Bad Rumblings in the Economy

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Bad economic news #1:

Real estate prices slid again in December, pushing a leading price index within a whisper of its lowest level since the housing crash began, data released Tuesday showed….“Despite improvements in the overall economy, housing continues to drift lower and weaker,” David M. Blitzer, chair of S.&P.’s Index Committee, said in a statement.

Bad economic news #2:

World oil prices are rising sharply as violence spreads through Libya, the first major petroleum exporter to be threatened by unrest sweeping North Africa and the Mideast. As fears mounted that soaring energy costs could derail the global economic recovery, the benchmark price of crude in London on Monday surged $5.48, or more than 5%, to $108.20 a barrel, its highest level since September 2008.

Falling house prices are hardly a surprise, so by itself this isn’t that big a deal. Rising oil prices weren’t either, back when they’d only gone up to $80 or so. But triple digits? And possibly more to come depending on what happens in Libya and elsewhere? Combine that with stubbornly high unemployment in the U.S., growing inflation in China, financial woes in Europe, and obvious fragility in the overall pace of our recovery from the Great Recession, and we might be wishing we’d opted for a more robust stimulus package pretty soon.

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AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

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If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

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