{"id":193169,"date":"2009-01-13T18:24:00","date_gmt":"2009-01-13T23:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/01\/13\/economics-update-304\/"},"modified":"2009-01-13T18:24:00","modified_gmt":"2009-01-13T23:24:00","slug":"economics-update-304","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/01\/13\/economics-update-304\/","title":{"rendered":"Economics Update"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/p>\n
Scary Picture of the Day:
Industrial Output Cliff Diving<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The U.S. trade deficit fell by 28.7% in November<\/a>, not because we are exporting more, but because consumption is falling so quickly. This is why you don’t see decoupling in the world economies (see chart pr0n)<\/p>\n

While we are on the topic of international capital flows, it appears that Standard and Poor’s is threatening to downgrade the debt of Spain<\/a> and Portugal<\/a> because of increasing deficits.<\/p>\n

Of course, and I am not a deficit hawk right not, it does beg the question about what to do with the US government shortfall, as it was $485.2 billion in the first quarter of fiscal year 2009<\/a> (October 1, 2008 \u2013 December 31, 2008), which is more than the deficit for all<\/span> of FY 2008.<\/p>\n

When is S&P going to warn us, and when is S&P going to be prosecuted for its recent fraud on the public? After the meltdown of various instruments that S&P saw fit to declare AAA, one wonders why. I would not employ any of the major ratings agencies as pastry chefs.<\/p>\n

We have some good news though, the TED spread fell to 98 basis points<\/a> (0.98%), dropping below 1% for the first time since August 15.<\/p>\n

The TED spread is the difference between 3 month treasuries and 3 month interbank loans, and the spread goes up as uncertainty about getting your money back goes up.<\/p>\n

BTW, homes won’t be turning around any time soon, Beazer Homes is reporting a 53.2% drop in home sales Q4 2007 to Q4 2008<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So with all of this uncertainty, people are pulling money out of palces like Spain and Portugal and putting it in the US, which drove the dollar up today<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Oilrose too<\/a>, largely on promises of large production cuts by the House of Saud.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Scary Picture of the Day:Industrial Output Cliff Diving The U.S. trade deficit fell by 28.7% in November, not because we are exporting more, but because consumption is falling so quickly. This is why you don’t see decoupling in the world economies (see chart pr0n) While we are on the topic of international capital flows, it …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1080,973,1135,984,1004,1031,1016],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-193169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-currency","category-economy","category-energy","category-europe","category-finance","category-house-of-saud","category-international-commerce"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193169"}],"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=193169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193169\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}