Brent Nyitray
Fairlington Blade
Let the mutherfuker burn!
jnc4p
Kevin S. Willis
Michigoose
lmsinca
markinaustin
Memetrics
novahockey
quarterback
ScottC
yellojktVital Statistics:
| Last | Change | Percent | |
| S&P Futures | 1701.3 | 9.3 | 0.55% |
| Eurostoxx Index | 2999.1 | -5.5 | -0.18% |
| Oil (WTI) | 101 | -0.2 | -0.24% |
| LIBOR | 0.246 | 0.003 | 1.03% |
| US Dollar Index (DXY) | 80.32 | -0.164 | -0.20% |
| 10 Year Govt Bond Yield | 2.74% | 0.01% | |
| Current Coupon Ginnie Mae TBA | 105 | -0.2 | |
| Current Coupon Fannie Mae TBA | 104.1 | -0.1 | |
| RPX Composite Real Estate Index | 200.7 | -0.2 | |
| BankRate 30 Year Fixed Rate Mortgage | 4.33 |
Markets are higher this morning on optimism that a deal is unfolding in the Senate. Bonds and MBS are down. The Mortgage Bankers Association reported that applications increased .3% last week.
Last night, Fitch put US sovereign debt on rating watch negative. “Although Fitch continues to believe that the debt ceiling will be raised soon, the political brinkmanship and reduced financing flexibility could increase the risk of a U.S. default”
Harry Reid and Mitch McConnel are finalizing plans to raise the debt ceiling through Feb 7 and fund the government through Jan 15. Technically the government runs out of money tomorrow, however independent analysts say that the real D-day is November 1. Note that T-bills maturing Oct 31 are trading with a yield of 36 basis points, which means the market is discounting the possibility that they get paid late. Both sides have been making small concessions to get a deal done. Of course the wild card is the House, and whatever solution that comes out of the Senate will leave obamacare largely intact. Note, as I write this, Bloomberg is saying that the T-bills maturing 10/31 now yield 52 basis points.
The dog that didn’t bark – shadow inventory. People have been warning of mass dumping of REO properties, but it never occurred, and now shadow inventory is working its way down. Regulators never forced the banks to write down / dispose of bad assets like they did after the S&L crisis in the late 80s. Billions of dollars were raised to capitalize on this, and the flow has been a slow trickle. Second, judges have been slow to approve foreclosures, particularly in the Northeast. This explains the wide disparity between home price appreciation in the West, where the shadow inventory has largely been worked off and the Northeast.
Bank of America announced 3Q earnings this morning, and came in better than expected. The pipeline ended the quarter down 59% quarter on quarter. Production was $465m vs $860 in Q2 based on lower gain on sale margins and a reduction in rate lock volume. 78% were refis.
Filed under: Morning Report |
All Things in Moderation 
RE: REO Properties – so Pretend and Extend worked?
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state of play:
Republican Senators are scheduled to meet at 11:00 am.
announcement is expected around noon.
Boehner has agreed to allow the House to vote first on the Senate-compromise plan and allow its passage with mostly Democratic votes
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i have a radio interview at 3:00 pm where I discuss the debt ceiling crisis and how to play it.. The crisis will probably be over by that point.
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now there is rumbling that the House is going to do something.
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NoVA, any public source for that, or internal rumor mill?
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rumor mill. but it seems to be a procedural move to speed things in the senate.
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Pass a clean 5 month Debt Limit.
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Oh, and…
Ted Cruz!!!1111!1!1!!!
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The agreement will open the government through Jan. 15, lift the debt ceiling through Feb. 7 and require a bicameral budget conference committee by Dec. 13.
Jan 15. I leave for Disney
Feb 7. weekend of my wife’s birthday.
fuckers.
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Overheard on k street:
Those fuckers just got a 2 and a half week paid vacation.
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nova:
Those fuckers just got a 2 and a half week paid vacation.
