{"id":192496,"date":"2009-03-25T17:17:00","date_gmt":"2009-03-25T22:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/03\/25\/economics-update-253\/"},"modified":"2009-03-25T17:17:00","modified_gmt":"2009-03-25T22:17:00","slug":"economics-update-253","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/03\/25\/economics-update-253\/","title":{"rendered":"Economics Update"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Well, we have some good news today, with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601087&amp;sid=a.g6jpiavix0&amp;refer=home\">both durable goods orders and new home sales up in February<\/a> on a monthly basis, though on a year over year basis, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.calculatedriskblog.com\/2009\/03\/durable-goods-orders-rise-in-february.html\">durable goods are still down 22%<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2009\/03\/25\/real_estate\/new_home_sales_Feb\/index.htm\">home sales are still down 41% year over year<\/a>, so it may mean nothing, or it may be, to quote paraphrase Churchill, the end of the beginning as opposed to the beginning of the end.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2009\/03\/25\/real_estate\/mortgage_applications.reut\/index.htm?postversion=2009032507\">spike in mortgage applications may reinforce this news<\/a>, or it may just be a lot of people refinancing their mortgages.<\/p>\n<p>Certainly with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601087&amp;sid=aRhTT4MNBjlM&amp;refer=home\">California home prices down 41% year over year<\/a>, this end game is likely to to be ugly anyway.<\/p>\n<p>In the mean time, in the world of government finance, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601087&amp;sid=aw3zna68hcl0&amp;refer=home\">Fed has started buying US treasuries to further push down interest rates<\/a>, and across the pond, a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601087&amp;sid=aGilkeScnyB4&amp;refer=home\">U.K. bond auction has failed for the first time in 7 years<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>There were not enough buyers there.<\/p>\n<p>In energy, <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2009\/03\/25\/markets\/oil\/\">oil was down slightly<\/a>, and in currency, the <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2009\/03\/25\/markets\/dollar\/index.htm\">dollar was mixed against other major currencies<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Well, we have some good news today, with both durable goods orders and new home sales up in February on a monthly basis, though on a year over year basis, durable goods are still down 22%, and home sales are still down 41% year over year, so it may mean nothing, or it may be, &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1080,973,1135,1004,1088,1089],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-192496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-currency","category-economy","category-energy","category-finance","category-real-estate","category-recession"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192496"}],"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=192496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192496\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}