{"id":193549,"date":"2008-12-08T13:19:00","date_gmt":"2008-12-08T18:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/12\/08\/economics-update-328\/"},"modified":"2008-12-08T13:19:00","modified_gmt":"2008-12-08T18:19:00","slug":"economics-update-328","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/12\/08\/economics-update-328\/","title":{"rendered":"Economics Update"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/img68.imageshack.us\/img68\/9556\/1206bizwebidle3518566vi7.gif\" style=\"margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; float: left; cursor: pointer;\" \/>Well, I will start of with Mr. Ritholtz&#8217;s trenchant analysis of the scary statistics I&#8217;ve been throwing about recently.  He looks at them and, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ritholtz.com\/blog\/2008\/12\/nfp-even-worse-than-reported\/\">concludes that the employment numbers are tweaked to make things look less dire<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Basically, he is saying that the birth\/death (of small firms, not people) adjustments and the seasonal adjustments are bunk, and the numbers on workforce participation as a percentage of the economy bear him out.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/img122.imageshack.us\/img122\/6834\/20081206000874609921ff3.gif\" style=\"margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; float: left; cursor: pointer;\" \/>Additionally, you have people leaving the labor force, or being underemployed, which is not counted in the normally covered statistics.<\/p>\n<p>BTW, the fact that <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/12\/05\/news\/economy\/mortgage_delinquencies\/index.htm?postversion=2008120512\">foreclosures rose 76% year over year in the 3rd quarter<\/a> bodes ill for the housing to recover any time soon. (<span style=\"font-style: italic;\">chart pr0n captured by Barry Ritholtz, I highly recommend his site<\/span>)<\/p>\n<p>Of course, the results of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/\/id\/28111896\">Manpower, Inc. survey of employers<\/a> does not point to an increasing in hiring in any segment of the economy.<\/p>\n<p>About the only bright news is that looks poised to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/\/id\/28109179\">approve the various bank rescue plans in the Euro zone<\/a>, they just approved France&#8217;s plan.<\/p>\n<p>Going further east, however, things get grim, with S&amp;P <a href=\"http:\/\/www.marketwatch.com\/news\/story\/Russias-ratings-cut-SP-first\/story.aspx?guid=%7BB8688F3C-3BE0-4382-A4B5-0D2F37D76F0D%7D\">downgrading Russian government debt<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.anotherfp.com\/newsite\/story2.php?id=6\">downgrading 6 of the larger Russian banks<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Despite the news, <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/12\/08\/markets\/oil\/\">oil was up today<\/a>, largely on reports of a bailout of the Big 3 (Big 2\u00bd), but <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/12\/07\/news\/economy\/lundberg_gas_price\/index.htm\">retail gasoline is continuing to head down<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Gasoline will continue to lag oil on the way down for 2 reasons:  It takes time for oil to get shipped from a refinery and become gasoline, and people are extracting profits on the way down, because what was expensive seems cheap to the consumer now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Well, I will start of with Mr. Ritholtz&#8217;s trenchant analysis of the scary statistics I&#8217;ve been throwing about recently. He looks at them and, concludes that the employment numbers are tweaked to make things look less dire. Basically, he is saying that the birth\/death (of small firms, not people) adjustments and the seasonal adjustments are &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[973,992],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-193549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","category-statistics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193549"}],"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=193549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193549\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}