Everyone knew that would happen. My niece was scheduled to go to Washington for an interview last week. The week before, the person she was supposed to interview with got in touch with her and told her that because of the shutdown, they wouldn’t be able to do the interview as officially scheduled, but if she came in on Saturday she was told they could meet up at a Starbucks to do it. My niece said that she had planned on being there Monday, so could they just meet in Starbucks then? “Oh no, I won’t be around. I’m going away for a vacation now that I don’t have to work.”
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How did I end up arguing the Libertarian point of view on PL??
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b/c that dude is a communist. but doesn’t know it.
and communism united the factions.
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Heh
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no, really. i think that guy is an actual honest to god Red.
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“How did I end up arguing the Libertarian point of view on PL??”
you?
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“no, really. i think that guy is an actual honest to god Red.”
who? There are some honest to god communists on PL
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She’s a she, but her revolution certainly is Communism and you’re right, she doesn’t know it.
And now you and jnc are
“Propriatarians”“Propertarians”, just so you know. She poo-poo-ed my link to libertarianism.org and informed me that it was a web site for people who don’t know what Libertarians actually believe.She’s started a new thread, so I may have to do some more baiting.
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Aletheia101
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Brent: Aletheia
And, yes, little ol’ me. And I can argue Libertarianism pretty well, if I do say so myself.
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Aletheia is definitely a communist. Although she seems to believe that only true communism exists with the absence of a state.
She branded communism as we have seen it as “state capitalism.”. I’m sure Stalin thought of himself as a state capitalist…
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It’s really disturbing to me. I just don’t get how someone could embrace that given its history.
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Shorter Carville: It’s better with less media.
http://thehill.com/opinion/columnists/james-carville/328731-polarization-in-media-worsens-partisanship
#FuckingKochBrothersOwnEverything…AndTedCruz!!1!1!1111!!!!
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Aletheia:
Me:
Bomb’s away!
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Mich:
You do realize that this is actually Communism, right?
As arguments for progressive taxation go, it’s probably one of the more internally consistent ones. If one is going to claim the right to other people’s wealth, it’s hard to be logical without adopting a communist framework.
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It’s really disturbing to me. I just don’t get how someone could embrace that given its history.
She doesn’t think Stalin, Pol Pot, or Mao have anything to do with Communism and its past.
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I was listening to an interview w/Rep. John Culberson last Friday on a local Houston station. He mentioned that last February he was going to vote no on raising the debt ceiling when, in the House floor, Boehner pulled him aside and asked him to vote for it this time and in Octobter it would default if O didn’t deal. So he voted with Boehner.
With that in mind, Boehner signaled as early as June that there would be no default. He is not trusted.
http://thefederalist.com/2013/10/16/time-john-boehner-resign-speaker/
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Scott:
You know me, I fully admit to being a bleeding heart Pinko liberal.
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oh, jeez. i just saw the “those we’re not true communists!” line.
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I think she’s over her head.
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Quote of the day on PL:
Snort!
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I’m not paying for your orgasm.
I am trying to imagine the context for this, but I cannot come up with any plausible idea…
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I think she imagines Communism as some arrangement where all production is owned by the people (but not the state) and the state somehow manages to facilitate society but not impose its will. Or something..
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The woman who learned nothing from JNC’s patient discussion with her is boring. If I go there and find ‘Goose, banned, nova, and Jnc it can be fun.
She actually suggested the Soviets were “state capitalists”? I got shrink to back off that for awhile about China by explaining how capitalism as a theory was a response to both mercantilism and feudalism, and that China seemed to be both mercantilist and feudal – ante-capitalist. But shrink is a smart guy.
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it’s loony tunes is what it is.
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Brent: it was all shrink’s fault. You can find the thread here.
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“b/c that dude is a communist. but doesn’t know it.”
No, she proudly admits to it, but then redefines everything to exclude any negative consequences under the “No True Scotsman” argument. I.e Stalin wasn’t an actual communist.
