{"id":192477,"date":"2009-03-27T17:20:00","date_gmt":"2009-03-27T22:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/03\/27\/economics-update-251\/"},"modified":"2009-03-27T17:20:00","modified_gmt":"2009-03-27T22:20:00","slug":"economics-update-251","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/03\/27\/economics-update-251\/","title":{"rendered":"Economics Update"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/img217.imageshack.us\/img217\/8545\/vehiclesalesfed20095937.jpg\" style=\"margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;\" width=\"375\" \/>So, we have some mixed news on the state of consumers, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/\/id\/29913204\">consumer sentiment improved slightly<\/a>, though it is still near historic lows, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/businessNews\/idUSTRE52Q2XI20090327?feedType=RSS&amp;feedName=businessNews\">incomes have fallen<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Since consumers are generally deleveraging, I would place more importance on the latter, case in point, is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.calculatedriskblog.com\/2009\/03\/vehicle-sales-cliff-diving-in-february.html\">February automobile sales continuing to drop<\/a>, with the replacement for the US auto fleet, fleet size divided by monthly sales, hitting 27 years.<\/p>\n<p>Obviously, this is not a sustainable number, and I would expect car sales to improve at some point, though whether this <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">in time<\/span> for the Big 3 (Big 2\u00bd) is anyone&#8217;s guess.<\/p>\n<p>In any case, it apperas that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/\/id\/29903705\">Japan is heading back toward a deflationary situation<\/a>, with their January CPI figures showing no change.<\/p>\n<p>In energy and currency, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601087&amp;sid=anz7iY65o6hs&amp;refer=home\">the dollar is up and oil and other commodities are down<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So, we have some mixed news on the state of consumers, consumer sentiment improved slightly, though it is still near historic lows, and incomes have fallen. Since consumers are generally deleveraging, I would place more importance on the latter, case in point, is February automobile sales continuing to drop, with the replacement for the US &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1108,1080,973,1135,1200,1188,1089],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-192477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-auto-industry","category-currency","category-economy","category-energy","category-inflation","category-japan","category-recession"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192477"}],"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=192477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192477\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}