{"id":192948,"date":"2009-02-02T18:17:00","date_gmt":"2009-02-02T23:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/02\/02\/economics-update-290\/"},"modified":"2009-02-02T18:17:00","modified_gmt":"2009-02-02T23:17:00","slug":"economics-update-290","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/02\/02\/economics-update-290\/","title":{"rendered":"Economics Update"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Consumer spending <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2009\/02\/02\/news\/economy\/personal_income_spending\/index.htm\">fell for the 6th straight month in December<\/a>, and all of 2008 turned in just 3.6% increase, the worst year over year number <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">since 1961<\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>The Institute for Supply Management&#8217;s factory index was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601087&amp;sid=aTE8b8cGw5eM&amp;refer=home\">better than expected<\/a>, but still an anemic 35.6, but better than the consensus prediction of 32.5, but 50 is neutral, so anything under 50 signifies more contraction.<\/p>\n<p>In inflation, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601087&amp;sid=a2cFf0LHc_GM&amp;refer=home\">&#8220;Treasury Real Yield&#8221; is at a 16 month high<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The Treasury Real Yield is the spread between TIPS (Treasury Inflation Protected Securities) and regular treasuries, and is a measure of investor expectations of inflation&#8230;.Which means that they are expecting more inflation&#8230;..Which is a <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">good<\/span> thing in this topsy-turvey economy.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile in the Celtic kitten, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/\/id\/28973475\">Ireland is looking at injecting \u20ac8 billion<\/a> into its troubled banks.<\/p>\n<p>In Russia, and it looks like speculators are <a href=\"http:\/\/www.iht.com\/articles\/2009\/02\/02\/business\/ruble.4-421432.php\">betting very heavily against the Ruble<\/a>, which just hit a new low.<\/p>\n<p>With Russia having already burnt through about 1\/3 of its reserves in an unsuccessful attempt to maintain the currency, this could get very ugly.<\/p>\n<p>Shrinking consumer demand has <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2009\/02\/02\/markets\/oil\/\">oil prices dropping again<\/a>, and has <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2009\/02\/02\/markets\/dollar\/index.htm\">pushed the dollar down against the Yen and Euro<\/a>, though it improved against the sick man of Europe, the British Pound.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Consumer spending fell for the 6th straight month in December, and all of 2008 turned in just 3.6% increase, the worst year over year number since 1961. The Institute for Supply Management&#8217;s factory index was better than expected, but still an anemic 35.6, but better than the consensus prediction of 32.5, but 50 is neutral, &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1080,973,1135,1004,1200,1089],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-192948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-currency","category-economy","category-energy","category-finance","category-inflation","category-recession"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192948"}],"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=192948"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192948\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}