{"id":194646,"date":"2008-09-03T17:33:00","date_gmt":"2008-09-03T22:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/09\/03\/economics-update-381\/"},"modified":"2008-09-03T17:33:00","modified_gmt":"2008-09-03T22:33:00","slug":"economics-update-381","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/09\/03\/economics-update-381\/","title":{"rendered":"Economics Update"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s generally not been a good year for manufacturing and construction, with the Institute for Supply Management’s (ISM) manufacturing index falling to 49.9<\/a>, with any number below 50 meaning contraction, though I wonder how much inflation is being measured as “growth”, which is what I think is driving much of the US Commerce Department data showing an increase in factory orders<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I think that this is entirely export driven growth, a position that the abysmal auto sales<\/a> reinforces, but these export sales are being driven by a cheap dollar, which will eventually drive interest rates higher in the US (foreigners will demand higher returns), crushing domestic consumption.<\/p>\n

That being said, construction is clearly cratering<\/a>, falling 0.6% in July, twice expectations.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, banking continues to look pretty heinous with the FDIC expanding office space in the expectation of a spate of bank failures<\/a>, S&P downgrading two regional banks<\/a>, and suggesting that 37% of regional banks will be down graded.<\/p>\n

Additionally, when GMACis laying off thousands<\/a>, you know that the industry is in dire straits.<\/p>\n

With Euro zone inflation falling<\/a>, it appears that the ECB will hold rates steady, for a while at least, which will serve to keep the dollar relatively strong, as evidenced by the US Dollar’s rise today<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Since the hurricanes in the Gulf were relatively mild, oil<\/a> and gasoline<\/a> have continued their downward path.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s generally not been a good year for manufacturing and construction, with the Institute for Supply Management’s (ISM) manufacturing index falling to 49.9, with any number below 50 meaning contraction, though I wonder how much inflation is being measured as “growth”, which is what I think is driving much of the US Commerce Department data …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1080,973,975,1004,1200,1221,1088],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-194646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-currency","category-economy","category-employment","category-finance","category-inflation","category-manufacturing","category-real-estate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194646"}],"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=194646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194646\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}