{"id":195411,"date":"2008-07-10T17:47:00","date_gmt":"2008-07-10T22:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/07\/10\/economics-update-420\/"},"modified":"2008-07-10T17:47:00","modified_gmt":"2008-07-10T22:47:00","slug":"economics-update-420","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/07\/10\/economics-update-420\/","title":{"rendered":"Economics Update"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Bank of England has <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/07\/10\/news\/international\/britain_rates.ap\/index.htm?postversion=2008071008\">decided to hold interest rates steady<\/a>.  It&#8217;s not like they had much of a choice.  Inflation is heating up, <span style=\"font-weight:bold;\">and<\/span> they are in the middle of a house bubble collapse that rivals ours, so doing nothing was the only option.<\/p>\n<p>If they raised rates, they make the housing crash even worse, if they lower rates, inflation gets worse.<\/p>\n<p>Their inaction <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/07\/10\/markets\/dollar.ap\/index.htm\">appears to have strengthened the dollar<\/a>, since it points towards few hikes by the European Central Bank too.<\/p>\n<p>In employment, <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/07\/10\/news\/economy\/jobless_claims.ap\/index.htm\">initial applications for unemployment are down from last week<\/a> (it&#8217;s a noisy measure), but it&#8217;s still much worse than last year, and <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/07\/10\/news\/economy\/teen_jobs\/index.htm\">teen summer employment is the worst in 40 years<\/a>, &#8220;If the average holds, total summer hiring in May, June, and July would be about 1.2 million, which would be the smallest gain in teen summer employment since 1958.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In energy, <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/07\/10\/news\/economy\/gasoline\/index.htm\">retail gasoline prices fell a bit<\/a>, but <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/07\/10\/markets\/oil.ap\/index.htm\">crude oil spiked above $140 again<\/a>, because of tensions in Nigeria and the US and Iranian saber rattling.<\/p>\n<p>In real estate, <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/07\/10\/real_estate\/mortgage_rates\/index.htm\">mortgage rates are a bit higher this week<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Bank of England has decided to hold interest rates steady. It&#8217;s not like they had much of a choice. Inflation is heating up, and they are in the middle of a house bubble collapse that rivals ours, so doing nothing was the only option. If they raised rates, they make the housing crash even &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1080,973,1004,1265,1200,985],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-195411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-currency","category-economy","category-finance","category-housing-crash","category-inflation","category-regulation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195411"}],"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=195411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195411\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}