Brent Nyitray
Fairlington Blade
Let the mutherfuker burn!
jnc4p
Kevin S. Willis
Michigoose
lmsinca
markinaustin
Arcanaut
novahockey
quarterback
ScottC
yellojktVital Statistics:
| Last | Change | Percent | |
| S&P Futures | 1561.8 | 5.9 | 0.38% |
| Eurostoxx Index | 2644.5 | 60.9 | 2.36% |
| Oil (WTI) | 88.24 | -0.9 | -1.07% |
| LIBOR | 0.276 | 0.001 | 0.18% |
| US Dollar Index (DXY) | 82.98 | 0.303 | 0.37% |
| 10 Year Govt Bond Yield | 1.67% | -0.03% | |
| Current Coupon Ginnie Mae TBA | 106.2 | 0.0 | |
| Current Coupon Fannie Mae TBA | 104.4 | 0.1 | |
| RPX Composite Real Estate Index | 191 | 0.5 | |
| BankRate 30 Year Fixed Rate Mortgage | 3.5 |
Markets are stronger this morning after weak European economic data raised the possibility of further easing. Apple will report after the close. The Markit US Flash PMI came in light. Bonds and MBS are up.
FHFA reported that home prices increased .7% MOM in February. Year-over-year, prices rose 7.1%. The FHFA index reports sales of homes with mortgages owned by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, so it is more of a “central tendency” index. It doesn’t include cash sales in places like Phoenix or San Francisco which is skewing some of the other indices. Prices are back to October 2004 levels
Chart: FHFA Home Price Index.
NVR reported disappointing earnings yesterday. The Reston VA-based homebuilder / mortgage originator reported sales increased by 28% and origination increased by 13%. The EPS and revenue numbers were light, however and the stock sold off. NVR is primarily East Coast based, which explains the difference between its results and KB Home’s which showed a 60% increase in revenues.
Flights are being delayed across the country due to furloughs of air traffic controllers. This is President Obama’s last and best chance to show the country that the sequestration cuts will hurt. His most recent budget will raise taxes on pretty much everyone, although it will mainly hit those who make $200,000 or more. It also includes AMT II, aka the Buffet Rule.
Filed under: Morning Report |
All Things in Moderation 
As a relatively frequent flier, I’m of two minds over the sequester cuts. Everyone admits they were ill-advised and a bad compromise to avoid whatever phantom crisis had created them (Was it debt default or gummint shutdown? It all blurs together.). However, there are certain functions of government which are usually done effectively and efficiently that simply don’t have the imagined share of waste fraud and abuse to hack away at.
For Republicans to now cry crocodile tears over the damage this is doing to their weekly travel schedule doesn’t elicit any sympathy. Admission that there are core competencies of the government that should be fully funded would be a good first step.
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yello:
Everyone admits they were ill-advised…
Do they? I don’t.
BTW, does anyone now what the FAA budget has been for the last few years, and what it is now after the cuts? I have looked and cannot find any article that give the raw numbers apart from how much has been cut, ie $600 million.
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I linked to a HotAir piece yesterday. The delays didn’t really materialize or were due to weather or runway maintenance delays. Also, since the depression began air travel is down while the FAA budget has been increasing yearly, including this year. Any flight delays due to furloughs that materialize are intentional as well as another example of Obama’s terrible management style. Why is it a believer in Federal government power is so utterly incompetent at administering it?
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McWing:
So, according to that link, the budget is still up year-over-year even after the sequester cuts. Which raises the question…why wasn’t it necessary for furloughs and the allegedly inevitable delays last year, when the budget was even smaller than it is now?
The notion that virtually any government spending program operates “effectively and efficiently” is, I think, nuts. My brother-in-law works for the federal government and is responsible for a budget, and we had a long discussion a few weeks ago about the whole budgeting process. He was frustrated because there is no financial incentive, either personally or within his area of control, for him to save money. If he manages to save money in a given budget cycle, he doesn’t get paid any more, and he loses that allocation in the future. He didn’t spend it, so he obviously doesn’t need it. As a manager he has absolutely no incentive to save money, and every incentive to come up with ways to spend more money. The process virtually guarantees waste and inefficiency.
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As every Democratic mayor knows, when you don’t get the levy you want passed, the first thing you do is cut the necessary and visible stuff like garbage pickup service, while protecting the the invisible and optional stuff like running the street cleaners, paperwork jockeys in city hall, etc.
Democrat governance 101.
