{"id":192211,"date":"2009-04-28T17:19:00","date_gmt":"2009-04-28T22:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/04\/28\/economics-update-233\/"},"modified":"2009-04-28T17:19:00","modified_gmt":"2009-04-28T22:19:00","slug":"economics-update-233","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/04\/28\/economics-update-233\/","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:\/\/img219.imageshack.us\/img219\/724\/800pxconsumerconfidence.png\" bordercolor=\"white\" border=\"0\" width=\"405\" \/><br \/><span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Graph courtesy of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Consumer_Confidence_Index\">Wikipedia<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<p>Well, we have some legitimately good news, that the Conference Board&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2009\/04\/28\/news\/economy\/consumer_confidence_April.reut\/index.htm?section=money_topstories\">Consumer Confidence Index rose to 39.2 in April<\/a>, a 12.3 point gain from March, though with the rather neutral year of 1985 being indexed to 100, 39.2 still sucks, as is clear from the graph.<\/p>\n<p>Additionally, while the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/id\/30452531\">home prices continued to fall<\/a>, they are falling at a slightly slower rate, or as Atrios so amusingly notes, &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.eschatonblog.com\/2009\/04\/positive-2nd-derivative.html\">Positive 2nd Derivative!!!<\/a>&#8220;<sup>*<\/sup><\/p>\n<p>House prices are still falling, and the rate of decline is the <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">noisiest<\/span> metric, unless you want to do the change in rate of decline (unless you want to go to something like the 3rd derivative, called &#8220;jerk&#8221; when dealing with motion).<\/p>\n<p>I would wait and see for a few months before jumping back into the market.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, the flu concerns <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/businessNews\/idUSSP42558220090428?feedType=RSS&amp;feedName=businessNews\">continue to push oil down<\/a>, though the positive economic data above has <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2009\/04\/28\/markets\/dollar.reut\/index.htm\">driven the dollar down too<\/a>, because there is less of a flight to safety.<\/p>\n<p><sup>*<\/sup><span style=\"font-size:78%;\">If you don&#8217;t get the joke because you are not a math geek, don&#8217;t despair&#8230;.At least you are not a math geek, which has to count for something.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Graph courtesy of Wikipedia Well, we have some legitimately good news, that the Conference Board&#8217;s Consumer Confidence Index rose to 39.2 in April, a 12.3 point gain from March, though with the rather neutral year of 1985 being indexed to 100, 39.2 still sucks, as is clear from the graph. Additionally, while the home prices &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1080,973,1135,974,1088,1089],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-192211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-currency","category-economy","category-energy","category-hack-journalism","category-real-estate","category-recession"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192211"}],"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=192211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192211\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}