{"id":194866,"date":"2008-08-13T17:30:00","date_gmt":"2008-08-13T22:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/08\/13\/economics-update-394\/"},"modified":"2008-08-13T17:30:00","modified_gmt":"2008-08-13T22:30:00","slug":"economics-update-394","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/08\/13\/economics-update-394\/","title":{"rendered":"Economics Update"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Let&#8217;s start with the <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">really scary<\/span> numbers that you need to know:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Retail sales <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2008\/08\/14\/business\/economy\/14econ.html?_r=1&amp;ref=business&amp;oref=slogin#\">were down in July<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>25% of current home sales <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/08\/13\/real_estate\/sellers_suffering_huge_losses\/index.htm?postversion=2008081313\">are at a loss<\/a>, which means that the current crappy home sales numbers are actually about \u00bc lower than reported, which might explain why <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/08\/13\/real_estate\/mortgage_applications.ap\/index.htm?postversion=2008081307\">Mortgage application volume continues to fall<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Meanwhile in Japan, <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/08\/12\/news\/international\/bc.japan.economytops.ap\/index.htm?postversion=2008081222\">their  economy contracted at a 2.4% annual rate<\/a>, once again showing that decoupling from the US economy is a failed theory.<\/p>\n<p>Still, the president of the ECB, Jean- Claude Trichet is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601109&amp;sid=a9WrbX8uWj3A&amp;refer=home\">sending out signals that imply that there will be no Euro zone rate cuts<\/a>, which would imply that the dollar may not have much strengthening left in it.<\/p>\n<p>I would note that businesses don&#8217;t put much stock in the economy right now.  Inventories increased, but <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601068&amp;sid=aKWo1XbopfIQ&amp;refer=home\">at a less than \u00bd the rate than the rebate juiced spending by consumers in June<\/a>, implying that they are expecting a major slowdown.<\/p>\n<p>The saying that, &#8220;When the US economy gets the sniffles, the rest of the world gets a cold,&#8221; still applies, and so we are still seeing <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20602081&amp;sid=a.HfxGoSlHkI&amp;refer=benchmark_currency_rates\">capital flight into the US dollar<\/a>, which is why it strengthened today.<\/p>\n<p>In energy, <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/08\/13\/markets\/oil\/\">oil rose<\/a> on thighter than expected inventory reports, and <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/08\/13\/news\/economy\/fuel\/index.htm\">retail gasoline has continued its unbroken downward streak<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Let&#8217;s start with the really scary numbers that you need to know: Retail sales were down in July. 25% of current home sales are at a loss, which means that the current crappy home sales numbers are actually about \u00bc lower than reported, which might explain why Mortgage application volume continues to fall. Meanwhile in &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[973,1135,1004,1088,1089],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-194866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","category-energy","category-finance","category-real-estate","category-recession"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194866"}],"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=194866"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194866\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}