{"id":192853,"date":"2009-02-13T18:21:00","date_gmt":"2009-02-13T23:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/02\/13\/economics-update-281\/"},"modified":"2009-02-13T18:21:00","modified_gmt":"2009-02-13T23:21:00","slug":"economics-update-281","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/02\/13\/economics-update-281\/","title":{"rendered":"Economics Update"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Well, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601087&amp;sid=a7wJt77abIRM&amp;refer=home\">GDP in the Euro Zone fell by 1.5% in the 4<span>rth<\/span> quarter<\/a>, and 1.2% from the 4<span>th<\/span> quarter of 2007.<\/p>\n<p>The quarterly drop is the largest in 13 years, and the year over year drop is the first recorded ever&#8230;..One of the joys of integrating your economy is that you integrate your recessions.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s no wonder that <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2009\/02\/13\/news\/international\/opec_forecast.reut\/index.htm\"><span>OPEC&#8217;s<\/span> predictions for world oil consumption have been slashed again<\/a>, though interestingly enough, <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2009\/02\/13\/markets\/oil\/\">oil is up today<\/a>, by the largest amount this year, largely on the expectation that the stimulus bill will pass.<\/p>\n<p>In real estate, the New York Federal Reserve is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.housingwire.com\/2009\/02\/13\/feds-mbs-purchases-reach-115-billion\/\">continuing its aggressive <span>policy<\/span> of buying from the sh$% pile<\/a>, purchasing another $23.2 billion in agency mortgage-backed securities this week, for a total of $114.96 billion.<\/p>\n<p>There is an interesting bit here though, this quote, &#8220;The Fed has also said it may soon begin modifying mortgages it owns within the assets it owns.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Somehow I figure that this is part of a <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">much bigger<\/span> story, only I don&#8217;t know what it is yet.<\/p>\n<p>Also we have <a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB123454524404184109.html?mod=rss_whats_news_us\"><span>Citi<\/span> and J.P. Morgan Chase Agreeing to a foreclosure moratorium<\/a>, and I think that this might be a part of the rest of that story.  Specifically, I think that they are worried about <span>Geithner&#8217;s<\/span> &#8220;Stress Test,&#8221; and they are doing this because they are hoping for goodwill from regulators.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, the <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2009\/02\/13\/markets\/dolllar\/index.htm?postversion=2009021312\">dollar is down today<\/a>, for the same reason that oil is up.  The stimulus package looks like a light at the end of the tunnel, and so the &#8220;flight to safety&#8221; moderated a bit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Well, GDP in the Euro Zone fell by 1.5% in the 4rth quarter, and 1.2% from the 4th quarter of 2007. The quarterly drop is the largest in 13 years, and the year over year drop is the first recorded ever&#8230;..One of the joys of integrating your economy is that you integrate your recessions. It&#8217;s &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1080,973,984,1004,1088,1089,985],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-192853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-currency","category-economy","category-europe","category-finance","category-real-estate","category-recession","category-regulation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192853"}],"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=192853"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192853\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}