{"id":193481,"date":"2008-12-12T20:18:00","date_gmt":"2008-12-13T01:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/12\/12\/economics-update-324\/"},"modified":"2008-12-12T20:18:00","modified_gmt":"2008-12-13T01:18:00","slug":"economics-update-324","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/12\/12\/economics-update-324\/","title":{"rendered":"Economics Update"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Well, <a href=\"http:\/\/calculatedrisk.blogspot.com\/2008\/12\/retail-sales-off-sharply-in-november.html\">retail sales numbers for November are grim<\/a>, down 7.4% from November 2007, and that&#8217;s with an adjustment for a late Thanksgiving that is probably excessive, so it is likely worse.<\/p>\n<p>Consumer sentiment <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/\/id\/28192364\">rose<\/a>, but is still at a pretty awful number.<\/p>\n<p>We also saw <a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article_email\/SB122908799910701637-lMyQjAxMDI4MjE5MjAxODI3Wj.html\">wholesale prices fall<\/a>, which can be either good news, moderating inflation, or bad news, deflation.<\/p>\n<p>Overseas, we have <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/\/id\/28187355\">the EU found agreement on an economic stimulus pack<\/a>, with even <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/vcCandidateFeed2\/idUSTRE4BB4OX20081212\">Angela Merkel backing off Hoovernomics by a half step<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>In Japan, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/id\/28191175?__source=RSS*tag*&amp;par=RSS\">a new economic stimulus package has been announced<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Russia, however, is being hammered by low oil prices, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/\/id\/28190287\">senior officials are now saying that the nation is in recession<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>As to currencies, the <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/12\/12\/markets\/dollar\/index.htm\">dollar was mixed<\/a>, up versus the Pound, down a smidge versus the Euro, and at a 13 year low versus the Yen.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not sure how much of this is all just a reaction to the Senate auto bailout follies, and the <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/12\/12\/markets\/oil\/index.htm\">the same goes for the price of oil<\/a>, which was down, but was likely driven by yesterday&#8217;s filibuster.<\/p>\n<p>Additionally, <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/12\/12\/news\/economy\/gas\/index.htm\">retail gasoline is now below $2 a gallon in the lower 48<\/a>, with New York State crossing that line today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Well, retail sales numbers for November are grim, down 7.4% from November 2007, and that&#8217;s with an adjustment for a late Thanksgiving that is probably excessive, so it is likely worse. Consumer sentiment rose, but is still at a pretty awful number. We also saw wholesale prices fall, which can be either good news, moderating &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1080,973,1135,984,1200,1188,1089,1033],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-193481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-currency","category-economy","category-energy","category-europe","category-inflation","category-japan","category-recession","category-russia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193481"}],"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=193481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193481\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}