{"id":193493,"date":"2008-12-11T21:13:00","date_gmt":"2008-12-12T02:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/12\/11\/economics-update-325\/"},"modified":"2008-12-11T21:13:00","modified_gmt":"2008-12-12T02:13:00","slug":"economics-update-325","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/12\/11\/economics-update-325\/","title":{"rendered":"Economics Update"},"content":{"rendered":"

Woah, new claims for jobless benefits just jumped by 58,000<\/a>, to 573,000, a 26 year high<\/span>.<\/p>\n

Continuing claims, which is a far less noisy metric, also jumped to a 26 year high, 4.43 million, up from 4.09 million.<\/p>\n

In real estate, the average rate for a 30-year fixed mortgage hit 5.47%<\/a>, a 4\u00bd year low, and forclosures fell in November<\/a>, but this appears to be as a result of new state laws requiring more time for the process and\/or temporary moratoriums<\/a>, so there will likely be a significant spike in the next few months.<\/p>\n

In the more general economy, we have a first, or at least a first since the Federal Reserve began collecting the data in 1951, the level of consumer debt held in the US has fallen<\/a>, by 0.8%.<\/p>\n

Of course, consumer net worth fell by 4.7%, so it’s a net loss.<\/p>\n

In international finance, the Swiss Central Bank cut its interest rate by 50 basis point<\/a>, and China’s exports fell 2.2% year over year<\/a>, the steepest drop in nearly a decade.<\/p>\n

In currency, the dollar weakened significantly<\/a>, by about 4\u00a2.<\/p>\n

My guess is that it was some combination of extremely low interest rates in the US, or the demonstration of batsh%$ insanity by the Republican senators on the auto bailout vote.<\/p>\n

In energy, oil is back above $45\/bbl<\/a> on strong calls by OPEC for production cuts, and retail gasoline prices continued their slide<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Woah, new claims for jobless benefits just jumped by 58,000, to 573,000, a 26 year high. Continuing claims, which is a far less noisy metric, also jumped to a 26 year high, 4.43 million, up from 4.09 million. In real estate, the average rate for a 30-year fixed mortgage hit 5.47%, a 4\u00bd year low, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[973,975,1135,1004,1088,1089],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-193493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","category-employment","category-energy","category-finance","category-real-estate","category-recession"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193493"}],"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=193493"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193493\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}