{"id":193617,"date":"2008-12-02T19:03:00","date_gmt":"2008-12-03T00:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/12\/02\/economics-update-332\/"},"modified":"2008-12-02T19:03:00","modified_gmt":"2008-12-03T00:03:00","slug":"economics-update-332","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/12\/02\/economics-update-332\/","title":{"rendered":"Economics Update"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>First, we have some developments  on the other side of the pond, with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601080&amp;sid=asXWJjAKhdeo&amp;refer=asia\">the Australian Central Bank lowering its rates by 100 basis points<\/a> (1%), the most since 1991, and  a major Russian investment bank is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601109&amp;sid=aMiAm0E0szBE&amp;refer=exclusive\">calling for a 20% depreciation of the Ruble<\/a>, to boost exports.<\/p>\n<p>It might be a good idea, depending on how export dependent the Russian economy is.  It would boost local and export oriented industries.<\/p>\n<p>On more general metrics of the credit crunch, <a href=\"http:\/\/calculatedrisk.blogspot.com\/2008\/12\/credit-crisis-indicators.html\">Calculated Risk&#8217;s credit crisis indicators show little progress<\/a>, and the fact that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601087&amp;sid=a_7x6ANdemWs&amp;refer=home\">the rates on Treasuries have fallen off a cliff<\/a>, with people getting virtually nothing (0.05%) for 3 months T-Bills, 2.68% on 10 year notes (a near record), and 3.17% for a 30 year note (a record).<\/p>\n<p>Basically, this means that investors are paying the government to hold their money safe for them.<\/p>\n<p>For what it&#8217;s worth, people are not trusting anything, including <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/\/id\/28014552\">much in the way of US and European sovereign debt<\/a>, with the cost of swaps to insure that debt skyrocketing.<\/p>\n<p>In energy, we have OPEC deferring a production cut, and so <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/12\/02\/markets\/oil\/\">oil is now firmly below $50\/bbl<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/12\/02\/news\/economy\/gasoline\/index.htm\">retail gasoline falling to $1.812\/gal<\/a>, a price I never thought that I would see again, and the 76th straight daily drop.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, the <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/12\/02\/markets\/dollar\/index.htm\">the dollar has weakened<\/a> though there is downward pressure on the Yuan from rumors that the Chinese will actively move to push the value down to boost their economy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>First, we have some developments on the other side of the pond, with the Australian Central Bank lowering its rates by 100 basis points (1%), the most since 1991, and a major Russian investment bank is calling for a 20% depreciation of the Ruble, to boost exports. It might be a good idea, depending on &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1080,973,1135,1004,1045],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-193617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-currency","category-economy","category-energy","category-finance","category-insurance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193617"}],"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=193617"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193617\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}