{"id":195906,"date":"2008-06-06T17:35:00","date_gmt":"2008-06-06T22:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/06\/06\/economics-update-444\/"},"modified":"2008-06-06T17:35:00","modified_gmt":"2008-06-06T22:35:00","slug":"economics-update-444","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/06\/06\/economics-update-444\/","title":{"rendered":"Economics Update"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>After 5 straight months of non-farm payroll job cuts, we are finally seeing <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/id\/25000080\">an increase in the unemployment rate<\/a>, \u00bd% to 5.5%.  It&#8217;s the biggest rise in 22 years, and it appears that the we&#8217;ve run out of discouraged workers, who are not counted as unemployed, to keep the rates low.<\/p>\n<p>Oil, which had been trending down since May 22, <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/06\/06\/news\/economy\/gas_prices\/index.htm?cnn=yes\">reversed itself and hit a new record<\/a>, peaking at $138.36\/bbl.  Retail gasoline, however, finally <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/06\/06\/markets\/markets_newyork\/index.htm?cnn=yes\">fell a bit<\/a> (scroll down), down to $3.986 yesterday&#8217;s record of $3.989.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s the first time that gasoline prices have fallen in nearly a month.<\/p>\n<p>Not surprisingly, all this has pummeled the dollar which has <a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB121275892647851827.html?mod=googlenews_wsj\">weakened to $1.5751 from $1.5592 yesterday to the Euro<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>BTW, it&#8217;s not just monoliner insurers that are hurting, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.marketwatch.com\/news\/story\/fitch-downgrades-mgic-investment-pmi\/story.aspx?guid=%7B1B7BC7EE-5199-48F7-B878-670D3EB36546%7D\">Fitch has downgraded mortgage insurers MGIC and PMI ratings<\/a>, two of the larger mortgage insurers to to BBB+ from A.<\/p>\n<p>If they go under, millions of people will technically be in default on their mortgage until they find another insurer.<\/p>\n<p>Given all this, it&#8217;s no surprise that Federal Deposit Insurance Corp Chairman Sheila Bair is saying that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/rbssFinancialServicesAndRealEstateNews\/idUSN0533667120080605\">we may see some failures of larger banks<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After 5 straight months of non-farm payroll job cuts, we are finally seeing an increase in the unemployment rate, \u00bd% to 5.5%. It&#8217;s the biggest rise in 22 years, and it appears that the we&#8217;ve run out of discouraged workers, who are not counted as unemployed, to keep the rates low. Oil, which had been &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1080,973,975,1135,1004,1045],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-195906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-currency","category-economy","category-employment","category-energy","category-finance","category-insurance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195906"}],"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=195906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195906\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}