{"id":192025,"date":"2009-05-21T17:16:00","date_gmt":"2009-05-21T22:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/05\/21\/economics-update-216\/"},"modified":"2009-05-21T17:16:00","modified_gmt":"2009-05-21T22:16:00","slug":"economics-update-216","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/05\/21\/economics-update-216\/","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:\/\/img20.imageshack.us\/img20\/3519\/contemporaryartny200420.jpg\" bordercolor=\"white\" border=\"0\" width=\"400\" \/><br \/><span style=\"font-style: italic;\">The Economic Downturn and Contemporary Art Sales, courtesy of <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.reuters.com\/felix-salmon\/2009\/05\/20\/chart-of-the-day-contemporary-art-edition\/\">Felix Salmon<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<p>Well, Thursday is jobless claims day, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/id\/30863337\">weekly initial jobless claims fell by 12,000<\/a>, to 631,000, and the 4 week moving average fell to 628,500 from 632,000, but continuing claims hit yet another new record, hitting the number of the beast, 6.66 million.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, more GDP data from more countries has come out, and it is <a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article_email\/SB124286297167741263-lMyQjAxMDI5NDIyMDgyNjAyWj.html\">almost uniformly grim<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Additionally, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.calculatedriskblog.com\/2009\/05\/philly-fed-continued-manufacturing.html\">Philadelphia Fed manufacturing index is showing further contraction<\/a>, though it did rise, from -24.4 to -22.6.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, the press is touting the fact that the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.marketwatch.com\/story\/april-leading-indicators-rise-recession-to-ease\">April leading economic indicators rose<\/a>, but this is a volatile index, and is not <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">supposed<\/span> to mean anything until you have 3 straight months up or down.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601110&amp;sid=adlSI1y00Vn0\">Treasuries fell, and yields rose<\/a>, on reports that the Fed will be buying less of them, and on an announcement that the government would be selling an additional $162 billion of them next week.<\/p>\n<p>Basically, it&#8217;s inflation concerns, which <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601087&amp;sid=auNpNsi3xB9Q\">also drove the dollar to a 4 month low<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Oil <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2009\/05\/21\/markets\/oil\/\">rose<\/a>, largely on profit taking from yesterday&#8217;s high.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Economic Downturn and Contemporary Art Sales, courtesy of Felix Salmon Well, Thursday is jobless claims day, and weekly initial jobless claims fell by 12,000, to 631,000, and the 4 week moving average fell to 628,500 from 632,000, but continuing claims hit yet another new record, hitting the number of the beast, 6.66 million. Meanwhile, &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1080,973,975,1135,1004,1089],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-192025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-currency","category-economy","category-employment","category-energy","category-finance","category-recession"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192025"}],"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=192025"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192025\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}