{"id":194239,"date":"2008-10-13T20:31:00","date_gmt":"2008-10-14T01:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/10\/13\/economics-update-364\/"},"modified":"2008-10-13T20:31:00","modified_gmt":"2008-10-14T01:31:00","slug":"economics-update-364","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/10\/13\/economics-update-364\/","title":{"rendered":"Economics Update"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If there is any major difference between the US and the European response to the financial crisis, it is that the Europeans have their sh$# together relative to the US.<\/p>\n<p>Britain was already taking equity stocks in banks this morning, and any sensible action by the Treasury department still appears to be <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">weeks away<\/span>, so it&#8217;s not surprising that <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/10\/13\/markets\/dollar\/index.htm\">the dollar is down relative to European currencies<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>It is a vote on the confidence that investors have in the relative competencies of the governments involved.<\/p>\n<p>Or maybe it&#8217;s the fact that the markets realize that the foreign exchange markets are subject to supply and demand too, and with the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601087&amp;sid=aZdo6tVs0hhI&amp;refer=home\">central banks of the industrialized world are shoveling dollars out their doors<\/a>, with the Fed being the most aggressive.<\/p>\n<p>I think that the goal was to lower interbank lending rates, which <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601087&amp;sid=aZHAULdQ8Mvk&amp;refer=home\">it appears to have done<\/a> for a while, at least.<\/p>\n<p>It appears that the markets are still seeing a recession, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601109&amp;sid=aN0nim5_qj2Q&amp;refer=home\">as commodities are generally down<\/a> though oil ended up, <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/10\/13\/markets\/oil\/\">above $80\/bbl<\/a>, today.<\/p>\n<p>The bit of disturbing news is that it appears that the Treasury is<br \/><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601087&amp;sid=aDjJYMSphyM0&amp;refer=home\">using Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy $40 billion in junk mortgage securities<\/a>, which is the wrong thing to do.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s why the even the knuckle draggers at the White House are <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2008\/10\/12\/business\/12imf.html?_r=1&amp;hp&amp;oref=slogin\">moving from buying the sh#$pile to buying the banks that need recapitalization<\/a>.<br \/><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2008\/10\/12\/business\/12imf.html?_r=1&amp;hp&amp;oref=slogin\"><br \/>This is what the Swedes did, though they added a lot of F&amp;^% you to bank management that we are unfortunately leaving out.<br \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If there is any major difference between the US and the European response to the financial crisis, it is that the Europeans have their sh$# together relative to the US. Britain was already taking equity stocks in banks this morning, and any sensible action by the Treasury department still appears to be weeks away, so &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1080,973,1004,985],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-194239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-currency","category-economy","category-finance","category-regulation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194239"}],"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=194239"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194239\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}