2009-03-24 USER


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ICSC UBS Store Sales YoY (Mar 24)

Survey n/a
Actual -1.4%
Prior -1.4%
Revised n/a

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ICSC UBS Store Sales WoW (Mar 24)

Survey n/a
Actual -0.4%
Prior -0.1%
Revised n/a

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Redbook Store Sales Weekly YoY (Mar 24)

Survey n/a
Actual -1.3%
Prior -1.1%
Revised n/a

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Redbook Store Sales MoM (Mar 24)

Survey n/a
Actual 0.0%
Prior 0.0%
Revised n/a

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ICSC UBS Redbook Comparison TABLE (Mar 24)

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House Price Index MoM (Jan)

Survey -0.9%
Actual 1.7%
Prior 0.1%
Revised -0.2%

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House Price Index YoY (Jan)

Survey n/a
Actual -6.3%
Prior -8.9%
Revised n/a

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House Price Index ALLX (Jan)

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Richmond Fed Manufacturing Survey (Mar)

Survey -51
Actual -20
Prior -51
Revised n/a

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Richmond Fed Manufacturing Survey ALLX (Mar)


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Existing Home Sales Rose 5.1% in February


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Typical biased reporting. The fall in price from last year is emphasized while the increase from last month isn’t even mentioned.

Existing Home Sales Rebound, but Prices Plunge

by Jeff Bater

Mar 23 (WSJ) — Existing-home sales rebounded in February, climbing above expectations, but prices plunged again.

Home resales climbed to a 4.72 million annual rate, a 5.1% increase from January’s unrevised 4.49 million annual pace, the National Association of Realtors said Monday.

Foreclosures and short sales reflect about 45% of total existing-home sales. Distressed properties are discounted, so the abundance of these sales prices new homes out of the market, discouraging construction and weakening the overall housing sector further.

With so many distressed sales, the median price for an existing home fell last month. At $165,400 in February, the median price was down 15.5% from $195,800 in February 2008. The median price in January this year was $164,800. The 15.5% plunge is the second biggest ever, behind January’s 17.5% drop.


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Obama on fiscal limits


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This says it all.

And only days after Bernanke explained how government spends by changing numbers in accounts.

Obama is either ignorant or subversive:

From 60 minutes last night:

Obama on 60 minutes

Mar 22 (CBS) —

KROFT: Is there some limit to the amount of money we can spend?

OBAMA: Yes.

KROFT: Or print trying to solve this crisis?

OBAMA: There is.

KROFT: And are we getting close to it?

OBAMA: The limit is our ability to finance these expenditures through borrowing. And the United States is fortunate that it has the largest, most stable economic and political system around. And so the dollar is still strong because people are still buying treasury bills. They still think that’s the safest investment out there. If we don’t get a handle on this, and also start looking at our long-term deficit projections, at a certain point, people will stop buying those treasury bills.


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China to keep buying Treasuries


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Clever, those Chinese. Now they get to keep their currency down to support their exports while claiming they are acting altruistically to support Obama.

Fortunately for us this keeps the imports flowing our way and supports our standard of living.

I don’t think we did this by design, but instead it falls under better lucky than good.

China to Keep Buying Treasuries, Top Official Says

by Dune Lawrence and Kevin Hamlin

Mar 23 (Bloomberg) — China’s top foreign-exchange official said the nation will keep buying Treasuries and endorsed the dollar’s global role, supporting the U.S. as the Obama administration increases spending to revive growth.


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Trichet on funding the national governments


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Trichet on funding the national governments

When asked specifically if there are any obstacles to the ECB purchasing government assets, Mr Trichet reiterated that the ECB “are not pre-committed for any new decisions”, while his comments suggest the issue of risk-sharing and fiscal indemnity remains an important consideration: “One element which has to be taken into account is that the risks of the central banks and the risks of the governments are, in the euro area, clearly separated without combination of risks or blending of responsibilities”.


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Swiss National Bank confirms beggar thy neighbor policy


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AKA, “Beggar Thy Neighbor” policy straight from the book.

SNB’s Jordan says Franc Can’t be Allowed to Strengthen Further

by Dermot Doherty

Mar 22 (Bloomberg) — The Swiss franc can’t be allowed to appreciate further as “excessive” strength would put Switzerland’s export industry at a “disadvantage” and threaten the country with higher unemployment, Sonntag reported, citing Swiss National Bank board member Thomas Jordan.

The SNB’s decision this month to purchase corporate bonds is aimed at reducing the risk premium by narrowing the spreads on such debt instruments, Jordan said in an interview in today’s
newspaper.

“We are facing a severe recession” and need to be “unconventional” in dealing with it, Jordan said. The SNB will expand the money supply “as strongly as is needed” to prevent deflation, according to the newspaper.


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Re: New CBO chief Elmendorf gets it wrong


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(email exchange)

Thanks!

