Economics Update

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Another Transportation Indicator of Non-Recovery

The Federal Reserve has released its Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization data, and it shows a 0.6% increase in December, though, as Dean Baker notes, it would have fallen but for increased electricity and gas consumption from the weather.

This is kind of in line with the LA/Long Beach port traffic data for December, the last 3 months of the year were down -9.2% year over year, though they were up +2.9% Y0Y in December.

As the associated graph pr0n shows, there is a big seasonal variation, so only YoY is the only meaningful data.

Still, the Empire State Fed Index is at 15.9, with numbers above zero indicating expansion, and Reuters/University of Michigan index of consumer sentiment rose to 72.8, though this was less than the forecast of 74.

Inflation is mooted, CPI rising by only 0.1% in December, and the figure, at least the initial inflation number, for the year was 2.7% inflation in 2009, largely on the fact that energy and other commodity prices are much higher, +50% on a gallon of gas, for example.

Ex-energy, we are still looking at deflation.

In real estate, once again, New York City is not doing, well, which means that no one is doing well, with properties across the 5 boroughs rising by only 0.12%, $1,200 on a million dollar property for the mathematically disinclined, and in Manhattan, rents fell 9.4%.

Finally, we had warm weather pushing oil down again, and the dollar rose.