{"id":195918,"date":"2008-06-05T17:15:00","date_gmt":"2008-06-05T22:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/06\/05\/economics-update-445\/"},"modified":"2008-06-05T17:15:00","modified_gmt":"2008-06-05T22:15:00","slug":"economics-update-445","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/06\/05\/economics-update-445\/","title":{"rendered":"Economics Update"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Weekly initial unemployment claims were <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/id\/24983366\">less than expected<\/a>, though the 4 week moving average of people receiving unemployment benefits was up.<\/p>\n<p>If there is a &#8220;wealth effect&#8221;, then this might be the side effect of the not wealth effect, as <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/06\/05\/news\/economy\/fundflows\/index.htm?postversion=2008060513\">household net worth dropped by $1.7 trillion<\/a> in 2Q of 2008.<\/p>\n<p>A lot of this drop is due to the real estate market, where <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/06\/05\/news\/economy\/foreclosure\/index.htm?postversion=2008060511\">there were over a million homes in foreclosure<\/a> in Q1 of 2008, 2.5% (one in 40 for the mathematically challenged) of all loans being serviced by the Mortgage Bankers Association, which explains why Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Donald Kohn expects <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/06\/05\/news\/companies\/banking_hearing\/index.htm?postversion=2008060510\">to see more write-downs and losses for banks<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Another day, <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/06\/05\/news\/economy\/gas_prices\/index.htm?postversion=2008060506\">another record for retail gasoline<\/a>, $3.989\/gal, and <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/06\/05\/markets\/oil_prices.ap\/index.htm?postversion=2008060507\">oil rose to $125.05\/bbl<\/a>, largely on the <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/06\/05\/news\/international\/europe_interest.ap\/index.htm?postversion=2008060508\">European Central Bank holding its interest rate at 4%<\/a>, and it&#8217;s president publicly worrying about inflation, which implies rate hikes and a weaker dollar, which tends to push oil prices up.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, monoline insurers MBIA and Ambac are <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601087&amp;sid=aGtCIF41PLkI&amp;\">delaying attempts to try and raise capital<\/a> because of the prospect of a rate cut by Moody&#8217;s.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Weekly initial unemployment claims were less than expected, though the 4 week moving average of people receiving unemployment benefits was up. If there is a &#8220;wealth effect&#8221;, then this might be the side effect of the not wealth effect, as household net worth dropped by $1.7 trillion in 2Q of 2008. A lot of this &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[973,975,1135,1004,1045,1088],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-195918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","category-employment","category-energy","category-finance","category-insurance","category-real-estate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195918"}],"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=195918"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195918\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}