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Part of the problem with wasteful government spending is that it is hard to isolate the waste. It is too well marbled into the other functions. The sequester doesn’t even attempt to do so. It just amputates limbs as a weight loss plan.
According to this WaPo article, the furloughs are $200M of the total FAA $637M sequester cuts. For as labor intensive an activity as air traffic control, it’s ridiculous to think cuts of that magnitude won’t affect service levels.
Back when I listened to right wing talk radio, the FAA seemed to be a particularly favorite target as a hotbed of rampant political correctness.
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yello:
Part of the problem with wasteful government spending is that it is hard to isolate the waste.
It might be hard for you and
Ime to isolate, but that doesn’t mean it is hard to isolate for those doing the spending. They know where the waste is, they just have no incentive to get rid of it.LikeLike
Amputation is the only solution. Who needs 16 Trillion arms and legs? Slice away!
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Republicans should have just mandated the controller funding in the FY2013 CR and picked an offset. This was tactically stupid of them.
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The boston bomber’s motivation was the wars according to WaPo: http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/boston-bombing-suspect-cites-us-wars-as-motivation-officials-say/2013/04/23/324b9cea-ac29-11e2-b6fd-ba6f5f26d70e_story.html
Of course not radical Islam, cause that’s not PC.
I am sure Greg is writing a “It’s Bush’s fault” post as we speak…
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I look forward to his scoop. It’ll be hard to top his Aqua Bhudda bombshell that upended an election.
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If its the wars, do we have another example of left wing violence?
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Market rumors about explosions in white house…
edit: AP twitter account sent it out…AP says its account was hacked. Market went berzerk.
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Blow back from indiscriminate drone strikes is real.
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Grist for the FAA debate:
http://m.washingtonexaminer.com/article/2527920
Key section:
“Here are the facts: President Obama’s 2013 FAA Budget Request asked for just $15.172 billion. But Congress gave them an extra $1.1 billion for the Grants-in-Aid for Airports program, bringing their total 2013 funding to $16.668 billion. Then the sequester lopped off $669 million in FAA funding, leaving them with $15.999 billion.
But that $15.999 billion is more money than they originally asked for to run the entire agency!”
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McWing:
I guess Obama was planning on furloughing the air traffic controllers even without the sequester.
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If this causes the Republicans to fold, then they deserve to lose.
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jnc:
If this causes the Republicans to fold, then they deserve to lose.
Are there murmurings that they are going to fold over this? That would be bad indeed.
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I find their whining tiresome. After 5 years of dealing with Obama, this was predicable and should have been addressed directly in the FY2013 CR.
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If Williams Sonoma stops selling pressure cookers does that mean the terrorists have won?
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This was an interesting read from 1920:
“New York Times: “To Put Down Terrorists,” September 18, 1920″
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9402E6DF1F31E433A2575BC1A96F9C946195D6CF
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@ScottC: “It might be hard for you and I me to isolate, but that doesn’t mean it is hard to isolate for those doing the spending.”
Hard for them too, I think. Everything is important when it’s your project, your associates, your bailiwick, and cutting spending is hard. If cutting spending changes your position, or puts you at risk, or lowers your power, or makes you unpopular . . . hard. Cutting is only easy when it has immediate benefit to you (or your tribe), doesn’t effect you negatively, or enhances your status with your colleagues/within your social group.
Then it becomes a battle between those for whom that is true and for whom the opposite is true.
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Kevin:
Hard for them too, I think.
I think there is a difference between difficulty in identifying waste/inefficiency and difficulty in eliminating it. The frustration of my brother-in-law is precisely that he can easily see the waste/inefficiency that is going on, but he has no incentive – indeed he has a disincentive – to eliminate it.
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@Brent: “The boston bomber’s motivation was the wars”
Don’t care. The excuses people give for their behavior seems largely irrelevant to me. Whether they are protesting wars or equal rights for gays or doing it to protest the premature cancelation of My So-Called Life . . . there’s no justification, and pretending that if you somehow address these so-called “reasons” (rationalizations, in fact, for the acting out of sociopathic behaviors that would probably be perpetrated anyway) will fix anything.
You can’t set foreign policy based on what someone might do. Stephen King pulled his early novel Rage from publication because it was “inspiring” copycat school hostage situations. Which accomplishes an important thing: if someone does something like that in the future, he doesn’t have to feel culpability. But, 9 times out of 10, someone who is going to read a book about a high school student taking his class hostage and then go act that out is going to engage in some sociopathic behavior anyway, finding inspiration, and justifications, elsewhere.
