{"id":195000,"date":"2008-08-04T17:34:00","date_gmt":"2008-08-04T22:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/08\/04\/economics-update-401\/"},"modified":"2008-08-04T17:34:00","modified_gmt":"2008-08-04T22:34:00","slug":"economics-update-401","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/08\/04\/economics-update-401\/","title":{"rendered":"Economics Update"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Challenger, Gray &amp; Christmas is <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/08\/04\/news\/economy\/challenger_jobs\/index.htm?postversion=2008080408\">reporting that planned job cuts were up 26% in July<\/a>, and the <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/08\/04\/news\/economy\/employment_trends\/index.htm?postversion=2008080411\">Conference Board&#8217;s Employment Trends Index fell to 112.1 in July<\/a>, leading the board to predict that unemployment could pass 6% in 2009.<\/p>\n<p>Additionally, the board noted that U6 has now topped 10%, which is probably the best metric, and closer to the one used in EU nations, for the first time in 5 years.  Quoth <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Unemployment#United_States_Bureau_of_Labor_Statistics\">the Wiki<\/a>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\">U1: Percentage of labor force unemployed 15 weeks or longer.<\/li>\n<li style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\">U2: Percentage of labor force who lost jobs or completed temporary work.<\/li>\n<li style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\">U3: Official unemployment rate per ILO definition.<\/li>\n<li style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\">U4: U3 + &#8220;discouraged workers&#8221;, or those who have stopped looking for work because current economic conditions makes them believe that no work is available for them.<\/li>\n<li style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\">U5: U4 + other &#8220;marginally attached workers&#8221;, or those who &#8220;would like&#8221; and are able to work, but have not looked for work recently.<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\">U6: U5 + Part time workers who want to work full time, but can not due to economic reasons<\/span>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In an article with a typically bad headline, we see that <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/08\/04\/news\/economy\/consumer_spending\/index.htm?postversion=2008080411\">personal spending and income fell in July<\/a>, the headline leads with non-inflation adjusted spending, and we also see that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601087&amp;refer=home&amp;sid=aBqrtd2NrXFI\">inflation has eaten up most of the tax rebate stimulus package<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>So what the taxman giveth, the House of Saud taketh away.<\/p>\n<p>Commodities are showing some moderation now, with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601110&amp;sid=am6vsHKDv2IA\">copper <\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601110&amp;refer=&amp;sid=aMjPy99bpuqs\">aluminum<\/a> falling because of the economic slowdown, though there is a consensus that latter will rebound.<\/p>\n<p>Energy is down too, both <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/08\/04\/markets\/oil\/\">oil<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/08\/04\/news\/economy\/fuel\/index.htm\">retail gasoline<\/a>, much for the same reasons.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/08\/04\/markets\/dollar_write\/index.htm\">dollar is down slightly<\/a>, but is likely to be a holding pattern until tommorow, when the Fed makes its decision on interest rates, and may not move much until Thursday, when the ECB does the same.<\/p>\n<p>In banking, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601087&amp;sid=aMYKCcWUt5uI&amp;refer=home\">Citi is now losing money on credit card securitizations<\/a>, where they take credit card debt and package it into securities (similar to mortgage backed securities).<\/p>\n<p>When you lose money on this, the economy is not in good shape, or you are completely incompetent.  In the case of Citi, probably both.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, the <a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB121780746398308595.html\">finance unit of Chrysler was able to finance only $24 billion of the $30 billion it sought to renew<\/a>, and it was at a higher cost than anticipated, which will likely make auto loans more expensive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Challenger, Gray &amp; Christmas is reporting that planned job cuts were up 26% in July, and the Conference Board&#8217;s Employment Trends Index fell to 112.1 in July, leading the board to predict that unemployment could pass 6% in 2009. Additionally, the board noted that U6 has now topped 10%, which is probably the best metric, &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[973,975,1135,1004,1200,1089],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-195000","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","category-employment","category-energy","category-finance","category-inflation","category-recession"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195000"}],"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=195000"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195000\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}