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“Michigoose, on October 16, 2013 at 12:57 pm said:
Scott:
You know me, I fully admit to being a bleeding heart Pinko liberal.”
I think you are fronting. I think when push comes to shove you are more about personal responsibility than you let on.
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There is another guy, SteveO, who is always preaching about “democratic capitalism”, which I take to mean Communism with a vote.
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Only in a relatively small homogeneous setting under stress has actual state socialism ever worked – ever. As soon as the stess is relieved [see Israel’s development] a democratic republic will turn to capitalism as the only way to maximize produtivity and minimize cost. Our internal capitalist disagreements, wherein I and JNC believe in strong anti-trust enforcemnt to assure the competitve mechanism and Scott believes that even a monopoly must fear the result of competition are relatively petty in comparison to our disagreement with Marxism. In fact, I liken monopoly to state control from my perspective, in terms of optimizing the economy.
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Mark:
In fact, I liken monopoly to state control from my perspective, in terms of optimizing the economy.
Actually I too object to coercive monopolies, but those can’t be stopped by anti-trust law because they are in fact the result of law, which is why I object to them. But, for example, Microsoft’s “monopoly”, which produced so much anti-trust angst, didn’t look to me anything like state control, as the rise of Apple demonstrates.
Ironically it is anti-trust laws themselves which give the state control, and which can produce politically preferred rather than economically optimal outcomes.
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Jonathan Chait takes the Republican shutdown and debt ceiling fight analogies to a new level:
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Mark, the communitarianism which Aletheia advocates can also work in small, self selecting communes where they can expel disruptive members, but trying to advocate it as a national government basically ends up with something like OWS with nuclear weapons.
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JNC – another place communitarianism works is on small scale community stuff like churches and even credit unions and investment clubs. The difference, as you point out, is scale and voluntarism. The bigger and less singular the goal, the more dictatorial force is necessary to force “communitarianism”.
Scott, we continue to disagree about monopolies, which are by definition non-competitive whether they have achieved dominance through patent, through graft, through force, or through better initial capitalization or good luck or genius.
I have agreed with you about natural monopolies, of course – I think they should be private and regulated where possible but sometimes they should be public, according to experience, not necessarily according to prejudged doctrine.
I have come to think that much of health care – particularly hospital care and the market restrictions imposed by the AMA -smack of monopoly practice.
‘Goose, she sounds like someone who just read the introduction to a Betty Crocker cookbook and from that is flaunting her new found knowledge of Julia Childs.
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Mark:
Scott, we continue to disagree about monopolies, which are by definition non-competitive
I definitely dispute the notion that monopolies are by definition non-competitive. A monopoly can be achieved by, and maintained by, being better at competition than others. It only becomes a problem when the monopoly is maintained by means other than competition, the primary method of which is government intervention.
If a given company attains a monopoly by providing a superior product than any of its competitors, and maintains it by continuing to provide a superior product than any of its would-be competitors, I can’t think of any reason why the government should intervene to stop them.
I think I said this before, but the primary problem with a monopoly is not the absence of any competition, but rather the absence of the threat of any competition. And the most efficient way to eliminate the threat of competition is via the use of legislation. Like anti-trust laws, which allow some companies to “compete” in the absence of the competition of (certain) others.
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Really good comment at Ace just now. It captures the essence of my political objections to big government in general and the progressive project in particular. This is exactly how the left undermines freedom and true self-rule.
Ace, I disagree in one aspect – it wasn’t mere apathy that helped to reduce political participation. It was primarily the elevation of so much to the national level, and the moving of so much power to the bureaucracy. If your city council wants to tear down a beloved building and put up a carpark, you can mobilize and get a few hundred people to stop it – at least get it on a ballot. If the folks in DC want to close a national monument in a fit of pique, you have to mobilize thousands or tens of thousands and get them all to go to DC and make their message visible and dramatic. That takes a LOT more effort and money. So, if you want to take over the society and the nation, you nationalize everything, and run a crisis-centered, vastly populist campaign based on feelings and “doing something!” You also hand over as much rulemaking to the mandarin class as possible, so you can shrug your shoulders and say “nothing I can do.” You absolve yourself of responsibility, while still maximizing your power, and reducing responsiveness to the hoi polloi.
