{"id":194835,"date":"2008-08-15T17:26:00","date_gmt":"2008-08-15T22:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/08\/15\/economics-update-392\/"},"modified":"2008-08-15T17:26:00","modified_gmt":"2008-08-15T22:26:00","slug":"economics-update-392","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/08\/15\/economics-update-392\/","title":{"rendered":"Economics Update"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today has actually been a good news day, with US industrial production increasing by 0.2% in July<\/a>, though one should remember that inflation is 0.8%, the the consumer sentiment index rose in Augst<\/a>, though July was a 28 year low, and the New York Fed Manufacturing Index rose<\/a>. (no qualifiers on this one, it really appears to be good news)<\/p>\n

Good news on all my standard metrics too, oil down<\/a>, gas down<\/a>, and dollar up<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Inflation is the fly in the ointment, as Dean Baker notes<\/a>, because the increased inflation means that the 3rd quarter will almost certainly be a contraction.<\/p>\n

I would, however be remiss if I did not note that commodity prices are falling very sharply<\/a>, which may bring moderation in inflation in the coming months.<\/p>\n

In the economic scandals section, we have Wachovia joining the parade of banks and investment houses settling on auction rate securities<\/a>, to the tune of $5.5 billion.<\/p>\n

In the “It should be a scandal,” category, we have S&P deciding not to downgrade MBIA and Ambac<\/a>, even though anyone with two brain cells to rub together knows that the monoliner insurers are junk<\/p>\n

I would also note that I’m wondering if we will see a Peso rally, because Mexico’s central bank just increased rates for the 3rd straight month<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And The Onion<\/span> is a national treasure:
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today has actually been a good news day, with US industrial production increasing by 0.2% in July, though one should remember that inflation is 0.8%, the the consumer sentiment index rose in Augst, though July was a 28 year low, and the New York Fed Manufacturing Index rose. (no qualifiers on this one, it really …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1080,973,1135,1004,985],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-194835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-currency","category-economy","category-energy","category-finance","category-regulation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194835"}],"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=194835"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194835\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}