{"id":191499,"date":"2009-08-11T09:34:00","date_gmt":"2009-08-11T14:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/08\/11\/economics-update-yesterdays-3\/"},"modified":"2009-08-11T09:34:00","modified_gmt":"2009-08-11T14:34:00","slug":"economics-update-yesterdays-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/08\/11\/economics-update-yesterdays-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Economics Update (Yesterdays)"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a> Temporary Help Numbers, H\/T The Big Picture<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n

I was going to post, but thunder storms came through, and even with a surge protector, I shut down.<\/p>\n

It was a big day for central bank news, with reports that the Federal Reserve sending signals that it will stop purchasing Treasuries<\/a>, which means that while rate hikes are not on the horizon, that quantitative easing (printing money) will be ended over the next few months.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the granddaddy of zero interest rate central banks, the Bank of Japan, has decided to keep its rate at 0.1%<\/a> (basically 0%), as the Bank Governor, Masaaki Shirakawa, says that he does not see a strong recovery once stimulus measures fade, “I can\u2019t be confident about the strength of final demand after inventory adjustments and policy measures run their course.”<\/p>\n

The Bank of Korea is of the same mind, with it keeping its benchmark rate at 2%<\/a>, an all time low for the institution.<\/p>\n

In employment, the decline in temporary workers seems to be moderating a bit<\/a> (see graph).<\/p>\n

In real estate, it looks like commercial real estate (CRE)is on a path to crash more catastrophically than residential real estate, Fitch Ratings predicting that delinquencies could exceed 5% by year’s end<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Basically, CRE is in a worse place than residential, because they typically take out 5 year mortgages that they have to refinance at the end of the term. If real estate prices go down, they cannot refinance, while in residential real estate, once you have a mortgage, you have one until the loan is paid off.<\/p>\n

In China, exports have declined for the 9th<\/sup> straight month<\/a>, and new loans fell<\/a>, indicating that they are not out of the woods yet.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, in currency, there has been a flight to safety, driving up the US dollar<\/a>, and to an even larger degree, the Japanese Yen<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In energy, oil fell<\/a>, though it is still above $70\/bbl, and gasoline prices have spiked<\/a>, up 15\u00a2 in the past two weeks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Temporary Help Numbers, H\/T The Big Picture I was going to post, but thunder storms came through, and even with a surge protector, I shut down. It was a big day for central bank news, with reports that the Federal Reserve sending signals that it will stop purchasing Treasuries, which means that while rate hikes …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1170,1080,973,1135,1120,1004,1016,1188,985],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-191499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-china","category-currency","category-economy","category-energy","category-far-east","category-finance","category-international-commerce","category-japan","category-regulation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191499"}],"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=191499"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191499\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}