{"id":193311,"date":"2008-12-27T00:06:00","date_gmt":"2008-12-27T05:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/12\/27\/economics-update-315\/"},"modified":"2008-12-27T00:06:00","modified_gmt":"2008-12-27T05:06:00","slug":"economics-update-315","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/12\/27\/economics-update-315\/","title":{"rendered":"Economics Update"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/img412.imageshack.us\/img412\/8821\/p1ao101aretains20081225ti4.gif\" style=\"margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; float: left; cursor: pointer;\" \/>Retail sales tanked in the Christmas shopping season, <a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB123025036865134309.html\">down 5.5% in November and 8% in December<\/a>, though ex-retail gasoline sales, where the fall in prices drove things further down, the numbers were -2.5% and -4%, which are pretty worrying too.<\/p>\n<p>I think that when the numbers are adjusted later with more complete data, they will be worse, because <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601087&amp;sid=auJbdfD2koc0&amp;\">customer visits to retailers fell 24% on the weekend before Christmas<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>FWIW, it does not look like the rest of the world will be pulling themselves, or anyone else, out of recession soon, as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/businessNews\/idUSTRE4B70ME20081226?feedType=RSS&amp;feedName=businessNews\">Japanese industrial production fell 8.1% YoY in November<\/a>, and the Japanese central bank has no where to go with interest rates, having just lowered them to 0.10% (no misplaced decimal).<\/p>\n<p>About the only piece of good news are <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ritholtz.com\/blog\/2008\/12\/credit-progress\/\">The Big Picture&#8217;s Credit Crisis Indicators<\/a>, which are showing a bit of improvement, with the TED spread and the LIBOR-OIS spread improving, though rates on Treasuries are still very low.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/img339.imageshack.us\/img339\/8664\/miau192mortns2008122521lc2.gif\" style=\"margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; float: left; cursor: pointer;\" \/>In the meantime, mortgage rates for a 30 year fixed mortgage<a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB123025073099834337.html?mod=rss_whats_news_us\">hit the lowest number since at least 1971<\/a>, when Freddie Mac started keeping these records, 5.14%, though there is the caveat that you can get these <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">only if the banks are willing to lend at all<\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>Note that this is for the &#8220;conforming&#8221; mortgage, which is packaged and resold by the GSEs, which now have an explicit guarantee from the government, and, as noted earlier, &#8220;non-conforming&#8221; mortgages are at about 2% more, an all time high.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/12\/26\/news\/economy\/oil_cuts.reut\/index.htm\">Oil was up a bit<\/a> on announcements by suppliers of production cuts by the UAE and House of Saud.<\/p>\n<p>Nothing much happened <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/12\/26\/markets\/bondcenter\/credit_market\/index.htm\">with currency<\/a>.  The 26th is a day off for most American traders, and Boxing Day in the UK, so there was not much activity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Retail sales tanked in the Christmas shopping season, down 5.5% in November and 8% in December, though ex-retail gasoline sales, where the fall in prices drove things further down, the numbers were -2.5% and -4%, which are pretty worrying too. I think that when the numbers are adjusted later with more complete data, they will &hellip;<\/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-193311","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\/193311"}],"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=193311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193311\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}