{"id":191881,"date":"2009-06-10T17:28:00","date_gmt":"2009-06-10T22:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/06\/10\/economics-update-202\/"},"modified":"2009-06-10T17:28:00","modified_gmt":"2009-06-10T22:28:00","slug":"economics-update-202","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/06\/10\/economics-update-202\/","title":{"rendered":"Economics Update"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Wingnut Economist Arthur Laffer and the contemptible Wall Street Journal OP\/ED page<\/a>, but there has been a huge growth in the money supply under “Helicopter” Ben Bernanke<\/span>.<\/span>
<\/span><\/div>\n

Well, we are seeing some more signs of increasing rates, with the 10-year Treasury hitting 4%<\/a>, the highest level since October of last year.<\/p>\n

It could mean that fewer investors are fleeing to the safety of treasuries, or it could mean that the monetary expansion is finally hitting interest rates (see pic).<\/p>\n

My money is on the former, but that doesn’t stop rising mortgage rates from pushing down the volume of home loan applications<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In international trade, the US trade deficit rose<\/a>, not because of additional imports, but because of fewer exports. International trade remains at rather low levels.<\/p>\n

We have some good news from the Federal Reserve, in a 2nd<\/sup> derivative kind of way, with their so-called Beige Book showing that the pace of the decline is slacking off somewhat<\/a>.<\/p>\n

We also have some good news from the UK, with UK industrial output rising for the first time since February of last year<\/a>, up 0.3%, though it is still down 12.3% year over year.<\/p>\n

Gordon Brown’s aggressive approach to the downturn may be showing some fruit.<\/p>\n

We actually had a lot of action in the currency market today, with both Russia and Brazil making large buys of IMF bonds<\/a>, so as to diversify away from US Treasuries.<\/p>\n

For Russia, that may just be grandstanding, but for Brazil, it’s a significant move.<\/p>\n

In any case, it drove the dollar down for most of the day<\/a>, though it finished up at the end of trading.<\/p>\n

In energy, oil rose on falling stockpiles<\/a>, and wholesale gasoline futures rose about $2\/gal<\/a> for the first time since October.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From Wingnut Economist Arthur Laffer and the contemptible Wall Street Journal OP\/ED page, but there has been a huge growth in the money supply under “Helicopter” Ben Bernanke. Well, we are seeing some more signs of increasing rates, with the 10-year Treasury hitting 4%, the highest level since October of last year. It could mean …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1080,973,1135,1004,1016,1089,985],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-191881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-currency","category-economy","category-energy","category-finance","category-international-commerce","category-recession","category-regulation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191881"}],"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=191881"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191881\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}