession is more than raw GDP numbers, and <a href=\"http:\/\/euobserver.com\/9\/28543\">industrial output in the EU tanked in June<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m a pessimist&#8230;.I see it as a pause, not a reversal, we still have more down to go.<\/p>\n<p>All in all, when one considers the that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/\/id\/32402952\">35% increase in bankruptcy filings in the 2<sup>nd<\/sup> quarter <\/a>, the <a href=\"http:\/\/40yrs.blogspot.com\/2009\/08\/you-think-that-housing-is-recovering.html\">abysmal foreclosure numbers<\/a>, and the fact that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/\/id\/32409169\">video game sales are down for the 5<sup>th<\/sup> straight month<\/a>, I just don&#8217;t basis for anything like a robust recovery.<\/p>\n<p>In T-Bill news, I&#8217;m <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">very<\/span> confused.<\/p>\n<p>First, the 3-year notes rose, then the 10 year notes fell, and today, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601087&amp;sid=aT7NRK.uhuC8\">30 year Treasuries rose<\/a>, and I cannot make any sense of that. (bonds rising=yields falling, and vise versa)<\/p>\n<p>If Treasuries continue to rise though, it might reverse the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/\/id\/32402633\">reverse the rise in rates that has a depressed mortgage demand<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>In any case, the economic news from Europe <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2009\/08\/13\/markets\/dollar.reut\/index.htm\">had the dollar tanking versus the Euro<\/a>, to $1.4295:\u20ac1.0000, and it also <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2009\/08\/13\/markets\/oil.reut\/index.htm\">pushed oil marginally higher<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Retail sales numbers courtesy of Calculated Risk It&#8217;s Jobless Thursday, and initial claims rose by 4,000 to 558K, with the 4 Week moving average increasing to 565K from 556.5K, and continuing claims, falling by 141K to 6.2 million, though for the latter, I&#8217;m not sure how much is people exhausting claims and moving to extended &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1080,973,975,1135,1004,1088,1089],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-191481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-currency","category-economy","category-employment","category-energy","category-finance","category-real-estate","category-recession"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191481"}],"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=191481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191481\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}