The official prognosticators are always looking for signs that the economy has improved. Sometimes they are right, most of the time they are just hopeful. Reports have just come out that show signs of improvement in the housing industry, but I would temper any enthusiasm with a realistic outlook–housing isn’t everything. Still, this is good news:
Overall, 626,000 new houses were built in the last 12 months.
This was higher than the 610,000 forecast by some economists.
The Commerce Department also said that applications for building permits, another barometer of activity, rose by a better-than-expected 7.5% to 685,000.
These numbers certainly are encouraging–but we’ll have to wait for a while to see if they actually mean anything substantial.
Time Magazine has a really interesting story about a Russian tycoon who bought a British newspaper, the Independent, in hopes of turning it around. Some people, apparently, doubt his methods and his choice of newspaper–but he appears to be making a go of it.
The Independent sells only around 100,000 copies in the U.K. on a typical weekday, trailing London’s four other quality dailies — the Daily Telegraph, Rupert Murdoch’s Times of London, the Financial Times and the Guardian — and consistently loses about $15 million a year. Lebedev, whose first experience in London was as a KGB agent in the 1980s, offered a characteristically enigmatic response: “Well, either I am a Russian spy, or I am mad, or I believe you can make money out of newspapers.”
The rest of the story is extremely intriguing. It gives readers an insight into the incredible risk that great businessmen often must brave in order to get a shot at large profits.
Wendy’s/Arby’s Group as been struggling since the onset of the recession, like most other restaurants. However, they have begun to implement changes, especially for Arby’s, which has struggled more than Wendy’s.
The fast food chain announced an effort to revitalize its sagging Arby’s chain by adding a dollar menu and renovating many of its locations. While Arby’s is faring far worse than Wendy’s, there’s also menu changes afoot there, too.
CEO Roland Smith updated investors during Thursday’s fourth-quarter earnings conference call, saying the company expected to add grilled egg sandwiches, oatmeal bars, roasted potatoes and fresh fruit to menus by the end of the next year.
My guess is that their numbers aren’t going to improve significantly until the economy does. Sales numbers aren’t hurting because they don’t offer oatmeal bars, they’re hurting because people don’t have money for Arby’s or Wendy’s.
The dollar and the Euro represent the economies and long-term stability of the economies of the United States and Europe, respectively. These are not simple forms of currency, they are also indicators of economic well-being. The euro is currently sitting at a 5-month low against the dollar. For a currency that was so recently climbing against the dollar, this is bad news. China, which has experienced enormous growth over the past year that some attribute to inflation. Confidence in China for the euro is falling, and quickly.
Short-term players sold the euro after data showed China’s gross domestic product expanded 8.7% in 2009, beating market expectations for 8.5% growth. Separate data showed the country’s consumer price index was up 1.9% from a year earlier in December, exceeding expectations for a 1.7% rise and underscoring inflation concerns.
The selling drove the euro down to $1.4067, its lowest level since August 17 last year. Concern that Chinese authorities may take the most recent data as a cue to tighten monetary policy further could continue to weigh on the euro and other commodity-linked currencies like the Australian dollar, dealers said. Thursday’s indicators came a day after China’s banking regulator said it will rein in new lending this year.
The speculation about China’s tightening central bank policies will lead to more bad news, both for the economy in general and the euro specifically.