{"id":197114,"date":"2008-02-29T17:43:00","date_gmt":"2008-02-29T22:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/02\/29\/economics-update-511\/"},"modified":"2008-02-29T17:43:00","modified_gmt":"2008-02-29T22:43:00","slug":"economics-update-511","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/02\/29\/economics-update-511\/","title":{"rendered":"Economics Update"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We have <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/02\/29\/news\/economy\/income_spending\/index.htm?postversion=2008022910\">bad news on income and spending<\/a>.  If you go to the link it says that they are both up slightly, 0.3% and 0.4% respectively, but this is less than inflation, which means that it is a real drop.<\/p>\n<p>We also have <a href=\"http:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/s\/ap\/20080229\/ap_on_bi_ge\/oil_prices\">oil at or near all time highs<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/02\/29\/markets\/euro_dollar.ap\/index.htm\">the dollar at or near all time lows<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>We have a new estimate of total losses among financial firms from the meltdown, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=newsarchive&amp;sid=avwrGqojbJ3k\">$600 billion<\/a>.  I think that they are off by at least one zero.<\/p>\n<p>Insurance is continuing to unwind in a <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">most<\/span> unpleasant manner. <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601103&amp;sid=aSkR69gQgqv0&amp;refer=us\">MBIA is not doing much in the way of business<\/a>, because bond issuers don&#8217;t trust them to be solvent in the future.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps of more concern is that this is beginning to effect the reinsurance market, with <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/02\/29\/news\/companies\/bc.apfn.earns.switzerland.swiss.ap\/index.htm\">Swiss Reinsurance Company posting an 87% drop in profits<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>If this market goes south, it takes most of the insurance market with it.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, we have the Fed <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/02\/29\/news\/economy\/fed_auction.ap\/index.htm?postversion=2008022912\">shoveling out more money to the investors<\/a>.  It will auction off another $60 billion in March.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t even want to think what the money supply is doing right now.<\/p>\n<p>The credit crunch is also interfering with things like reorganizations, with <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/02\/29\/news\/companies\/delphi_bankruptcy.ap\/index.htm?postversion=2008022911\">Delphi unable to find the loans necessary for it to reorg under bankruptcy<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessweek.com\/investor\/content\/feb2008\/pi20080226_304457.htm\">earnings fell across the market<\/a>, with the S&#038;P 500 companies&#8217; earnings falling 4.2%, as opposed to the 10% increase forcast at the beginning of 2007.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We have bad news on income and spending. If you go to the link it says that they are both up slightly, 0.3% and 0.4% respectively, but this is less than inflation, which means that it is a real drop. We also have oil at or near all time highs, and the dollar at or &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1261,1080,973,1004,1045],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-197114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bubble","category-currency","category-economy","category-finance","category-insurance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197114"}],"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=197114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197114\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}