{"id":193292,"date":"2008-12-29T20:29:00","date_gmt":"2008-12-30T01:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/12\/29\/economics-update-314\/"},"modified":"2008-12-29T20:29:00","modified_gmt":"2008-12-30T01:29:00","slug":"economics-update-314","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/12\/29\/economics-update-314\/","title":{"rendered":"Economics Update"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It appears that <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/12\/29\/markets\/bondcenter\/credit_markets.reut\/index.htm\">credit is still easing<\/a>, with the 3 month LIBOR (London interbank offered rates) falling.<\/p>\n<p>The spread between LIBOR and Treasuries is still awful, but it&#8217;s a bit better, largely because the Treasuries are effectively 0% right now.<\/p>\n<p>On the other hand, the <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/12\/29\/news\/economy\/midwest_manufacturing.reut\/index.htm\">Chicago Federal Reserve Bank&#8217;s Midwest factory index<\/a> dropped to the lowest level in 12 years.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m a mechanical engineer, so I believe that manufacturing and services, and not banking, are the core activities of the economy, so I tend to believe the factory index more than LIBOR spreads.<\/p>\n<p>In international currencies, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/businessNews\/idUSTRE4BS2I020081229?feedType=RSS&amp;feedName=businessNews\">Pound hit an all time low vs the Euro<\/a> \u00a30.9798:\u20ac1.000, nearly parity.<\/p>\n<p>The experts are saying that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601109&amp;sid=ao4uwSKIRHc8&amp;refer=home\">they believe that the Pound will gain vs the Euro in the coming <\/a> because the Bank of England won&#8217;t be lowering rates much more.<\/p>\n<p>This makes sense.  The BOE is already bumping up against zero interest rates.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601087&amp;sid=actrhn0tZSMY&amp;refer=home\">US dollar is down too<\/a>, largely on concerns that the Gaza conflict will drive up oil prices and because the Fed&#8217;s zero target lending rate makes it a less attractive currency.<\/p>\n<p>The conflict in Gaza has also <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/12\/29\/markets\/oil\/index.htm\">driven oil up<\/a>, though <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/12\/29\/news\/economy\/gas\/index.htm\">retail gasoline is near a 5-year low at $1.619\/gal<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Yowza, I gots to buy me a Hummer!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It appears that credit is still easing, with the 3 month LIBOR (London interbank offered rates) falling. The spread between LIBOR and Treasuries is still awful, but it&#8217;s a bit better, largely because the Treasuries are effectively 0% right now. On the other hand, the Chicago Federal Reserve Bank&#8217;s Midwest factory index dropped to the &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1080,973,1004,1089],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-193292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-currency","category-economy","category-finance","category-recession"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193292"}],"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=193292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193292\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}