{"id":192221,"date":"2009-04-27T17:22:00","date_gmt":"2009-04-27T22:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/04\/27\/economics-update-234\/"},"modified":"2009-04-27T17:22:00","modified_gmt":"2009-04-27T22:22:00","slug":"economics-update-234","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/04\/27\/economics-update-234\/","title":{"rendered":"Economics Update"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/img222.imageshack.us\/img222\/456\/675439407countrywide042.jpg\" style=\"margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;\" \/>Here&#8217;s a surprise, Bank of America buys Countrywide Financial, whose reckless mortgage policies destroyed their company and threw untold thousands out on the street, and now BoA is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.charlotteobserver.com\/business\/story\/689302.html\">attempting to make the &#8220;Countrywide&#8221; brand vanish<\/a>, because it is such a completely toxic entity.<\/p>\n<p>Which means that they are writing off the so-called &#8220;good will&#8221;, basically the value of the &#8220;Countrywide&#8221; brand name, accrued with the purchase.<\/p>\n<p>Heck of a job, Kenny.<\/p>\n<p>In related real estate news, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.calculatedriskblog.com\/2009\/04\/q1-2009-homeownership-rate-at-2000.html\">home ownership percentages are back at the level they were in 2000<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>More generally, we have the Dallas branch of the Federal Reserve releasing its numbers, and they are <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ritholtz.com\/blog\/2009\/04\/dallas-fed\/\">all very negative<\/a>, though they are no longer the end of the world bad, which is an improvement.<\/p>\n<p>In energy, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/\/id\/30422048\">retail gasoline has been flat for the past 2 weeks<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/businessNews\/idUSSP42558220090427?feedType=RSS&amp;feedName=businessNews\">oil is down<\/a> on the expectation that the flu outbreak is likely to further crimp energy demand.<\/p>\n<p>The flu also <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2009\/04\/27\/markets\/dollar\/index.htm\">drove the dollar up<\/a>, as people looked for safe havens.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here&#8217;s a surprise, Bank of America buys Countrywide Financial, whose reckless mortgage policies destroyed their company and threw untold thousands out on the street, and now BoA is attempting to make the &#8220;Countrywide&#8221; brand vanish, because it is such a completely toxic entity. Which means that they are writing off the so-called &#8220;good will&#8221;, basically &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-192221","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\/192221"}],"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=192221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192221\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}