{"id":193149,"date":"2009-01-15T18:23:00","date_gmt":"2009-01-15T23:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/01\/15\/economics-update-302\/"},"modified":"2009-01-15T18:23:00","modified_gmt":"2009-01-15T23:23:00","slug":"economics-update-302","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/01\/15\/economics-update-302\/","title":{"rendered":"Economics Update"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"border: 1px solid black; margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px; width: 410px; float: left; text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/img66.imageshack.us\/img66\/5544\/weeklyclaimsjan09629194xc4.jpg\" bordercolor=\"white\" center=\"\" width=\"400\" border=\"0\" \/><a href=\"http:\/\/www.calculatedriskblog.com\/2009\/01\/weekly-unemployment-claims.html\">H\/T <\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/www.calculatedriskblog.com\/2009\/01\/weekly-unemployment-claims.html\">Calculated Risk<\/a><\/div>\n<p>Well,  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/id\/28671923\">weekly first time jobless claims at rose to 524,000<\/a>, and the 4 week moving average was down 8000 to 518,500, and continued claims fell slightly, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.calculatedriskblog.com\/2009\/01\/weekly-unemployment-claims.html\">from 4.6 to 4.5 million<\/a>.  (Scary graph pr0n on right)<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not sure how much of this is being effected by the short weeks of Christmas and new years, but it should sort out in the next few weeks.<\/p>\n<p>Not unsurprisingly, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.federalreserve.gov\/fomc\/beigebook\/2009\/20090114\/default.htm\">Federal Reserve&#8217;s Beige Book<\/a>, a collection of anecdotal economic information reported by the various Federal Reserve banks, was really quote grim.<\/p>\n<p>Unsurprising, considering that foreclosure filings <a href=\"http:\/\/www.marketwatch.com\/news\/story\/us-foreclosure-filings-2008-rose\/story.aspx?guid=1B0E993C-88D5-44B6-8C50-C02410082B5E&amp;dist=SecMostRead\">rose 81% in 2008<\/a> over 2007.<\/p>\n<p>Housing is not recovering in the near term, even with <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2009\/01\/15\/real_estate\/housing_rates_drop.reut\/index.htm?postversion=2009011511\">mortgage rates hitting another record low<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>One of the reasons that there will not be a recovery is that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.costar.com\/News\/Article.aspx?id=8C9B5EDF378D078D74A1A1852DCDEABA\">commercial real estate is imploding right now<\/a>, with the volume of loans for office space and rental properties defaulting or becoming delinquent expected to <span style=\"font-weight:bold;\">triple<\/span> in 2009.<\/p>\n<p>In international finance, <a href=\"http:\/\/ftalphaville.ft.com\/blog\/2009\/01\/14\/51146\/sp-downgrades-greece\/?source=rss\">S&amp;P downgraded Greek sovereign debt<\/a>, from A to A-, and the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/\/id\/28671618\">ECB cut its benchmark rate to 2%<\/a>, an all time low.<\/p>\n<p>Not surprisingly, both of these <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2009\/01\/15\/markets\/dollar\/index.htm\">pushed the dollar up<\/a> today.<\/p>\n<p>The juxtaposition of economic weakness with a stronger dollar <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2009\/01\/15\/markets\/oil\/index.htm\">drove oil down<\/a> too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>H\/T Calculated Risk Well, weekly first time jobless claims at rose to 524,000, and the 4 week moving average was down 8000 to 518,500, and continued claims fell slightly, from 4.6 to 4.5 million. (Scary graph pr0n on right) I&#8217;m not sure how much of this is being effected by the short weeks of Christmas &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1080,973,975,1135,1004,1088,1089],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-193149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-currency","category-economy","category-employment","category-energy","category-finance","category-real-estate","category-recession"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193149"}],"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=193149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193149\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}