{"id":195109,"date":"2008-07-29T17:31:00","date_gmt":"2008-07-29T22:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/07\/29\/economics-update-405\/"},"modified":"2008-07-29T17:31:00","modified_gmt":"2008-07-29T22:31:00","slug":"economics-update-405","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/07\/29\/economics-update-405\/","title":{"rendered":"Economics Update"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Bush administration is now, finally, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2008\/US\/07\/28\/economy.ap\/index.html\">predicting a slowing economy<\/a>, with a GDP growth rate of 1.6%&#8230;though with a higher prediction of inflation at 3.8%, it&#8217;s a net contraction, which is why they are also predicting an increase in the unemployment rate.<\/p>\n<p>Given this environment, it is unsurprising that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/id\/25902934\">home prices fell in May by 0.9%<\/a>, 15.8% year over year, which is grim.<\/p>\n<p>What is surprising is that <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/07\/29\/news\/economy\/consumer_confidence\/index.htm?postversion=2008072910\">Consumer confidence was up a bit<\/a>, to 51.9 from 51.0, but even 51.9 is <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">very<\/span> pessimistic.<\/p>\n<p>We may be seeing a bottom of consumer pessimism, which is different from seeing a bottom to the credit crisis.<\/p>\n<p>The slowdown <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/07\/29\/markets\/oil\/\">seems to be driving the price of oil down<\/a>, as well as the <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/07\/29\/news\/economy\/gasoline\/index.htm\">price of retail gasoline<\/a>, and falling energy prices seem to be <a href=\"http:\/\/bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20602081&amp;sid=a0y1DmaXuIYQ&amp;refer=benchmark_currency_rates\">bolstering the dollar versus foreign currencies<\/a>, though the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601087&amp;refer=home&amp;sid=a7E9AiPqI0ss\">bad news on Japanese unemployment<\/a>, a 2 year high, may have contributed to this.<\/p>\n<p>Still, the banks are <a href=\"http:\/\/iht.com\/articles\/ap\/2008\/07\/29\/business\/NA-US-Fed-Credit-Crisis.php\">buying lots of money from the Federal Reserve<\/a> to deal with the liquidity problems, $75 billion this time, so we ain&#8217;t out of the woods.<\/p>\n<p>For your amusement, a cartoon:<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/pic60.picturetrail.com\/VOL1689\/10590113\/20109639\/327797201.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Bush administration is now, finally, predicting a slowing economy, with a GDP growth rate of 1.6%&#8230;though with a higher prediction of inflation at 3.8%, it&#8217;s a net contraction, which is why they are also predicting an increase in the unemployment rate. Given this environment, it is unsurprising that home prices fell in May by &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1080,973,975,1135,1004,1200],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-195109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-currency","category-economy","category-employment","category-energy","category-finance","category-inflation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195109"}],"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=195109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195109\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}