{"id":192357,"date":"2009-04-08T17:22:00","date_gmt":"2009-04-08T22:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/04\/08\/economics-update-243\/"},"modified":"2009-04-08T17:22:00","modified_gmt":"2009-04-08T22:22:00","slug":"economics-update-243","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/04\/08\/economics-update-243\/","title":{"rendered":"Economics Update"},"content":{"rendered":"

We have a report that consumer confidence is improving<\/a>, according to the IBD<\/span>\/TIPP<\/span> economic optimism index, which rose to 49.1 from 45.3, which is only slightly<\/span> pessimistic, 50 being neutral.<\/p>\n

I have no idea if the folks at at Investors Business Daily\/TIPP<\/span> actually run a good poll, but it does look like consumer confidence is up a bit, though the Federal Reserve’s<\/span> view of the economy remains gloomy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Certainly with wholesale inventories falling by 1.5% in February<\/a>, the largest drop in 17 years, there are some bright spots here, because as inventories fall, orders have to be made to restock.<\/p>\n

The same cannot be said for commercial real estate, with
mall vacancies at a 10-Year high<\/a>, and office t rents falling significantly in San Francisco<\/a>.(-24%<\/span> year over year !)<\/p>\n

Rents fell for apartments in Southern California<\/a> and nation wide<\/a> too, which tends to mitigate the impetus for people to buy homes, so I think that the continued increase in mortgage applications<\/a> is still largely Refi<\/span> activity.<\/p>\n

The credit markets still suck which is why the Fed is looking at offering longer term loans at a higher interest rate for TALF<\/span><\/a>, even as participation in the program is less than anticipated<\/a>, indicating that investors are still leery of investing in things like mortgage backed securities.<\/p>\n

In international finance, Fitch has followed S&P’s lead, and downgraded Ireland’s sovereign debt<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Treasury has expanded TARP to cover insurance companies<\/a>, including some of the very<\/span> big names, such as Hartford, Prudential, and Met Life.<\/p>\n

This Problem is getting smaller, not bigger.<\/p>\n

Finally, both oil<\/a> and the US dollar<\/a> rose today, on a less then expected inventory for the former, and a flight to safety for the latter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We have a report that consumer confidence is improving, according to the IBD\/TIPP economic optimism index, which rose to 49.1 from 45.3, which is only slightly pessimistic, 50 being neutral. I have no idea if the folks at at Investors Business Daily\/TIPP actually run a good poll, but it does look like consumer confidence is …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1080,973,1135,1004,1221,1088,1089,985],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-192357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-currency","category-economy","category-energy","category-finance","category-manufacturing","category-real-estate","category-recession","category-regulation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192357"}],"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=192357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192357\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}