{"id":193859,"date":"2008-11-11T21:39:00","date_gmt":"2008-11-12T02:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/11\/11\/economics-update-345\/"},"modified":"2008-11-11T21:39:00","modified_gmt":"2008-11-12T02:39:00","slug":"economics-update-345","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/11\/11\/economics-update-345\/","title":{"rendered":"Economics Update"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, it’s a bank holiday, so it’s a little bit slow, but the fact that American Express is filing to become a bank holding company<\/a>, so that it can take part in the Federal Reserve’s sh&%pile for cash program.<\/p>\n

My guess would be that they are seeing their default rate going up, and that they can’t find anyone to buy the debt.<\/p>\n

In retail, General Growth Properties, the 2nd largest mall operator in the US, said that it may file for bankruptcy protection<\/a>, and National Wholesale Liquidators filed for bankruptcy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In other impending bankruptcies, option ARM lender Downey Savings and Loan just said in it’s 10Q that it cannot see a way to avoid being taken over by the Office of Thrift Supervision<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Most of the interest rate indicators were unavailable today because of the holiday, but the LIBOR (the L stands for London) was down a bit again today<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Also from that little island off the coast of France, retail and home sales are heading south quickly there too<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The joys of Anglo-Saxon capitalism, I guess.<\/p>\n

In any case, there is no joy in Mudville, if by Mudville you mean the real estate market, so Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have instituted a new program to modify mortgages to minimize foreclosures<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I still think that bankruptcy changes are the best solution here.<\/p>\n

In any case, the impending recession drove oil to a 19 month low<\/a>, and drove the dollar up<\/a>, as people tend to flee to the dollar in bad times.<\/p>\n

Falling oil is also absolutely killing the Ruble<\/a>, which appears to be on the brink a devaluation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, it’s a bank holiday, so it’s a little bit slow, but the fact that American Express is filing to become a bank holding company, so that it can take part in the Federal Reserve’s sh&%pile for cash program. My guess would be that they are seeing their default rate going up, and that they …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[973,1004,1088,1089,985],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-193859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","category-finance","category-real-estate","category-recession","category-regulation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193859"}],"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=193859"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193859\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}