{"id":194986,"date":"2008-08-05T17:23:00","date_gmt":"2008-08-05T22:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/08\/05\/economics-update-400\/"},"modified":"2008-08-05T17:23:00","modified_gmt":"2008-08-05T22:23:00","slug":"economics-update-400","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/08\/05\/economics-update-400\/","title":{"rendered":"Economics Update"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, the Fed held rates steady<\/a>, and it appears from their statement that they will hold rates steady.<\/p>\n

Honestly, I don’t expect any rate change now before the election. Changing the rates in September or October would lead to complaints of a political agenda.<\/p>\n

The Index of Supply Management’s index of non- manufacturing businesses showed continuing contraction in July<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It was up to 49.5, which was above forecast, but anything under 50 is contraction.<\/p>\n

For what it’s worth, it looks like Noriel Roubin’s prediction that hundreds of banks will fail<\/a> as a result of the credit crunch is finally getting some ink at a major news service (Reuters).<\/p>\n

I would suggest his blog<\/a> to get more detail, particularly on his estimate that the Taxpayer will be on the hook for $1-$2 trillion for all this.<\/p>\n

Both he, and I, think that the credit crunch will get a lot worse, and stories like former Merrill Lynch superstar Dow Kim shutting down his hedge fund before it started<\/a>, because investors got skittish and pulled out, would seem to confirm this.<\/p>\n

I would also note that delinquent loans are rising for commercial real estate<\/a>, which indicates that the commercial real estate market is following the residential market down the drain.<\/p>\n

In the normal indices, we see the dollar up a bit<\/a>, and oil<\/a> and gasoline<\/a> down for another day.<\/p>\n

Thursday, when the Euro Central Bank sets its<\/span> rates, should be interesting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, the Fed held rates steady, and it appears from their statement that they will hold rates steady. Honestly, I don’t expect any rate change now before the election. Changing the rates in September or October would lead to complaints of a political agenda. The Index of Supply Management’s index of non- manufacturing businesses showed …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1080,973,1135,1004,1088,1089],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-194986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-currency","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\/194986"}],"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=194986"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194986\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}