At some point, we have to hold the people who actually do things responsible for what it is they do.
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Not only do I agree with KW, but when I read “American wars” I automatically think “Muslim extremists”, first, especially since we haven’t gone to war in Dagestan or Chechnya. Personal responsibility, in the end, is the real deal. And the kid bro will get life without parole, or death, depending on whether he spills anything useful or whether he embraces martyrdom, in which case maybe he should be “forced” to live.
NoVa, I almost came to your assistance at PL, about the West explosion, but decided everyone else there was too embedded in their preconceptions. Texas papers have been and are flooded with photos, like the one I posted here [I think], and PLers all believe that “inspections” would have revealed the safety issue, without even knowing where the flame came from. It was not spontaneous combustion. Judging by the HUGE newsworthiness of the blast in Texas, in the 4th, 7th, 8th, 11th, and 15th largest cities in America, the only press problem that can be for sure pointed out is that NYC, DC, LA, and Chi media don’t give a shit about central Texas. You were spot on, except there are some decent accommodations in Waco, it being a college town that hosts many thousands for Baylor home football. There are no real good restaurants and no bars in Waco, so that means there is no news that a national reporter would cover there. I don’t know if any even came down for Koresh. If they did, they probably stayed in D, or FW, or in Austin.
Also, the press loves speculating about terrorism. We heard every theory from AQ [my first thought, admittedly] to skinheads [akin to DTR’s repeating what some analysts told her on NPR] and it may turn out to be sort of none of the above, because no Russian born Muslims had ever lifted a hand against America before there was no speculation about them. What we do know about PL is that most commenters there are uninterested in facts that do not fit their own notions.
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What we do know about PL is that most commenters there are uninterested in facts that do not fit their own notions.
Hey! I resemble that remark!
the West TX explosion is going to get a lot more Texas coverage because it is local. There is a whole formula involving fatalities and distance and number of photogenic blondes involved that drive news coverage. Fertilizer will never be as sexy as swarthy terrorists.
As a matter of risk assessment, proper regulation of small grade industrial facilities is a far greater threat to the nation than some semi-abandoned ne’er-do-wells with a credit card and access to fireworks.
And by regulation I do not necessarily mean a new level of bureaucracy. A visit from the fire marshal or the insurance company underwriter should have avoided this particular incident. But you can’t cure stupidity. Which is often why we need rules. The rules that sound the most common sensical like don’t burn palates near giant piles of flammable materials are the ones that are often needed the most.
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But you can’t cure stupidity. Which is often why we need rules. The rules that sound the most common sensical like don’t burn palates near giant piles of flammable materials are the ones that are often needed the most.
Sounds right to me.
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There’s a dude currently doing time in Federal prison they’re looking at for this. His crime?
Bomb-making.
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McWing, that’s the paramedic who showed up at the scene right? Who also liked to make pipe-bombs in his spare time, right?
Can’t imagine there’s any connection.
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That’s him.
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@ScottC: “I think there is a difference between difficulty in identifying waste/inefficiency and difficulty in eliminating it”
In a purely objective sense, I grant you, but it’s difficult to identify your pet project, or your good friend and colleague’s position, as part of waste and inefficiency because closeness to the people/project/expense limits objectivity. Similarly, even more than a few layers of distance makes it likely you will cut efficient and worthwhile programs and positions and preserve inefficient and wasteful people and programs because you aren’t close enough, and have an inaccurate perspective, despite being more objective.
Which leaves us, mostly, with one real world solution: do what we do. Cut randomly, or across the board, or via sequester, and those people and departments and programs than can adapt will continue, and those that cannot will stagnate or be eliminated, and those served by such programs (or taking advantage of such grants) will find other ways to accomplish at least some of their goals, or perish.
When you lose a good job, no matter how unfair it was or how good you were at the job, you will generally find some other job, perhaps not as good or rewards, in order to pay the bills. Necessity accomplishes much.
The great benefit of the free market approach is that there is always a minimum degree of effectiveness required to remain in business. The most wasteful private companies run with the poorest efficiency can only stay for so long; eventually, reality catches up. This pruning mechanism is not present for government programs, which leaves more artificial means for pruning.
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@ScottC: “edit: AP twitter account sent it out…AP says its account was hacked. Market went berzerk.”
For pity’s sake. If you kids can’ play nice with the Internet, we’re going to take it away.
It makes it so hard to take anything you read on the Interwebz seriously. Any news story can be misreported rumor or parody, or hacking, or misreported hacking . . .
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