{"id":196465,"date":"2008-04-24T16:37:00","date_gmt":"2008-04-24T21:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/04\/24\/economics-update-473\/"},"modified":"2008-04-24T16:37:00","modified_gmt":"2008-04-24T21:37:00","slug":"economics-update-473","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/04\/24\/economics-update-473\/","title":{"rendered":"Economics Update"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601068&amp;sid=aFJXrsoDIbJo&amp;refer=home\">Unemployment claims fell<\/a> again, note my standard caveat about noisy measures though.<\/p>\n<p>Note also that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/id\/24292550\">new-home sales are unbelievably grim<\/a>.  An 8.5% drop month to month is falling off a cliff, but this is following the numbers being <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">revised downward<\/span> for the month of February.<\/p>\n<p>If that doesn&#8217;t scare you, there is a Credit Suisse research report that suggests that there will be <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/bondsNews\/idUSN2233380820080422\">6.5 million foreclosures by 2012<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\"><p>The foreclosures could put 12.7 percent of all residential borrowers out of their homes, Credit Suisse analysts, led by Rod Dubitsky, said in the report. That compares with a foreclosure rate of 2.04 percent in the last quarter of 2007, they said, citing Mortgage Bankers Association data.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>That is one out of 8 residential borrowers.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s too bearish for even me, and I&#8217;m the biggest bear out there.<\/p>\n<p>In terms of non-residential real estate measures, we have the Architecture Billings Index (ABI) <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aia.org\/press2_template.cfm?pagename=release_ABI_Mar_042308\">dropping to its lowest level ever<\/a>, suggesting that commercial real estate&#8217;s about to tank too, and <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/04\/24\/news\/economy\/durable_goods_march.ap\/index.htm?postversion=2008042409\">orders for durable goods, items expected to last 3 or more years, fell 0.3% from February<\/a>, worse than expected.<\/p>\n<p>The drop in unemployment claims <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/04\/24\/markets\/bondcenter\/Bonds_ap.ap\/index.htm\">triggered a drop in treasuries<\/a> and a <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/04\/24\/markets\/dollar.ap\/index.htm\">strengthening of the dollar<\/a>, because it makes it less likely that the Fed will cut rates at its next meeting.<\/p>\n<p>Truth be told, the Fed cutting rates won&#8217;t do much anyway, as is shown by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thetruthaboutmortgage.com\/mortgage-rates-rise-on-inflationary-concerns\/\">mortgage rates continued upward path<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The Fed has lowered rates below the effective inflation rate, and so their rates have decoupled from the commercial rates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Unemployment claims fell again, note my standard caveat about noisy measures though. Note also that new-home sales are unbelievably grim. An 8.5% drop month to month is falling off a cliff, but this is following the numbers being revised downward for the month of February. If that doesn&#8217;t scare you, there is a Credit Suisse &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1080,973,975,1200,1088],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-196465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-currency","category-economy","category-employment","category-inflation","category-real-estate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196465"}],"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=196465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196465\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}