{"id":192518,"date":"2009-03-23T17:34:00","date_gmt":"2009-03-23T22:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/03\/23\/economics-update-255\/"},"modified":"2009-03-23T17:34:00","modified_gmt":"2009-03-23T22:34:00","slug":"economics-update-255","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/03\/23\/economics-update-255\/","title":{"rendered":"Economics Update"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/img297.imageshack.us\/img297\/9858\/vipe4489936.jpg\" style=\"margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;\" width=\"300\" \/>Since we&#8217;ve already covered the Geithner <del>political suicide pact<\/del> economic plan, let&#8217;s lead off with housing.<\/p>\n<p>Happy, happy, joy, joy, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.realtor.org\/press_room\/news_releases\/2009\/03\/february_existing_home_sales\">home sales rose 5.1%<\/a> in February relative to January, <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">seasonally adjusted<\/span>, though people not so closely attached to the realty industry have noted that it&#8217;s<br \/><a href=\"http:\/\/www.calculatedriskblog.com\/2009\/03\/existing-home-sales-increase-slightly.html\">really a pretty modest rise<\/a>, or note that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ritholtz.com\/blog\/2009\/03\/existing-home-sales-fall-46\/\">home sales have fallen year over year<\/a>, and that about 45% of these sales are distressed in some manner.<\/p>\n<p>I would say that year over year is the <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">only<\/span> metric to apply, because the so called &#8220;seasonal adjustment&#8221; if it ever were valid, has become meaningless in the current collapsing market.<\/p>\n<p>Internationally, we have another member of the 0% benchmark club, as the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601110&amp;sid=a7MyTifbQSxc\">Bank of Israel has cut its benchmark rate to 0.50%<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>In currency and commodities, the <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2009\/03\/23\/markets\/dollar\/index.htm\">dollar is down<\/a>, because people are less concerned about safe havens, so there is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601110&amp;sid=abLxWWeAP6_k\">less dollar flight to safety<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601110&amp;sid=asPIFt5zHy6w\">copper<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2009\/03\/23\/markets\/oil\/\">oil<\/a> rose.<\/p>\n<p>It appears that these markets like Geithner&#8217;s plans, because, they are over paid and over bonused trader types, I guess.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Since we&#8217;ve already covered the Geithner political suicide pact economic plan, let&#8217;s lead off with housing. Happy, happy, joy, joy, home sales rose 5.1% in February relative to January, seasonally adjusted, though people not so closely attached to the realty industry have noted that it&#8217;sreally a pretty modest rise, or note that home sales have &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1080,973,1135,1004,1200,1159,1088,985,992],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-192518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-currency","category-economy","category-energy","category-finance","category-inflation","category-israel","category-real-estate","category-regulation","category-statistics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192518"}],"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=192518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192518\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}