{"id":193328,"date":"2008-12-23T21:06:00","date_gmt":"2008-12-24T02:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/12\/23\/economics-update-317\/"},"modified":"2008-12-23T21:06:00","modified_gmt":"2008-12-24T02:06:00","slug":"economics-update-317","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/12\/23\/economics-update-317\/","title":{"rendered":"Economics Update"},"content":{"rendered":"

Will the last home builder please turn off the lights?<\/p>\n

Because existing home sales fell 8.6% from October<\/a>, new home sales fell 2.9%, home prices fell by 13.2%<\/a>, and foreclosures and short sales were 45% of all sales<\/span>.<\/p>\n

Consumer sentiment improved more than forecast<\/a> last month though, driven largely by the expectation of lower prices.<\/p>\n

In currency, the dollar was largely mixed<\/a>, though both the Yen and Pound were down.<\/p>\n

It should be noted that the Yen is off a historic high, and the pound is near a historic low, it’s about to reach parity with the Euro, so the dynamics are different.<\/p>\n

As to why the Pound is falling, it might be that the U.K. economy is shrinking at a pace not seen in 17 years<\/a>, 0.6%, which is worse than
the US figure of -0.5%<\/a> for the quarter.<\/p>\n

EVen more than the US, the UK bought into the idea of the finance industry as an engine for the economy, and they are reaping the whirlwind.<\/p>\n

Oil is down again<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Also, here is a story that I think we will see more of in the next few months,*<\/sup> there has been a default by Global Investment House (GIH) in Kuwait on a $200 million loan<\/a>, one of the larger investment houses in the Arab world.<\/p>\n

They aren’t going under just yet, but I think that this is the first crack in the armor of the petro-Arab investment houses.<\/p>\n

*<\/sup>Because I am just so good at making predictions.<\/span>\u2020<\/sup>
\u2020<\/sup>Considering my record, this may actually be a sign to go the <\/span>other way<\/span>….Or not.<\/span>\u2021<\/sup>
\u2021<\/sup>Disclaimer<\/span>: Matthew G. Saroff disclaims any responsibility for any actions taken as a result of the information displayed on any pages of this website.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Will the last home builder please turn off the lights? Because existing home sales fell 8.6% from October, new home sales fell 2.9%, home prices fell by 13.2%, and foreclosures and short sales were 45% of all sales. Consumer sentiment improved more than forecast last month though, driven largely by the expectation of lower prices. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[973,1135,984,1004,1200,1188,1088,1089],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-193328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","category-energy","category-europe","category-finance","category-inflation","category-japan","category-real-estate","category-recession"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193328"}],"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=193328"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193328\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}