{"id":195287,"date":"2008-07-18T17:47:00","date_gmt":"2008-07-18T22:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/07\/18\/economics-update-414\/"},"modified":"2008-07-18T17:47:00","modified_gmt":"2008-07-18T22:47:00","slug":"economics-update-414","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/07\/18\/economics-update-414\/","title":{"rendered":"Economics Update"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, the Europeans, or at least the Germans promise to be in major freak out mode for a while, as producer prices are increasing at 6.7%<\/a>, and this means that the Germans, the largest economy in Europe, will be screaming for rate hikes, because it was only 80 years ago that you needed a wheelbarrow or marks to buy a loaf of bread.<\/p>\n

Unsurprisingly, this drove the dollar down too, though a contributing factor may be a report published in the financial times that sovereign wealth funds are looking to reduce exposure to the dollar<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There is no stampede, but people are tiptoeing toward the exits on the dollar.<\/p>\n

I’m not sure how related it is, sovereign wealth funds hold a big chunk of GSE debt, but Freddie Mac has filed with the SEC to sell stock<\/a> in order to raise new capital.<\/p>\n

In energy, dribbled down a bit<\/a>*<\/sup> to settle at $128.88\/bbl, and retail gasoline fell about a penny<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In investment banking, Merrill Lynch lost $4.9 billion<\/a>, and Citi lost $2.5 billion<\/a>, though the latter was better than expected, and Citi will continue paying a dividend<\/a>, which strikes me as foolish.<\/p>\n

In real estate, evidence, in Orange County at least<\/a>, that commercial real estate is comatose. A 91% drop in building, a 62% increase in vacancy, and a 2.5% decrease in rents.<\/p>\n

It’s grim in the UK too, with mortgage lending falling 32% year over year<\/a>, with near certainty of the central bank increasing rates.<\/p>\n

The UK is beginning to look like the San Diego of Europe.<\/p>\n

*<\/sup>No Apology for the pun.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, the Europeans, or at least the Germans promise to be in major freak out mode for a while, as producer prices are increasing at 6.7%, and this means that the Germans, the largest economy in Europe, will be screaming for rate hikes, because it was only 80 years ago that you needed a wheelbarrow …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1080,973,1004,1200,1088,1089],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-195287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-currency","category-economy","category-finance","category-inflation","category-real-estate","category-recession"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195287"}],"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=195287"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195287\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}