{"id":191578,"date":"2009-07-24T16:59:00","date_gmt":"2009-07-24T21:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/07\/24\/economics-update-174\/"},"modified":"2009-07-24T16:59:00","modified_gmt":"2009-07-24T21:59:00","slug":"economics-update-174","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/07\/24\/economics-update-174\/","title":{"rendered":"Economics Update"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Something that everyone misses about this economy is that it is really all about jobs.  Note that I am currently looking for a job, which makes me more aware of this.<\/p>\n<p>Actually, it&#8217;s not everyone who does not get that it&#8217;s about jobs, ordinary people get it, which is why <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/\/id\/32123654\">consumer confidence fell in July<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>In any case, we should glad that we don&#8217;t live in the UK, because &#8220;The Street&#8221;, their version of Wall Street, owns their economy even more than that great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity,* Goldman Sachs, owns our economy, and so the UK&#8217;s GDP <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601068&amp;sid=aK1ZrKAZP.60\">fell by 0.8% in the 2<sup>nd<\/sup> Quarter<\/a>, and 5.6% year over year, the largest slump ever recorded for Old Blighty.<\/p>\n<p>The problem is that without jobs, there is no recovery, and the recovery programs spend a lot of times of the relative health of financial cephalopods,<sup>\u2020<\/sup> not the return of jobs.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s beginning to increasingly look like real estate will lag any recovery, with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.calculatedriskblog.com\/2009\/07\/surge-in-rental-units.html\">major increases in the number of rental units and the vacancy rate<\/a>, which has spiked to 10.6% as people who cannot sell their homes continue to rise, and <a href=\"http:\/\/bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601110&amp;sid=an17jgiccivM\">US home vacancies hit 18.7<\/a> on bank seizures and walk-aways.<\/p>\n<p>Still, the traders are optimistic, which is <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2009\/07\/24\/markets\/oil.reut\/index.htm\">driving oil up<\/a> and the <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2009\/07\/24\/markets\/dollar.reut\/index.htm\">dollar down<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><sup>*<\/sup><span style=\"font-size:78%;\">Alas, I cannot claim credit for this bon mot, it was coined by the great Matt Taibbi, in his article on the <\/span><span style=\"text-decoration: line-through;font-size:78%;\" >massive criminal conspiracy<\/span><span style=\"font-size:78%;\"> investment firm, <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/politics\/story\/28816321\/the_great_american_bubble_machine\"><span style=\"font-style: italic;font-size:78%;\" >The Great American Bubble Machine<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-size:78%;\">.<\/span><br \/><sup>\u2020<\/sup><span style=\"font-size:78%;\">You know, cephalopods, as in <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">vampire squids<\/span>, like Goldman Sachs<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Something that everyone misses about this economy is that it is really all about jobs. Note that I am currently looking for a job, which makes me more aware of this. Actually, it&#8217;s not everyone who does not get that it&#8217;s about jobs, ordinary people get it, which is why consumer confidence fell in July. &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[973,975,1088,1089],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-191578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","category-employment","category-real-estate","category-recession"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191578"}],"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=191578"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191578\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}