{"id":193968,"date":"2008-11-04T18:27:00","date_gmt":"2008-11-04T23:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/11\/04\/economics-update-350\/"},"modified":"2008-11-04T18:27:00","modified_gmt":"2008-11-04T23:27:00","slug":"economics-update-350","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/11\/04\/economics-update-350\/","title":{"rendered":"Economics Update"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Well, it looks like the credit crunch is thawing a bit, as the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601087&amp;sid=ajxs96reU2rc\">dollar LIBOR<\/a> and the <a href=\"http:\/\/calculatedrisk.blogspot.com\/2008\/11\/libor-continues-to-decline.html\">TED Spread<\/a> have both dropped over the past few days.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, banks are still not lending to anyone <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">other<\/span> than each other, though.<\/p>\n<p>Yesterday, I mentioned the ISM&#8217;s manufacturing index falling.  Well today, it&#8217;s the full report from the Commerce Department, with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/\/id\/27534489\">factory orders falling 2.5%<\/a>, seasonally adjusted, which was more than 3 times the predicted number.<\/p>\n<p>In the mean time, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601110&amp;sid=aNQs8lzGpI.8\">dollar fell the most against the euro since 1999<\/a>, 2.7%, which is kind of odd, since the <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/11\/04\/markets\/markets_newyork\/index.htm?postversion=2008110416\">stock market was up strongly<\/a>, in what I call the &#8220;No More Bush Rally&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>I think that this is all election arbitrage, kind of a financial rain dance, as is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601087&amp;sid=aY4vcwbTepE0&amp;refer=home\">today&#8217;s bump in oil prices<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>In any case, I would expect that the ECB will be cutting rates soon, which should further buttress the dollar, as their <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601068&amp;sid=aFd4KnQiQrJA&amp;refer=home\">producer price inflation numbers came in below expectations<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Still, we are not out of the woods, as evidenced by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/\/id\/27537718\">soaring bankruptcies in October<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Well, it looks like the credit crunch is thawing a bit, as the dollar LIBOR and the TED Spread have both dropped over the past few days. Of course, banks are still not lending to anyone other than each other, though. Yesterday, I mentioned the ISM&#8217;s manufacturing index falling. Well today, it&#8217;s the full report &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[973,1135,1004,1200,1089],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-193968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","category-energy","category-finance","category-inflation","category-recession"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193968"}],"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=193968"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193968\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}