{"id":192156,"date":"2009-05-04T17:29:00","date_gmt":"2009-05-04T22:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/05\/04\/economics-update-229\/"},"modified":"2009-05-04T17:29:00","modified_gmt":"2009-05-04T22:29:00","slug":"economics-update-229","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/05\/04\/economics-update-229\/","title":{"rendered":"Economics Update"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We have some good news in real estate, with pending sales of existing homes <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601110&amp;sid=a.yxBSgvo42Q\">posting their first back to back increase in almost a year<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601087&amp;sid=apix.38yRBpk&amp;refer=home\">construction rose unexpectedly<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Note however, that the pending homes sales numbers are for homes going into contracts, and has been diverging from closings lately, largely because of financing issues.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m a bull, and Yale economist Robert Shiller, of the famed Case-Shiller real estate index, is somewhat bearish too, saying that the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601110&amp;sid=aOgZpghrXLbk\">improvements in real estate are &#8220;fragile&#8221;<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Sometimes, markets pause for a breath on the way down, just as they do on the way up.<\/p>\n<p>That being said, the lending situation does seem to be loosening up, as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601109&amp;sid=a83zvnvvOCXQ&amp;refer=home\">spreads are falling<\/a>, which means that money is cheaper.<\/p>\n<p>Still, banks are <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601110&amp;sid=aUsKT1cqx43c\">predicting more loan losses from the economy contracting<\/a> according to a Federal Reserve report.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile the generally good news has <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2009\/05\/04\/markets\/oil\/\">driven oil up<\/a>, on the expectation of increased demand, and <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2009\/05\/04\/markets\/dollar\/index.htm\">driven the dollar down<\/a>, as people leave the safe haven of the $US.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We have some good news in real estate, with pending sales of existing homes posting their first back to back increase in almost a year, and construction rose unexpectedly. Note however, that the pending homes sales numbers are for homes going into contracts, and has been diverging from closings lately, largely because of financing issues. &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1080,973,1135,1004,1088],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-192156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-currency","category-economy","category-energy","category-finance","category-real-estate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192156"}],"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=192156"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192156\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}