{"id":196140,"date":"2008-05-21T16:37:00","date_gmt":"2008-05-21T21:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/05\/21\/economics-update-455\/"},"modified":"2008-05-21T16:37:00","modified_gmt":"2008-05-21T21:37:00","slug":"economics-update-455","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/05\/21\/economics-update-455\/","title":{"rendered":"Economics Update"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Donald Kohn is now giving some <a href=\"http:\/\/www.marketwatch.com\/News\/Story\/Story.aspx?guid=%7B3BA98A82-50B1-487C-BF2E-505EA1DDE8F1%7D&amp;siteid=mktw\">pretty strong signals that there will be no further rate cuts<\/a>, which indicates that the Fed might be a bit concerned about inflation now.<\/p>\n<p>The currency markets are <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">most definitely concerned<\/span> about inflation (which is another word for currency devaluation), and so <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/05\/21\/markets\/dollar.ap\/index.htm?postversion=2008052108\">the dollar has dropped<\/a>.  It&#8217;s near a month low.<\/p>\n<p>Oil just <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/05\/21\/markets\/oil_eia\/index.htm?postversion=2008052110\">smashed the $130 barrier<\/a>, settling at $133.17\/bbl, and <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/05\/21\/news\/economy\/gas_prices\/index.htm\">retail gasoline hit another record<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Real estate continues to face downward pressures, with <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/05\/21\/real_estate\/bc.apfn.mortgage.applications.ap\/index.htm?postversion=2008052107\">Mortgage applications falling 7.8%last week<\/a>.  So even though we are in buying season, people are not looking to buy.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, we have what appears to be the collapse of a monoliner insurer with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601087&amp;sid=apCafgGAxDnU\">CIFG Guaranty having its rating cut to junk status<\/a>.  They were downgraded from AAA in March, and Moodys just downgraded them further from A1 to Ba2, 7 levels at one swoop.<\/p>\n<p>The business for monoliners is dependent on having an AAA rating.  Put a fork in them, they are done.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Donald Kohn is now giving some pretty strong signals that there will be no further rate cuts, which indicates that the Fed might be a bit concerned about inflation now. The currency markets are most definitely concerned about inflation (which is another word for currency devaluation), and so the dollar has &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[973,1135,1004,1045,1088],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-196140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","category-energy","category-finance","category-insurance","category-real-estate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196140"}],"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=196140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196140\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}