{"id":193166,"date":"2009-01-14T18:20:00","date_gmt":"2009-01-14T23:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/01\/14\/economics-update-303\/"},"modified":"2009-01-14T18:20:00","modified_gmt":"2009-01-14T23:20:00","slug":"economics-update-303","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/01\/14\/economics-update-303\/","title":{"rendered":"Economics Update"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/p>\n
H\/T Calculated Risk<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

It’s official: retail sales just cratered<\/a>. Retail sales fell 2.7% from November to December, and this is after<\/span> November was adjusted down to 2.1 from the previously reported as a 1.8% drop.<\/p>\n

It’s a 9.8% year over year drop, but adjusting for inflation declined by 11.3%. It’s a record, and a very scary one.<\/p>\n

It’s why Nissan is moving its Auto plants to a 4-day week<\/a>. No one is buying anything.<\/p>\n

Expect to see more bankruptcies increasing in retail. <\/p>\n

The department store Gottschalks and the clothing store Goody\u2019s are filing for bankruptcy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

We will see more of this as retailers realize realize that the Christmas season did them in.<\/p>\n

Also, note that part of the reason for this is that the credit crunch appears to be easing<\/a>, which means that getting debtor in possession financing, which allows continuing operations under reorg, is easier, which makes bankruptcy easier.<\/p>\n

That being said, the bankruptcy filing by Nortel<\/a> still surprises me.<\/p>\n

I’m not sure how much of this is the economy, how much is that it never recovered from the dot-bomb collapse in 2000, and how much is that it’s still very much a telephone equipment company.<\/p>\n

In real estate foreclosure activity just spiked again in California<\/a>, they recently passed a law to delay foreclosures by 45 days, and the 60 days are up now.<\/p>\n

Even with low rates, which drove refinancing to a 5\u00bd year record last week<\/a>, are no help for homeowners who are under water.<\/p>\n

In energy, oil fell on reports of large stockpiles<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In currency, the dollar was mixed<\/a>, and the Ruble was devalued again<\/a> on reports of a continued impasse in the Russia\/Ukraine spat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

H\/T Calculated Risk It’s official: retail sales just cratered. Retail sales fell 2.7% from November to December, and this is after November was adjusted down to 2.1 from the previously reported as a 1.8% drop. It’s a 9.8% year over year drop, but adjusting for inflation declined by 11.3%. It’s a record, and a very …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[973,1004,1088,1089],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-193166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","category-finance","category-real-estate","category-recession"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193166"}],"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=193166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193166\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}