{"id":197127,"date":"2008-02-28T18:09:00","date_gmt":"2008-02-28T23:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/02\/28\/economics-update-512\/"},"modified":"2008-02-28T18:09:00","modified_gmt":"2008-02-28T23:09:00","slug":"economics-update-512","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/02\/28\/economics-update-512\/","title":{"rendered":"Economics Update"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>First and most importantly, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bea.gov\/newsreleases\/national\/gdp\/gdpnewsrelease.htm\">GDP increased at an annual rate of 0.6% in q4<\/a>.  Seeing as how prices are increasing at an annual rate of greater than 4%, I would call this a contraction in real dollar terms.<\/p>\n<p>Also, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.marketwatch.com\/news\/story\/initial-jobless-claims-rise-19000\/story.aspx?guid=%7B38AAC57A-F0F8-4BF4-BBA0-1C1BDEF1F5F1%7D\">Initial jobless claims rise 19,000 to 373,000<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/02\/28\/markets\/bc.apfn.fanniemae.rating.ap\/index.htm?postversion=2008022807\">Moody&#8217;s is looking at downgrading Fannie Mae<\/a>.  Right now, it&#8217;s B+, which may be fine for a grade, but not so good for a financial institution. <\/p>\n<p>Moody&#8217;s is probably thinking that they at risk of having problems if there is something like a margin call, as <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/02\/28\/news\/companies\/bc.apfn.thornburgmortgag.ap\/index.htm?postversion=2008022809\">Thornburg Mortgage Inc. currently is<\/a>.  It looks like they will take a $300 million hit.<\/p>\n<p>We also have a <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2008\/02\/28\/news\/companies\/bc.earns.freddiemac.ap\/index.htm?postversion=2008022808\">q4 loss of $2.5 billionfor Freddie Mac<\/a>  This goes along with Fannie&#8217;s $3.6 billion loss that I reported a few days back.<\/p>\n<p>And just to show you that it isn&#8217;t limited to real estate, the credit crunch is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/apps\/news?pid=20601087&amp;sid=ahBrqT4J5uOY&amp;refer=home\">forcing the Pennsylvania student loan program will stop making loans<\/a>, at least for now, because the credit crunch is making money too expensive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>First and most importantly, GDP increased at an annual rate of 0.6% in q4. Seeing as how prices are increasing at an annual rate of greater than 4%, I would call this a contraction in real dollar terms. Also, Initial jobless claims rise 19,000 to 373,000. Moody&#8217;s is looking at downgrading Fannie Mae. Right now, &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1261,973,1004,1088],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-197127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bubble","category-economy","category-finance","category-real-estate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197127"}],"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=197127"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197127\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}