{"id":191995,"date":"2009-05-26T17:23:00","date_gmt":"2009-05-26T22:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/05\/26\/economics-update-213\/"},"modified":"2009-05-26T17:23:00","modified_gmt":"2009-05-26T22:23:00","slug":"economics-update-213","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/05\/26\/economics-update-213\/","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:\/\/img507.imageshack.us\/img507\/9068\/52209bankfailures618421.gif\" bordercolor=\"white\" border=\"0\" width=\"400\" \/><br \/><span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ritholtz.com\/blog\/2009\/05\/sssss\/\">Bank Failures reported by FDIC<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<p>The economic press is touting <span>the<\/span> fact that <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2009\/05\/26\/news\/economy\/consumer_confidence.reut\/index.htm?section=money_topstories\">consumer confidence hit an 8 month high<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>More accurately, they are touting that the jump from 40.8 to 54.9, is the biggest in 6 years&#8230;.Only, of course, the index is bench marked such that 1985=100, so the number is still crappy.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s the same as the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.calculatedriskblog.com\/2009\/05\/chicago-fed-april-national-activity.html\">Chicago Bank of the Federal <span>Reserve&#8217;s<\/span> April National Activity Index<\/a>, which is up (<span>Yay<\/span>!), but this does not mean expansion, it means <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">contraction<\/span>, just not quite so fast (<span>Awww<\/span>!).<\/p>\n<p>You know, maybe we can wait to call a recovery until we have a month where the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/\/id\/30940080\">year over year Case-<span>Shiller<\/span> housing price index does not fall by 18.7%<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Consumers will not spend under these circumstances, and the economy, which is\/was 70%+ consumer spending, will not recover.<\/p>\n<p>In any case, be glad we aren&#8217;t German, and not just because that means that we aren&#8217;t German, because <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/\/id\/30936616\">Germany&#8217;s GDP fell by 3.8% for the quarter and 6.7% year-over-year<\/a>, as their export driven economy sputtered.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, in energy and currency land, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/businessNews\/idUSSP42558220090526?feedType=RSS&amp;feedName=businessNews\">oil was up on the consumer confidence figures<\/a>, and the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=newsarchive&amp;sid=aBSpJ89BfFhg\">dollar rose as people freaked over the <span>DPRK<\/span> conducting another nuke test<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>If I could predict the actions of the North Koreans, I would make a killing on the futures markets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bank Failures reported by FDIC The economic press is touting the fact that consumer confidence hit an 8 month high. More accurately, they are touting that the jump from 40.8 to 54.9, is the biggest in 6 years&#8230;.Only, of course, the index is bench marked such that 1985=100, so the number is still crappy. It&#8217;s &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1080,973,1135,984,1120,1044,1042,1089],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-191995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-currency","category-economy","category-energy","category-europe","category-far-east","category-nuclear-weapons","category-proliferation","category-recession"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191995"}],"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=191995"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191995\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}