{"id":196107,"date":"2008-05-23T16:43:00","date_gmt":"2008-05-23T21:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/05\/23\/economics-update-453\/"},"modified":"2008-05-23T16:43:00","modified_gmt":"2008-05-23T21:43:00","slug":"economics-update-453","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/05\/23\/economics-update-453\/","title":{"rendered":"Economics Update"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The employment data is done for the week, so we have energy news, where Oil, after breaking $135\/bbl then settling around #131, <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/05\/23\/markets\/oil.ap\/index.htm?postversion=2008052311\">is now back above $132\/bbl<\/a>, and gas prices are trending up again, though some of the latter is no doubt due to the upcoming 3 day weekend.<\/p>\n<p>The dollar is <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/05\/23\/markets\/dollar.ap\/index.htm\">trending down against all major currencies<\/a>, hitting $1.5755:\u20ac1.0000, a bit below the  $1.60 record, but not by much.<\/p>\n<p>In real estate, we have <a href=\"http:\/\/biz.yahoo.com\/ap\/080523\/economy.html\">existing home sales falling 1%<\/a> in April, no signs of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.connpost.com\/ci_9316525\">the foreclosure rate abating<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601087&amp;refer=home&amp;sid=amCt0FoZgzKY\">inventories soaring<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Is it any wonder that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/ousiv\/idUSN0951352620080522\">mortgage lenders are tightening standards to where they were a few deccades back<\/a>?<\/p>\n<p>This credit tightening is going to take an economy already in recession<sup>*<\/sup>, and throw it down a well.<\/p>\n<p>On the brighter side, it appears that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601087&amp;sid=aNwSMDorso_k&amp;refer=home\">the municipal bond market has finally shaken itself out a bit<\/a>, recovering from the auction rate security implosion of a few months back.<\/p>\n<p><sup>*<\/sup><span style=\"font-size:78%;\">Yes, I know that it&#8217;s not official yet, but we know the reality when it bites us on the ass.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The employment data is done for the week, so we have energy news, where Oil, after breaking $135\/bbl then settling around #131, is now back above $132\/bbl, and gas prices are trending up again, though some of the latter is no doubt due to the upcoming 3 day weekend. The dollar is trending down against &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1080,973,1135,1004,1009],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-196107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-currency","category-economy","category-energy","category-finance","category-government"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196107"}],"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=196107"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196107\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}