{"id":191856,"date":"2009-06-16T17:23:00","date_gmt":"2009-06-16T22:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/06\/16\/economics-update-199\/"},"modified":"2009-06-16T17:23:00","modified_gmt":"2009-06-16T22:23:00","slug":"economics-update-199","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/06\/16\/economics-update-199\/","title":{"rendered":"Economics Update"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"border: 1px solid black; margin: 0px 10px; width: 310px; float: right; text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/img268.imageshack.us\/img268\/8421\/129587m6763559.gif\" bordercolor=\"white\" border=\"0\" \/><br \/><span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thenewyorkerstore.com\/product_details.asp?mscssid=5G69KSCT0H3M8J1FNR1U6CQE6N9D9NE3&amp;sitetype=1&amp;sid=129587\">Why We Love the New Yorker<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<p>It&#8217;s a day for mixed economic news, with <a href=\"http:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/s\/nm\/20090615\/bs_nm\/us_creditcards\">credit card defaults rise hitting a record in May<\/a>, which obviously bodes ill for consumer spending<\/p>\n<p>On less personal metrics, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.calculatedriskblog.com\/2009\/06\/la-area-port-traffic-in-may.html\">Los Angeles and Long Beach port traffic was up over April<\/a>, though it was still down year over year, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/id\/31384228\">housing starts and housing permits jumped<\/a> though much of this activity may simply be <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/id\/31387332\">builders trying to beat the $8000 first time home buyer tax credit before it expires at the end of November<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Additionally, it looks like the financial markets are moving toward some instability, as the VIX, an index of market volatility, has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/\/id\/31368564\">moved above 30<\/a>, which indicates a bumpy ride, and possibly a correction, in the markets.<\/p>\n<p>Inflation is muted on both sides of the Atlantic, with last with <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2009\/06\/16\/news\/economy\/producer_price_index\/index.htm\">wholesale prices inflation hitting only 0.2% in May<\/a>, and inflation in the Euro Zone <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/\/id\/31382377\">posting a 0% rate<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, continued comments by Russia about moving to an alternative reserve currency to the dollar <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2009\/06\/16\/markets\/dollar.reut\/index.htm\">pushed the dollar down<\/a>, and that, along with the housing numbers, <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2009\/06\/16\/markets\/oil.reut\/index.htm?section=money_topstories\">drove crude oil up for most of the day<\/a>, though it settled down $0.15\/bbl, basically treading water.<\/p>\n<p>[<span style=\"font-style:italic;\">late update<\/span>]<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2009\/06\/16\/news\/economy\/industrial_production.reut\/index.htm?section=money_news_economy\">US industrial output fell 1.1% in May<\/a>, and the capacity utilization rate fell to 68.3%, the lowest number since records started being kept in 1967.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Why We Love the New Yorker It&#8217;s a day for mixed economic news, with credit card defaults rise hitting a record in May, which obviously bodes ill for consumer spending On less personal metrics, Los Angeles and Long Beach port traffic was up over April, though it was still down year over year, and housing &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[973,1004,1200,1016,1088,1089],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-191856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","category-finance","category-inflation","category-international-commerce","category-real-estate","category-recession"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191856"}],"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=191856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191856\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}