{"id":194219,"date":"2008-10-15T17:32:00","date_gmt":"2008-10-15T22:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/10\/15\/economics-update-362\/"},"modified":"2008-10-15T17:32:00","modified_gmt":"2008-10-15T22:32:00","slug":"economics-update-362","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/10\/15\/economics-update-362\/","title":{"rendered":"Economics Update"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Well, I just overheard on the radio that the Baltic Dry Index, a measure of the cost of shipping, just fell to a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=newsarchive&amp;sid=ahkq91XcsKnY\">more than 5 year low<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Ships are sitting idle as manufacturers try to reduce inventory.<\/p>\n<p>We are also seeing this at the other end of the manufacturer to market equation, with <a href=\"http:\/\/biz.yahoo.com\/ap\/081015\/economy.html\">retail sales falling 1.2% in September<\/a>&#8230;And remember, this was <strong>before<\/strong> Lehman imploded.<\/p>\n<p>The Federal Reserve&#8217;s Beige Book, a report of the state of the economy, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.marketwatch.com\/news\/story\/beige-book-paints-picture-sharp\/story.aspx?guid=%7BBB78B35D-4476-4569-B8BA-F847C7ED825F%7D\">is pointing down too<\/a>, as is the New York Fed&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/calculatedrisk.blogspot.com\/2008\/10\/ny-fed-manufacturing-conditions.html\">Empire State Manufacturing Survey<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>In energy, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/\/id\/27187445\">crude oil ended at less than $75\/bbl<\/a> today&#8230;..One note, when I predicted some time back that we would never see the south side of $100\/bbl, <strong>I was wrong<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Interestingly enough we are also seeing reports that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601068&amp;sid=amZ3uCIUB8GQ&amp;refer=home\">Paulson can give money to banks, but he can&#8217;t make them lend it out<\/a>, which would seem to imply that we need someone more interventionist at the helm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Well, I just overheard on the radio that the Baltic Dry Index, a measure of the cost of shipping, just fell to a more than 5 year low. Ships are sitting idle as manufacturers try to reduce inventory. We are also seeing this at the other end of the manufacturer to market equation, with retail &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1047,973,1004,1089,985],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-194219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corrections","category-economy","category-finance","category-recession","category-regulation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194219"}],"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=194219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194219\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}