{"id":192276,"date":"2009-04-22T21:18:00","date_gmt":"2009-04-23T02:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/04\/22\/economics-update-237\/"},"modified":"2009-04-22T21:18:00","modified_gmt":"2009-04-23T02:18:00","slug":"economics-update-237","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/04\/22\/economics-update-237\/","title":{"rendered":"Economics Update"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, the IMF has updated its recession forecast for 2009<\/a>, and their estimate has become much<\/span> more pessimistic, with their estimate for contraction at -1.3%, down from -0.5%, they are also anticipating credit losses on the order of $4.1 trillion, and that the financial system will not stabilize until sometime in 2010.<\/p>\n

Honestly, I still<\/span> think that the new estimate is overly optimistic, but I’m a born bear.<\/p>\n

This is born out by the fact that official UK economic predictions are that the British Isles will experience their fastest contraction since the end of the WW II<\/a>, and Japanese exports are down year over year by almost \u00bd<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That being said, we have some good news in real estate, with the Architecture billings index rising last month<\/a>, and home were up 0.7%month to month in February<\/a>, though prices are still down 6.5% year over year, but it’s the first two month price gain in about 2 years.<\/p>\n

Additionally, mortgage applications are up<\/a>, though this is largely refi activity, and the delay in foreclosures in California have returned with a vengeance<\/a>, now that the little “holiday” created by the law changes that lengthened the time line from default to eviction has passed.<\/p>\n

Banking still sucks though with Fannie and Freddie losses from defaults rising<\/a>, Capital One’s losses on credit card defaults<\/a> were worse than expected, as were Morgan Stanley’s losses<\/a> (the cut dividends too), though Wells Fargo, who largely eschewed the high flying ways of the other large banks, had record profit<\/a> and displaced Bank of America as the nation’s top lender.<\/p>\n

In energy, oil rose slightly<\/a>, despite reports of a growing inventory, and in currency, the dollar fell<\/a> on reduced investor worries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, the IMF has updated its recession forecast for 2009, and their estimate has become much more pessimistic, with their estimate for contraction at -1.3%, down from -0.5%, they are also anticipating credit losses on the order of $4.1 trillion, and that the financial system will not stabilize until sometime in 2010. Honestly, I still …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1080,973,984,1004,1188,1088,1089],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-192276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-currency","category-economy","category-europe","category-finance","category-japan","category-real-estate","category-recession"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192276"}],"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=192276"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192276\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}