{"id":195042,"date":"2008-08-01T17:58:00","date_gmt":"2008-08-01T22:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/08\/01\/economics-update-402\/"},"modified":"2008-08-01T17:58:00","modified_gmt":"2008-08-01T22:58:00","slug":"economics-update-402","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/08\/01\/economics-update-402\/","title":{"rendered":"Economics Update"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Well, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2008\/08\/02\/business\/02econ.html?_r=1&amp;hp&amp;oref=slogin\">the official unemployment rate climbed to a 4 year high<\/a>, 5.5%, and total number of jobs fell by 51K, the 7th straight monthly drop in a row, in July.<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;re in a recession.  Get over it.<\/p>\n<p>Manufacturing actually <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/08\/01\/news\/economy\/manufacturing.ap\/index.htm\">did a bit better than expected in July<\/a>, it was flat, though much of that was military and exports driven by a weak dollar, but I&#8217;ll take what I can get.<\/p>\n<p>In the monoliner insurance follies, we have good news for AMBAC, they <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/news\/newsfeeds\/articles\/djf500\/200808010933DOWJONESDJONLINE000614_FORTUNE5.htm\">paid  Citigroup $850 million<\/a> to get out of a $1.4 billion guarantee on some collateralized debt obligations (CDO).<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s being reported as good news for AMBAC, which says something about the qualities of said CDOs.<\/p>\n<p>As bad as the job news was, it was better than expected, so <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/08\/01\/markets\/dollar\/index.htm\">the dollar strengthened in international trading<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>In energy, the employment report <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/08\/01\/markets\/oil.ap\/index.htm?postversion=2008080110\">drove oil up too<\/a>, though retail gasoline is back <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/08\/01\/news\/economy\/fuel\/index.htm\">below $3.90\/gallon<\/a>.  Woo hoo!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Well, the official unemployment rate climbed to a 4 year high, 5.5%, and total number of jobs fell by 51K, the 7th straight monthly drop in a row, in July. We&#8217;re in a recession. Get over it. Manufacturing actually did a bit better than expected in July, it was flat, though much of that was &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1080,973,975,1135,1045,1089],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-195042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-currency","category-economy","category-employment","category-energy","category-insurance","category-recession"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195042"}],"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=195042"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195042\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}