{"id":191984,"date":"2009-05-28T17:22:00","date_gmt":"2009-05-28T22:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/05\/28\/economics-update-211\/"},"modified":"2009-05-28T17:22:00","modified_gmt":"2009-05-28T22:22:00","slug":"economics-update-211","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/05\/28\/economics-update-211\/","title":{"rendered":"Economics Update"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"border: 1px solid black; margin: 0px 10px; width: 410px; float: right; text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/img154.imageshack.us\/img154\/9279\/weeklyclaimsmay14938232.jpg\" bordercolor=\"white\" border=\"0\" width=\"400\" \/><br \/><span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Initial and Continuing Claims, Courtesy of<br \/><a href=\"http:\/\/www.calculatedriskblog.com\/2009\/05\/unemployment-claims-continued-claims-at_28.html\">Calculated Risk<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<p>So, the new unemployment claims numbers are out, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.workforcesecurity.doleta.gov\/press\/2009\/052809.asp\">they are still bad, though a bit better<\/a>, 623,000, down 13,000 from the last week, and the 4-week moving average fell 3K to 626,750.<\/p>\n<p>That being said, the continuing claims were 6,788,000, up 110K, to yet another record, so layoffs may be slowing, but so is hiring.<\/p>\n<p>My take: this is more businesses are running out of people to lay off than it is the economy improving.<\/p>\n<p>On the other side of the pacific, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/id\/30971097?__source=RSS*tag*&amp;par=RSS\">Japanese retail sales rose<\/a>, but the consensus is that this is a temporary blip, not a trend.<\/p>\n<p>Reinforcing my &#8220;dead cat bounce&#8221; view is the fact that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601087&amp;sid=aX.ORiKLaVik&amp;refer=home\">durable goods orders remain near a 13 year low<\/a>. (There is also some <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">very<\/span> bad financial journalism around this story, which I will get to separately)<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, in real estate <a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB124351361133562355.html#mod=rss_whats_news_us\">new home sales rose even as prices continued their fall<\/a>, and if you look at the sales there is a huge portion which are distressed properties, short sales or foreclosures.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s why we are seeing more stories about how there are <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sfgate.com\/cgi-bin\/article.cgi?f=\/c\/a\/2009\/05\/25\/MNRB17JFHB.DTL\">No &#8220;move-up&#8221; buyers<\/a>, selling their old house and upgrading.<\/p>\n<p>There is very little equity for such a move currently, and with <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2009\/05\/28\/real_estate\/mortgage_rates\/index.htm?section=money_topstories\">mortgage rates continuing their upward path<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601087&amp;sid=anKvgNsd6mO8\">delinquencies and foreclosures rising sharply<\/a>, they <a href=\"http:\/\/www.marketwatch.com\/story\/foreclosures-break-another-record-in-first-quarter\">broke another record in first quarter<\/a>, I don&#8217;t see any signs of a real rebound in the sector.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, I wonder how much the relaxation of the credit crunch involves the rest of our economy.  The metrics involving inter-bank lending show signs of a thaw, but <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2009\/05\/28\/markets\/commercial_paper.reut\/index.htm?postversion=2009052812\">US commercial paper fell to its lowest level in 8 years<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>This is largely non-bank lending, and it&#8217;s absolutely comatose.<\/p>\n<p>Menqhile in currency and energy, the <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2009\/05\/28\/markets\/dollar.reut\/index.htm\">dollar dropped, and the Yen dropped more\/a>, on the (not really that) good durable goods numbers and unemployment figures, while <\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2009\/05\/28\/markets\/oil\/\">oil was up on OPEC&#8217;s announcement of no production boosts<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Initial and Continuing Claims, Courtesy ofCalculated Risk So, the new unemployment claims numbers are out, and they are still bad, though a bit better, 623,000, down 13,000 from the last week, and the 4-week moving average fell 3K to 626,750. That being said, the continuing claims were 6,788,000, up 110K, to yet another record, so &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1080,973,975,1135,1188,1088,1089],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-191984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-currency","category-economy","category-employment","category-energy","category-japan","category-real-estate","category-recession"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191984"}],"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=191984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191984\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}