Party like its 1998
A breather in European stocks, as better than expected earnings from UBS and BMW was met by selling, is weighing on the futures as they digest the 1000 level, back to where it was in Feb 1998 when it got there for the first time. In 1998, Saving Private Ryan was the #1 grossing movie, the Titanic soundtrack was the Billboard top album, Celine Dion was the top artist and Seinfeld had its last episode. After a transfer payment boost to May Personal Income, June Income is expected to fall 1%. Spending is expected to rise .3% but watch to see how much of it was gasoline purchases. The Savings rate should fall from the 6.9% level as a result but the rising trend will be a multi year process. June Pending Home Sales are expected to rise .7% and will be an interesting test of the buyer’s response to the rise in mortgage rates. In June, the average 30 yr rate was 5.48% up from 5.02% in May. The offset of course was lower prices and tax incentives.
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August 4th, 2009 at 10:39 am
hmm…
Years ago, the government reporting some basic economic indicators like M3, and moved away from real economic indicators like U-6 unemployment and inflation and substituted economic indicators like “U-3″ and “core inflation” to cover up what is really happening
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2009/08/real-economy-versus-fake-economy-of.html
August 4th, 2009 at 4:17 pm
Thanks for the link Lori. You should take a look at it too, Peter. It will help explain why gold is where it is. While the USG may be able to fool most people, most of the time, they can’t fool all the people, all the time. Some of us are actually more intelligent than the USG gives us credit for.