{"id":195223,"date":"2008-07-22T17:22:00","date_gmt":"2008-07-22T22:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/07\/22\/economics-update-411\/"},"modified":"2008-07-22T17:22:00","modified_gmt":"2008-07-22T22:22:00","slug":"economics-update-411","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/07\/22\/economics-update-411\/","title":{"rendered":"Economics Update"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Charles Plosser, President of the Philadelphia Federal Reserve, <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/07\/22\/news\/economy\/plosser.ap\/index.htm?postversion=2008072209\">called for rate hikes to forestall inflation<\/a>.  Not surprisingly, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=newsarchive&amp;sid=aQm1gJfc0vgQ\">US dollar has risen as a result<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, the banking meltdown continues aplace, with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601087&amp;sid=aEZnVX_6M1dU&amp;refer=home\">Wachovia losing $9.9 billion dollars<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/07\/22\/news\/companies\/wachovia_lending.ap\/index.htm?postversion=2008072206\">exiting the wholesale mortgage business<\/a>, meaning that they will no longer offer mortgages through independent brokers, and <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/07\/22\/news\/companies\/wamu\/index.htm?postversion=2008072217\">WaMu Lost $3.3 billion<\/a> too.<\/p>\n<p>I would also note that <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/07\/22\/news\/companies\/fannie_freddie_books\/?postversion=2008072207\">federal examiners auditing the GSE&#8217;s books<\/a>, though this is more a preparation for a US government bailout than it is any concern for wrongdoing.<\/p>\n<p>Considering that <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/07\/22\/real_estate\/homes_prices.ap\/index.htm\">U.S. home prices 4.8% from May 2007 to May 2008<\/a>, I&#8217;d count a GSE bailout as likely.<\/p>\n<p>Seeing as how tropical storm Dolly largely missed the offshore oil rigs, it&#8217;s not surprising that <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/07\/22\/markets\/oil\/\">oil prices have fallen<\/a>, and it appears that <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/07\/22\/news\/economy\/gasoline\/index.htm\">retail gasoline is doing the same<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Still, this is mostly a symptom of a slumping economy, where less oil is needed, much as <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/07\/22\/news\/companies\/ups_profitdecline.ap\/index.htm\">UPS&#8217;s profit slump of 21%<\/a> is clear evidence of a radically slowing economy.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s also old home week at <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">40 Years in the Desert<\/span>, because we have some news about another monoliner insurer in trouble, this time, it&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601087&amp;sid=aVySNyoS2oxI&amp;refer=home\">Assured Guaranty<\/a>, one of the two insurers left with AAA ratings from all three major agencies, that is taking a tumble, because Moody&#8217;s is making noises about a downgrade.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Charles Plosser, President of the Philadelphia Federal Reserve, called for rate hikes to forestall inflation. Not surprisingly, the US dollar has risen as a result. Meanwhile, the banking meltdown continues aplace, with Wachovia losing $9.9 billion dollars and exiting the wholesale mortgage business, meaning that they will no longer offer mortgages through independent brokers, and &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1080,973,1135,1004,1088,985],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-195223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-currency","category-economy","category-energy","category-finance","category-real-estate","category-regulation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195223"}],"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=195223"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195223\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}