(Yes, I know, just anecdotal.)

Honeywell Wins $23 Billion Jet Award, Its Biggest, From Embraer

by Courtney Dentch

(Bloomberg) Honeywell International Inc. won its biggest business jet engine order, beating two rivals for a $23 billion contract from Empresa Brasileira de Aeronautica SA.

Honeywell will build engines for two new Embraer planes over the next decade, the companies said after the close of U.S. stock markets yesterday. The contract is the Brazilian company’s first engine order with Morris Township, New Jersey-based Honeywell and includes repair parts and services.

ABC personal finance subcomponent

Down but not out.

Weakness, but probably no recession as per Bernanke’s latest address before Congress.

Inflation ripping, as Fed staff raises it’s near term forecast.

The Fed ‘fights inflation’ with ’slack’.

The Fed waiting for slack to be reduced before turning its attention to inflation is illogical at best.

Without the much anticipated further decline in home prices the Fed will find itself that much further ‘behind the inflation curve’.

The Fed needs the housing decline for its models to forecast inflation returning to comfort zones.

(a set of interoffice emails)

Sanjiv to me
9:10 AM Reply
See the riots in Haiti over food prices?

Mike to me
9:03 AM Reply
Much of it caused by financial intermediaries

YES, TO THE EXTENT THERE ARE EXCESS INVENTORIES.

BIOFUELS, TO THE EXTENT THE FOOD/ACREAGE HAS BEEN USED FOR FUEL

On Wed, Apr 9, 2008 at 9:02 AM, Brian wrote:

Did you see the news in the Philippines last night? The government is going to start increasing wages to help people deal with rising food and energy costs. Interesting approach toward combating inflation.

Yes, the mainstream calls that ‘monetizing’ the price increases. Given a shortage, giving people more funds doesn’t add to supply in the short run, and, (twist on Keynes coming) when it comes to food shortages in the short run we’re all dead.

This is destabilizing and escalating.

Egypt’s Soaring Food Prices Bring Bread Lines, Deficit Pressure

By Abeer Allam and Daniel Williams

 

(Bloomberg) Atyat Musa Bakri, a Cairo mother of nine children, was waiting in line to buy subsidized bread for the third time in one day.

“The more cheap bread I can get, the better,” she said as a crowd of about 30 women jostled at a bakery in the Boulaq district. “The price of everything is going up and up, so I save on this. I spend all morning buying cheap bread.”

Bread is just about the only affordable food these days in Egypt, where rising commodity and energy prices have sent unsubsidized food prices up 20 percent or more in the past year. The rising cost of subsidies is damaging the government’s efforts to reduce its budget deficit.

About 500 political activists and textile workers at the Mahallah El-Kobra factory in northern Egypt were arrested and dozens were wounded in clashes with police on April 6 as the government clamped down on a one-day national strike to protest food inflation. In Mahallah itself, demonstrators threw stones at police phalanxes and set fire to trash.

The government-owned Egyptian Gazette newspaper said April 1 that seven people have died since the beginning of the year in brawls in bread lines.

Egyptian inflation accelerated to 12.1 percent in February, the fastest pace in 11 months, the Cairo-based Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics reported March 19. Food and beverage prices increased 16.8 percent, while non-subsidized bread and grain prices jumped 27 percent. Dairy products and eggs rose 20.1 percent.

MBAVPRCH Index (Apr 4)

If this is a recession, it’s not much of one, and housing is slowly bottoming and turning back up some.

MBAVREFI Index (Apr 4)

The refi machine is far from dead.

Wholesale Inventories

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