{"id":191808,"date":"2009-06-22T17:25:00","date_gmt":"2009-06-22T22:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/06\/22\/economics-update-195\/"},"modified":"2009-06-22T17:25:00","modified_gmt":"2009-06-22T22:25:00","slug":"economics-update-195","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/06\/22\/economics-update-195\/","title":{"rendered":"Economics Update"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/img269.imageshack.us\/img269\/6732\/exhtrate2847860.png\" style=\"margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;\" width=\"400\" \/>Last week, I mentioned that some of the declines in continuing unemployment claims might be the result of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ritholtz.com\/blog\/2009\/06\/continuing-claims-exhaustion-rate\/\">benefits exhaustion<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Well now we have the chart pr0n to show it, and I&#8217;m now wondering how many of the people dropping off the rolls are actually getting work.<\/p>\n<p>Still, we are seeing some signs of improving business confidence, this time it&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601068&amp;sid=aUXkgLed56Hk\">German business confidence<\/a>, which is up for the 3rd straight month.<\/p>\n<p>I tend to prefer less ephemeral statistics though, such as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.calculatedriskblog.com\/2009\/06\/moodys-cre-prices-fall-86-in-april.html\">commercial real estate prices<\/a> (down 8.6% from April and down 25% year over year) and the fact that <a href=\"http:\/\/bonddad.blogspot.com\/2009\/06\/rail-traffic-moving-lower-with-no-end.html\">rail and truck traffic are still trending down<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>We are also seeing some more signs of a reduced appetite for risk, with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/id\/31478539?__source=RSS*tag*&amp;par=RSS\">the dollar strengthening<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>In energy, both <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2009\/06\/22\/markets\/oil\/\">crude oil<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2009\/06\/22\/markets\/gas_prices\/index.htm?section=money_topstories\">retail gasoline<\/a> fell, largely on good inventories and concerns about a jobless &#8220;recovery&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Note that this is the first time that gasoline has fallen in 54 days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last week, I mentioned that some of the declines in continuing unemployment claims might be the result of benefits exhaustion. Well now we have the chart pr0n to show it, and I&#8217;m now wondering how many of the people dropping off the rolls are actually getting work. Still, we are seeing some signs of improving &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1080,973,975,1035],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-191808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-currency","category-economy","category-employment","category-transportation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191808"}],"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=191808"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191808\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}