{"id":192828,"date":"2009-02-16T18:20:00","date_gmt":"2009-02-16T23:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/02\/16\/economics-update-280\/"},"modified":"2009-02-16T18:20:00","modified_gmt":"2009-02-16T23:20:00","slug":"economics-update-280","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/02\/16\/economics-update-280\/","title":{"rendered":"Economics Update"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Japan&#8217;s economy <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/02\/16\/business\/worldbusiness\/16yen.html?_r=1&amp;hp\">contracted at an annual rate of 12.7% in the Q4 of 2008<\/a>.  Those are numbers more than a recession, they are near implosion, so I would take the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/\/id\/29215789\">Confederation of British Industry&#8217;s prediction that the UK economy will shrink 3.3% in 2009<\/a> with a grain of salt.<\/p>\n<p>The UK is far more dependent on banking and investment than Japan is in its economy, the Japanese actually make stuff and sell it to people.<\/p>\n<p>A further indicator of the likelihood of a brutal downturn is that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.marketwatch.com\/news\/story\/Financials-lead-way-SP-heads\/story.aspx?guid=%7BA077A0AC-3404-42D2-843E-19706D565667%7D\">the companies in the S&amp;P 500 just turned their <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">first ever<\/span> aggregate quarterly loss ever<\/a>, with something like 400 of the 500 companies declaring a loss.<\/p>\n<p>However, today was not without good news, as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601087&amp;sid=aI6uHhlNAFUk&amp;refer=home\">junk bond sales hit a 6 month high<\/a>, which implies that people are no longer fleeing so strongly to safe havens like US treasuries, though there is still enough uncertainty to <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2009\/02\/16\/markets\/dollar.reut\/index.htm\">push the dollar and the Yen higher<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Still, demand concerns are <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2009\/02\/16\/markets\/oil.reut\/index.htm\">driving oil down<\/a>, even as <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2009\/02\/16\/news\/economy\/gas_prices\/index.htm\">retail gasoline prices continue their march back towards $2.00 a gallon<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Japan&#8217;s economy contracted at an annual rate of 12.7% in the Q4 of 2008. Those are numbers more than a recession, they are near implosion, so I would take the Confederation of British Industry&#8217;s prediction that the UK economy will shrink 3.3% in 2009 with a grain of salt. The UK is far more dependent &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1080,973,1135,1004,1089,1164],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-192828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-currency","category-economy","category-energy","category-finance","category-recession","category-teotwawki"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192828"}],"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=192828"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192828\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}