{"id":192862,"date":"2009-02-12T18:26:00","date_gmt":"2009-02-12T23:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/02\/12\/economics-update-282\/"},"modified":"2009-02-12T18:26:00","modified_gmt":"2009-02-12T23:26:00","slug":"economics-update-282","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/02\/12\/economics-update-282\/","title":{"rendered":"Economics Update"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/img6.imageshack.us\/img6\/5390\/claimslt3839373af3.gif\" style=\"margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; float: left; cursor: pointer;\" width=\"375\" \/><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/img6.imageshack.us\/img6\/7140\/claims3861214bd0.gif\" style=\"margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; float: left; cursor: pointer;\" width=\"375\" \/>Well, the obvious lede here is the <a href=\"http:\/\/briefing.com\/Investor\/Public\/Calendars\/EconomicReleases\/claims.htm\">weekly initial jobless claims<\/a>, which dropped 8000 to 623,000, still well within OMFG territory, and the four-week moving average, which is to my mine a better and less noisy metric, jumped from 583,500 to 607,500, while continuing claims rose to 4.81 million&#8230;..Ouch.<\/p>\n<p>We have some more numbers for the real estate bloodbath too, with the NAR reporting that <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2009\/02\/12\/real_estate\/Latest_median_prices\/index.htm\">median home prices declined in Q4 of 2008 by 12.4%<\/a> as compared to Q4 of 2007.<\/p>\n<p>Foreclosures <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2009\/02\/12\/real_estate\/January_foreclosures_ease\/index.htm\">fell in January<\/a>, but this is largely because the GSEs have put a temporary moratorium.<\/p>\n<p>More telling is the fact that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.realtor.org\/press_room\/news_releases\/2009\/02\/4th_quarter_metro_area_home_prices_down\">foreclosures and short sales accounted for 45% of sales in Q4<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Mortgage rates <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/\/id\/29162791\">are down this week to 5.16%<\/a>, which is still above the 4 and change percent from last month, so I do not expect this to do much to the market.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/img7.imageshack.us\/img7\/9223\/retailjan094081851sz3.jpg\" style=\"margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; float: left; cursor: pointer;\" width=\"375\" \/>We do have a bright spot, with , it was +1% over December as opposed to the expected -.8%, but look as the chart on the right shows, it&#8217;s still very grim.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/img527.imageshack.us\/img527\/3600\/chartgasprices021216286hu5.gif\" style=\"margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; float: left; cursor: pointer;\" \/>It&#8217;s worth noting that some of the increase is because <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2009\/02\/12\/news\/economy\/gas_prices\/index.htm\">retail gasoline prices have been trending higher<\/a> (bottom chart), which along with increased spending for food and for clothing, were largely responsible for the increase.<\/p>\n<p>In currency, the <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2009\/02\/12\/markets\/dollar.reut\/index.htm\">Yen and the dollar strengthened<\/a> as investors fled to their relative safety, and in energy, <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2009\/02\/12\/markets\/oil\/\">oil fell below $34\/bbl<\/a> on high inventories and low demand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Well, the obvious lede here is the weekly initial jobless claims, which dropped 8000 to 623,000, still well within OMFG territory, and the four-week moving average, which is to my mine a better and less noisy metric, jumped from 583,500 to 607,500, while continuing claims rose to 4.81 million&#8230;..Ouch. We have some more numbers for &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1080,973,975,1135,1004,1200,1088],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-192862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-currency","category-economy","category-employment","category-energy","category-finance","category-inflation","category-real-estate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192862"}],"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=192862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192862\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}