{"id":195242,"date":"2008-07-21T17:19:00","date_gmt":"2008-07-21T22:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/07\/21\/economics-update-412\/"},"modified":"2008-07-21T17:19:00","modified_gmt":"2008-07-21T22:19:00","slug":"economics-update-412","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/07\/21\/economics-update-412\/","title":{"rendered":"Economics Update"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601068&amp;sid=aNv5jZ9Phzfw&amp;refer=home\">Leading Economic Indicators have now fallen for the 2nd straight month<\/a>.  It&#8217;s down 2.1% year over year, putting it in the 2001 recession category.<\/p>\n<p>In a related matter, it appears that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=newsarchive&amp;sid=a8vyq70TQcMM\">Freddie Mac may be trying to unwind its debt exposure a bit<\/a>, as we have reports that it will be purchasing less mortgage debt from lenders, making getting a home mortgage more difficult.<\/p>\n<p>Oil is <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/07\/21\/markets\/oil\/\">back above $130\/bbl<\/a>, largely on concerns about Iran and Tropical storm Dolly, but <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/07\/21\/news\/economy\/gasoline\/index.htm\">gasoline prices continue to fall<\/a>, it&#8217;s now about a nickel down from the record.<\/p>\n<p>The dollar is <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/07\/21\/markets\/dollar\/index.htm\">slightly weaker today<\/a>, but I think that the delta is more a non-movement than a movement.<\/p>\n<p>For some well predicted hilarity, note that <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/07\/21\/news\/companies\/bank_of_america\/index.htm?postversion=2008072109\">Bank of America profit took a 41% hit<\/a>, in part because the newest member of their stable, Countrywide Financial, lost $2.3 billion this quarter.<\/p>\n<p>I told you so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Leading Economic Indicators have now fallen for the 2nd straight month. It&#8217;s down 2.1% year over year, putting it in the 2001 recession category. In a related matter, it appears that Freddie Mac may be trying to unwind its debt exposure a bit, as we have reports that it will be purchasing less mortgage &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],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-195242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-currency","category-economy","category-energy","category-finance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195242"}],"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=195242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195242\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}