{"id":192689,"date":"2009-03-05T18:21:00","date_gmt":"2009-03-05T23:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/03\/05\/economics-update-267\/"},"modified":"2009-03-05T18:21:00","modified_gmt":"2009-03-05T23:21:00","slug":"economics-update-267","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/03\/05\/economics-update-267\/","title":{"rendered":"Economics Update"},"content":{"rendered":"

Busy day, so let’s start with the central banks: The Bank of England cuts rates by 50 basis points<\/a> (\u00bd%), and is engaging in quantitative easing (printing money) in the form of buying \u00a375 billion ($US 106 B), and the European cut its benchmark rate by 50 basis points to 1.5%<\/a>, and is also looking at “further non-standard measures” (see quantitative easing).<\/p>\n

Considering that the ECB has no charge except to manage inflation, this is extraordinary.<\/p>\n

Unsurprisingly, the rates cuts have driven the dollar up<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
As Brad Delong Notes<\/a>, <\/span>“It is overwhelmingly likely that the current downturn-in-progress will then surpass the united 1979-1982 downturn as the worst downturn since the Great Depression itself.<\/span>“<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

In employment, first time jobless claims fell to 639,000<\/a>, but the less volatile 4 week moving average rose to 641,750, the “highest since October 1982,” and productivity dropped 0.4% in Q4 of 2008<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Bumpy ride, folks.<\/p>\n

On the brighter side Bonddad’s credit indicators show a thaw in lending over the past few months<\/a>, and February retail sales beat expectations<\/a>, though the numbers are still pretty bad.<\/p>\n

In autos, GM is saying that there is “substantial doubt” about whether it can survive<\/a> in an SEC filing, not a surprise, and implies Chapter 11, which further implies liquidation for Chrysler.<\/p>\n

Mortgage rates rose last week<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Oil, meanwhile fell in response to the generally anemic economic news<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Busy day, so let’s start with the central banks: The Bank of England cuts rates by 50 basis points (\u00bd%), and is engaging in quantitative easing (printing money) in the form of buying \u00a375 billion ($US 106 B), and the European cut its benchmark rate by 50 basis points to 1.5%, and is also looking …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1108,1080,973,975,1135,1004,1088,1089,985],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-192689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-auto-industry","category-currency","category-economy","category-employment","category-energy","category-finance","category-real-estate","category-recession","category-regulation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192689"}],"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=192689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192689\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}