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 | 1632.7 | 1.8 | 0.11% |
| Eurostoxx Index | 2654.8 | -11.8 | -0.44% |
| Oil (WTI) | 95.66 | -0.2 | -0.23% |
| LIBOR | 0.273 | 0.000 | 0.00% |
| US Dollar Index (DXY) | 80.92 | -0.031 | -0.04% |
| 10 Year Govt Bond Yield | 2.21% | -0.02% | |
| Current Coupon Ginnie Mae TBA | 101.5 | 0.3 | |
| Current Coupon Fannie Mae TBA | 99.8 | 0.7 | |
| RPX Composite Real Estate Index | 203.4 | 0.5 | |
| BankRate 30 Year Fixed Rate Mortgage | 4.05 |
Markets are higher this morning after a slew of economic data that was generally negative. Bonds and MBS are up.
In economic data this morning, the producer price index showed inflation remains in check at the wholesale level. Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization were lower than expected. Finally, the University of Michigan Consumer Confidence number fell. Yesterday, the Bloomberg Consumer Comfort Index fell, and the driver was people’s perception of their own financial situation. Perhaps the increase in interest rates is beginning to be felt.
Next week will be the FOMC meeting. Market participants will undoubtedly be focusing on the debate over tapering QE. Are they comfortable with the recent spike in long-term rates?
Mortgage investors are starting to rotate to non-agency paper as rates rise. It is basically a bet that the housing market continues to improve. At the margin, it should put pressure on agency paper, which will increase borrowing rates.
We have already seen some of the effects of mortgage REIT deleveraging in the MBS space. The spread between Ginnie I and Ginnie II securities has narrowed, as well as the spread between Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac TBAs. Fannie Mae and Ginnie I TBAs generally trade at a premium to Freddie Mac TBAs and Ginnie II TBAs respectively. Why is this happening? Mortgage REIT deleveraging. The Ginnie Is and Fannie Mae TBAs are more liquid than the IIs and Freddie Macs. And when you are deleveraging, you sell what you can, not necessarily what you want to. Punch line? Ginnie loans and Fannie loans are getting more expensive relative to Freddie loans.
The MR will be spotty next week as I will be on the Left Coast.
Filed under: Morning Report |
All Things in Moderation 
George Will rips into Lois Lerner:
As soon as the Constitution permitted him to run for Congress, Al Salvi did. In 1986, just 26 and fresh from the University of Illinois law school, he sank $1,000 of his own money, which was most of his money, into a campaign to unseat an incumbent Democratic congressman. Salvi studied for the bar exam during meals at campaign dinners.
He lost. Today, however, he should be invited to Congress to testify about what happened 10 years later when as a prosperous lawyer he won the Republican Senate nomination to run against a Democratic congressman named Dick Durbin.
In the fall of 1996, at the campaign’s climax, Democrats filed with the Federal Elections Commission charges alleging campaign finance violations by Salvi’s campaign. These charges dominated the campaign’s closing days. Salvi spoke by phone with the head of the FEC’s Enforcement Division, who he remembers saying: “Promise me you will never run for office again, and we’ll drop this case.” He was speaking to Lois Lerner.
After losing to Durbin, Salvi spent four years and $100,000 fighting the FEC, on whose behalf FBI agents visited his elderly mother demanding to know, concerning her $2,000 contribution to her son’s campaign, where she got “that kind of money.” When the second of two federal courts held that the charges against Salvi were spurious, the lawyer arguing for the FEC was Lois Lerner.
He also calls her a “bureaucratic bully” and a “slithering partisan”. I wonder what he really thinks.
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Really interesting observation from David French over at The Corner, detailing the number of government lawyers, civil servants, who are Obama partisans:
The civil-service system was designed to replace the spoils system, which — in addition to creating chaotic rushes of office-seekers with each change of administration — packed political hacks into important administrative positions. A civil service was supposed to change that unacceptable reality by placing the administration of the more neutral functions of the government into the hands of dispassionate professionals. Thus the strong federal job security in the civil service, greater security than enjoyed by virtually any private-sector employee. The job security — so the argument goes — was necessary to prevent the re-emergence of blatant political patronage.
But what if the combination of increasingly activist government with strong bureacratic bias re-creates federal service as a kind of permanent spoils system for the Left? Isn’t it inevitable that this leftist bureaucracy will eventually view itself not as a servant for all citizens but as an instrument of its own righteous ideology?
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He also calls her a “bureaucratic bully” and a “slithering partisan”.
This is a hit piece. I wonder who fed Will all this oppo-research.
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yello:
I wonder who fed Will all this oppo-research.
A Congressional hearing. From Will’s article:
Last week, in a televised House Ways and Means Committee hearing, Rep. Peter Roskam, R-Ill., Salvi’s former law partner, told the riveting story of the partisan enforcement of campaign laws to suppress political competition by distracting Salvi and entangling him in bureaucratic snares.
But, of course, as Will also noted:
The next day, the number of inches of newsprint in The Washington Post and New York Times devoted to Roskam’s revelation was the number of minutes that had been devoted to it on the three broadcast networks’ evening news programs the night before: Zero.
Hard to believe, I know.
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“This is a hit piece.”
It certainly left an impression.
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WSJ makes probably the best case for the NSA surveillance I have seen so far.
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” data-mining is justified to the extent it wards off far more illiberal and anti-democratic measures that might be imposed following another attack with mass casualties”
the “it could be worse” argument?
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Ha, too bad this guy isn’t one of ours.
“Those who think that it is okay to behave in a way that demeans or exploits their colleagues have no place in this army…. If that does not suit you, then get out.”
“It is up to us to make a difference. If you’re not up for it, find something else to do with your life. There is no place for you amongst this band of brothers and sisters”.
http://americablog.com/2013/06/australian-army-chief-how-a-real-leader-deals-with-harassment-of-women.html
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Who knew they needed a poll to tell us this.
Whenever House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is asked about Congress’ woefully low approval rating, he invariably responds by noting history: for as long as there’s been a Congress, it’s been unpopular with the public.
And to be sure, there’s certainly something to that argument. But what Boehner and every other lawmaker needs to realize is that since the dawn of modern polling, Congress has never been this unpopular.
Gallup reported yesterday, “Americans’ confidence in Congress as an institution is down to 10%, ranking the legislative body last on a list of 16 societal institutions for the fourth straight year. This is the lowest level of confidence Gallup has found, not only for Congress, but for any institution on record.”
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Good story in today’s post about no-knock raid gone bad (death of suspect) in today’s post. Radley Balko is quoted which I was excited to see.
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NoVa – There is a good companion piece written by the sister of a young man with Down Syndrome who was suffocated by several off duty deputies of the same department when he wouldn’t leave a theatre.
ßß
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