Economics Update

Well, real estate sucks, with pending home sales falling by 4% (BTW, Manhattan apartment prices fell 4% too, so ain't nothing going up.)

Manufacturing data is out too, and it's grim, with factory orders falling twice what was forecast in November, and Toyota deciding to idle its plants for 11 days over February and March.

The last time Toyota did this was in the early 1990s recession, and they did it for one day.

Services did better than expected, with the Institute for Supply Management's (ISM) non-manufacturing index rising. The prediction was that it would fall from 37.3 to 37 in November, but it rose to 40.6.

Better than expected, but any number below 50 still counts as contraction.

A bit of up news is that Calculated Risk's Credit Crisis Indicators are showing improvement today.

But with all this going on it is no surprise that consumer bankruptcies rose by nearly a third in 2008.

The problem with the 2005 act was that people don't declare bankruptcy on a whim, they declare bankruptcy when they fall of the tight rope that is middle class existence in the United States, and there is no safety net to catch them.

In currency, the dollar rose against the Euro, largely on the expectations of further rate cuts by the ECB.

In energy, oil finished the day down, but it spent part of the day above $50/bbl for the first time in about a month.