{"id":195951,"date":"2008-06-03T17:09:00","date_gmt":"2008-06-03T22:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/06\/03\/economics-update-447\/"},"modified":"2008-06-03T17:09:00","modified_gmt":"2008-06-03T22:09:00","slug":"economics-update-447","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/06\/03\/economics-update-447\/","title":{"rendered":"Economics Update"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Well, <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/06\/03\/news\/economy\/gas_prices\/index.htm\">retail gas prices set a new record high again<\/a>, $3.978\/gallon, making 26 new records in 27 days, and yesterday was flat, even though oil <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/06\/03\/markets\/oil_ap.ap\/index.htm\">fell just under $4 to $123.99\/bbl<\/a>, and it&#8217;s $11.19 lower than the record on May 22.<\/p>\n<p>Lehman is expected to post a  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.marketwatch.com\/news\/story\/lehman-mulling-capital-raise-wall\/story.aspx?guid=%7B57A74557-1E14-40C5-9492-5F9905C4C675%7D&amp;dist=msr_1\">loss of around 1\/3 billion<\/a>, and is making noises about selling more stock to raise about $4 billion in capital, which has <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/06\/03\/markets\/dollar.ap\/index.htm\">driven the dollar down<\/a> a bit.<\/p>\n<p>The fact that the dollar has fallen today is odd, given that Bernanke has said that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.marketwatch.com\/news\/story\/bernanke-signals-discomfort-weak-dollar\/story.aspx?guid=%7B1EBCD78C-CB1B-444B-A821-987EF69A841B%7D&amp;dist=TNMostRead\">he is concerned about the weak dollar<\/a> and that <a href=\"http:\/\/biz.yahoo.com\/ap\/080603\/bernanke_economy.html\">further rate cuts are unlikely<\/a>, both of which should serve to strengthen the dollar, at least in the short term.<\/p>\n<p>In the mean time the <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/06\/03\/news\/economy\/fed_auction.ap\/index.htm\">Fed shoveled another $75 billion to banks<\/a> as a part of their sh&#038;^pile for cash scheme, so perhaps someone is noticing the sound of printing presses at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing going to warp 9.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, we have <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/06\/02\/news\/companies\/thornburg.ap\/index.htm?postversion=2008060216\">Thornburg Mortgage delaying its earnings report to the SEC<\/a>, which in these times almost always means bad news.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Well, retail gas prices set a new record high again, $3.978\/gallon, making 26 new records in 27 days, and yesterday was flat, even though oil fell just under $4 to $123.99\/bbl, and it&#8217;s $11.19 lower than the record on May 22. Lehman is expected to post a loss of around 1\/3 billion, and is making &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-195951","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\/195951"}],"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=195951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195951\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}