In case you thought the new head of the CBO understands the way the monetary system works…

>   
>   On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 1:37 AM, Scott wrote:
>   
>   FYI . . . from page 43 of CBO’s 10-year projections published
>   today…influence of CBO’s new head Doug Elmendorf (co-author a few
>   years ago of a widely cited paper on the effects of deficits on interest
>   rates) is pretty clear . . . .
>   
>   ”Capital accumulation is affected because the increase in government
>   debt is expected to displace, or “crowd out,” a smaller amount of private
>   capital.
>   

There is no such thing.

>   
>   That result occurs because the reduction in overall national saving
>   dampens spending on business fixed investment and the construction of
>   housing.
>   

Non-sensical rhetoric. ‘National savings’ as he is using the term is a relic from the gold standard when there were hard supply side constraints on reserves.

>   
>   Although the size of such displacement is very uncertain,
>   

Yes, in fact it doesn’t exist.

>   
>   CBO assumes that, in the long run, each dollar of additional federal debt
>   crowds out about a third of a dollar’s worth of private domestic capital
>   (with the remainder of the rise in debt offset by increases in private
>   saving and inflows of foreign capital).”
>   

Ridiculous empty rhetoric from yet another deficit terrorist.


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Liddy testimony at the Fed


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Congressional testimony from Mr. Liddy, the AIG CEO:

Liddy testimony

Mar 18 (CNN) —

KANJORSKI: Thank you very much, Mr. Liddy.

I guess my first question is, you’ve just announced that some of your members or employees that received those bonuses after Saturday this week have agreed to return it. Why couldn’t that have been negotiated for the last two months? And why couldn’t that information have been made available to both this committee, to the secretary of the treasury, and to the chairman of the Federal Reserve?

These are the allegations that have made AIG subject to the wrath of the media, the administration, and the ‘American public’.

LIDDY: I think there’s two parts to that question, sir. Let me see if I can address them in turn.

We’ve been working on this issue of what to do with these retention payments. We’ve made the information publicly available in our various 10-K filings and 8-Ks and (INAUDIBLE). The decision we made — I made — was as much one of risk assessment as it was blindly following legal advice. The risk assessment was we’ve made great progress in winding down this business, but there is still $1.6 trillion of stuff in that portfolio.

There’s risk that that could blow up. And if it were to explode, it can cause irreparable damage to that progress that we’ve already made.

KANJORSKI: Necessitating, Mr. Liddy, a further investment of the American taxpayers in (INAUDIBLE) with equity if we were to keep you solvent.

LIDDY: Would you repeat that, sir?

KANJORSKI: The risk is if those assets deteriorate or blow up, you would either go into total destruction or have to come back to the United States government and this Congress for additional funds.

LIDDY: Yes. I think that’s exactly correct, sir.

So the judgment that we made, in cooperation with the Federal Reserve — we treat the Federal Reserve as our very important partners. The decision we made was that we could preserve that unit and continue to wind it down in a very orderly fashion and not expose the taxpayer and the company for the risks that, heretofore, they’ve been exposed to.

I know $165 million is a very large number. It’s a very large number. In the context of $1.6 trillion and the money that’s already been invested in us, we thought that was a good trade.

KANJORSKI:Am I to understand you’re saying that Chairman Bernanke or his designated person at the Federal Reserve was informed that you were going to make these payments and acquiesced in that decision?

LIDDY:Yes. Everything we do, we do in the partnership with the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve is at our board meetings, at our compensation committee meetings, at our various meetings on strategy. And they have the ability to weigh in either yea or nay on anything that we decide.

So why hasn’t all that venom been redirected to the Fed?


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2009-03-23 CREDIT


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In line with recent equity price actions as the Obamaboom takes shape due to the automatic stabilizers, and soon to be enhanced by the fiscal adjustments.

IG On-the-run Spreads (Mar 23)

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IG6 Spreads (Mar 23)

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IG7 Spreads (Mar 23)

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IG8 Spreads (Mar 23)

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IG9 Spreads (Mar 23)


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2009-03-23 USER


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Existing Home Sales (Feb)

Survey 4.45M
Actual 4.72M
Prior 4.49M
Revised n/a

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Existing Home Sales MoM (Feb)

Survey -0.9%
Actual 5.1%
Prior -5.3%
Revised n/a

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Existing Home Sales YoY (Feb)

Survey n/a
Actual -4.6%
Prior -8.6%
Revised n/a

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Existing Home Sales Inventory (Feb)

Survey n/a
Actual 3.798
Prior 3.611
Revised n/a

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Existing Home Sales ALLX 1 (Feb)

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Existing Home Sales ALLX 2 (Feb)

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Existing Home Sales TABLE 1 (Feb)

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Existing Home Sales TABLE 2 (Feb)


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