{"id":196318,"date":"2008-05-07T16:37:00","date_gmt":"2008-05-07T21:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/05\/07\/economics-update-464\/"},"modified":"2008-05-07T16:37:00","modified_gmt":"2008-05-07T21:37:00","slug":"economics-update-464","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/05\/07\/economics-update-464\/","title":{"rendered":"Economics Update"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The numbers are out for March pending home sales, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/domesticNews\/idUSN0717285920080507\">they are very grim<\/a>, with the pending home sales index falling to it&#8217;s lowest level since its founding in 2001, a 1% one month and 20% year over year drop.  Of course the NAR is seeing a turnaround in the next few months, like they always do.<\/p>\n<p>We are also seeing increasing signs of inflation, with Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City President Thomas Hoenig suggesting that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601087&amp;sid=aTAYVgs5054k\">inflation pressures may lead to rate hikes<\/a> soon, and <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/05\/07\/news\/companies\/toyota_prices.ap\/index.htm?postversion=2008050708\">Toyota to raising prices on their cars<\/a>, largely as a result of the falling dollar.<\/p>\n<p>On the plus side, however, productivity increased by 2.2% in the first quarter, more than the 1.5% predicted, which should moderate inflation some.<\/p>\n<p>On a more general, &#8220;we in a recession&#8221; note, <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/05\/07\/news\/economy\/retail_imports\/index.htm?postversion=2008050711\">retail imports fell 4.8% in March<\/a>, yet another indicator of a slowdown, that the retailers are cutting back.<\/p>\n<p>Oil <a href=\"http:\/\/iht.com\/articles\/2008\/05\/06\/business\/oil.php\">hit another record today<\/a> too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The numbers are out for March pending home sales, and they are very grim, with the pending home sales index falling to it&#8217;s lowest level since its founding in 2001, a 1% one month and 20% year over year drop. Of course the NAR is seeing a turnaround in the next few months, like they &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[973,1135,1004,1200,1088,1089],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-196318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","category-energy","category-finance","category-inflation","category-real-estate","category-recession"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196318"}],"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=196318"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196318\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}