{"id":192998,"date":"2009-01-29T18:20:00","date_gmt":"2009-01-29T23:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/01\/29\/economics-update-292\/"},"modified":"2009-01-29T18:20:00","modified_gmt":"2009-01-29T23:20:00","slug":"economics-update-292","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/01\/29\/economics-update-292\/","title":{"rendered":"Economics Update"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Well, the jobless numbers are out, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/id\/28910819\">they are not pretty<\/a> with initial claims running at 588,000,continuing claims rising 159,000 to 4.776 million, which is the <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2009\/01\/29\/news\/economy\/jobless_claims\/index.htm\">highest number recorded since the 1967<\/a>, when they started collecting the data, and the 4 week moving average rose by 24,250 to 542,500.<\/p>\n<p>Additionally durable goods orders fell by 3.7% in 2008.<\/p>\n<p>And if you are wondering if there is a segment of the banking industry that <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">won&#8217;t<\/span> need a bailout, stop wondering.<\/p>\n<p>There isn&#8217;t a segment of the banking industry that is not in trouble, as <a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB123318420520726249.html?mod=rss_Politics_And_Policy\">regulators are not moving to inject capital into credit unions<\/a>, which are traditionally the most conservative, and the safest of the bank like institutions.<\/p>\n<p>The fact that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/\/id\/28912072\">new home sales have fallen to the lowest level ever recorded<\/a> (recording started in 1963) probably has a lot to do with this.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/img84.imageshack.us\/img84\/1108\/trucks6662960vz9.jpg\" style=\"margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; float: left; cursor: pointer;\" width=\"375\" \/>Also, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.truckline.com\/pages\/article.aspx?id=471%2F%7B8E1C7279-ED27-4C03-B189-CEEEE26BBB12\">freight truck tonnage is cliff diving<\/a>. (H\/T <a href=\"http:\/\/www.calculatedriskblog.com\/2009\/01\/truck-tonnage-index-cliff-diving.html\">Calculated Risk<\/a>)<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, the most healthy of the Big 3 (Big 2\u00bd) auto makers, Ford, just <a href=\"http:\/\/www.marketwatch.com\/news\/story\/Fords-quarterly-net-loss-nearly\/story.aspx?guid=%7BE3FA0603-0276-4B01-8AD6-6F0506216CB7%7D\">reported a larger-than-expected $5.9 billion loss in the last quarter<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>In international finance <a href=\"http:\/\/www.iht.com\/articles\/2009\/01\/29\/business\/29kiwi.php\">New Zealand is aggressively dropping its benchmark interest rates too<\/a>, with their central bank 150 basis points (1\u00bd%) to the record low of 3.5%.<\/p>\n<p>About the only good news is that it appears that deflationary expectations are easing, as the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601110&amp;sid=agd7NK_cQ0HQ\">spread between 10 year Treasury Inflation Protected Securities (TIPS)and  10 year nominal securities has risen about 1%<\/a> for the first time since November 10.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, the <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2009\/01\/29\/markets\/dollar\/index.htm\">dollar was mixed today<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2009\/01\/29\/markets\/oil\/index.htm\">oil fell on the housing news<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Well, the jobless numbers are out, and they are not pretty with initial claims running at 588,000,continuing claims rising 159,000 to 4.776 million, which is the highest number recorded since the 1967, when they started collecting the data, and the 4 week moving average rose by 24,250 to 542,500. Additionally durable goods orders fell by &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1112,1108,973,975,1004,1200,1088,1089,985,1035],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-192998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-australia-and-new-zealand","category-auto-industry","category-economy","category-employment","category-finance","category-inflation","category-real-estate","category-recession","category-regulation","category-transportation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192998"}],"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=192998"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192998\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}