{"id":193604,"date":"2008-12-03T19:56:00","date_gmt":"2008-12-04T00:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/12\/03\/economics-update-331\/"},"modified":"2008-12-03T19:56:00","modified_gmt":"2008-12-04T00:56:00","slug":"economics-update-331","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/12\/03\/economics-update-331\/","title":{"rendered":"Economics Update"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, some employment numbers are out, and they suck wet farts from dead pigeons<\/a>. Job cuts in November were up 148% from last year, 181,671 according to Challenger Gray & Christmas said and 250,000 according to ADP.<\/p>\n

Other metrics are bad too, with the Fed’s Beige Book showing economic slowdown in every one of the Federal reserve districts<\/a>, and the Institute for Supply Management’s Non-Manufacturing Index dropped off a cliff<\/a>, falling to 37.3 from 44.4 in October.<\/p>\n

Service activity in Europe is falling, with the Euro Zone service activity falling to a 10 year record<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In retail, we have Retail Tracker more than tripling its estimate as to the decline in this years holiday shopping season<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There is some bright news, with mortgage applications rising 112% in last week<\/a>, though I tend to believe this analysis<\/a>, that this is not new demand, but people scrambling to lock in the rate.<\/p>\n

It’s one of those things that makes week to week stats noisy.<\/p>\n

What isn’t noisy is the fact that Manhattan empty office space has doubled<\/a>, and if there is a glut of office space there, there’s a glut of office space everywhere.<\/p>\n

In international finance, we have, VEB<\/span>, a Russian State Bank asking for a $34 billion cash injection<\/a>, and the Kiwis%<\/a> and the Thais<\/a> central banks slashing their rates by 150 and 100 basis points (1% and 1.5%) respectively.<\/p>\n

This makes it no surprise that the dollar gained against the euro and pound<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In energy, despite OPEC’s<\/span> announcement of its intent to cut wasdown again today<\/a>, and retail gas prices fell for the 77th<\/span> straight day<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, some employment numbers are out, and they suck wet farts from dead pigeons. Job cuts in November were up 148% from last year, 181,671 according to Challenger Gray & Christmas said and 250,000 according to ADP. Other metrics are bad too, with the Fed’s Beige Book showing economic slowdown in every one of the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[973,975,1088,1089],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-193604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","category-employment","category-real-estate","category-recession"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193604"}],"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=193604"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193604\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}