It was not an accidental thing that the populace began to feel apathetic about just how much it could change in politics and governance. It was the design all along – and globalization is the next step. The higher the level of government, the more technocratic and authoritarian it can become. Then your life can be ruled from conception to decomposition – all for your good!
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JNC — Ioved you line the other day about capitalism bringing us more 3-day music festivals than ever before.
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Now she’s on fascism. Oh, lord!
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Nova, we can feel oppressed together at Charlie Palmer’s tonight for serf happy hour before steaks as we contemplate the wine and beer list and feel ashamed of all the waste produced through competition in the capitalist system.
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Oh, sure, jnc–rub it in!
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Well, to read Chait or any of the other lefty writers, I’d say we’re at most 2 years away from the first sedition trial.
I’m so old I remember when dissent was patriotic.
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“‘Goose, she sounds like someone who just read the introduction to a Betty Crocker cookbook and from that is flaunting her new found knowledge of Julia Childs.”
I disagree with this. She’s pretty well read. She just accepts the premises of Marxism completely and from that all else follows. Her definitions fit within that framework.
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JNC< she was better in her conversation with you but equating any American pol in office to a fascist is an indication that she picked up a word that she vaguely knows means “not Marxist and therefore bad”. She does not have any understanding of fascism and the authoritarian leader’s reliance on “representative” groups – industrial trusts, unions, trade associations and the like, through which government both operates and obtains feedback, in a somewhat analogous way to classical feudalism, and it has a protectionist aspect that serves the state, not the public.
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If the folks in DC want to close a national monument in a fit of pique
And what would that be?
the hoi polloi
Pet peeve: it isn’t “the” hoi polloi, it’s just hoi polloi.
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Mich:
And what would that be?
Barricading open air monuments in public parks, like the Vietnam memorial and the WWII memorial, under the pretense of the government shutdown, even though it actually cost more money to “close” them than to leave them open with unfettered access as they usually are 24/7. Which is the kind of crap that O was pulling for the last 2 weeks.
Pet peeve: it isn’t “the” hoi polloi, it’s just hoi polloi.
Not for those of us who are members of of it.
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Given that the police and NPS rangers that had to patrol those open air monuments weren’t being paid, I think your calling it “pique” is, well, pique on your part. Not to mention if one of those Tea Party ralliers who decided to climb all over the monuments like they were playground equipment had sprained an ankle and required medical attention the DC EMTs weren’t being paid.
Not for those of us who are members of of it.
Well, if you want to be “the the majority”, OK. But you aren’t tonight!
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Merely “hoi polloi”? Cool. At the pace of one new fact a day I would have learned 25K facts by now. How great is that? I missed some days.
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Mark:
Merely “hoi polloi”? Cool.
Actually according the OED: “Hoi is the Greek word for the, and the phrase hoi polloi means ‘the many.’ This has led some traditionalists to insist that hoi polloi should not be used in English with the, since that would be to state the word the twice. But, once established in English, expressions such as hoi polloi are typically treated as fixed units and are subject to the rules and conventions of English. Evidence shows that use with the has now become an accepted part of standard English usage: they kept to themselves, away from the hoi polloi (rather than . . . away from hoi polloi).”
So “the hoi polloi” is a perfectly acceptable English phrase. Nothing wrong with it.
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Does anybody think that if the Stasi, er , Park Police weren’t preparing to bayonet, er “keep out” 88 year old combat vets that the WWII memorial would have been completely destroyed by roving bands of furloughed government worke…, er vandals?
I don’t. And if anybody had done any damage there would have been literally hundreds if not thousands of volunteers to guard the memorials.
It’s obvious these monuments are FAR to important to be kept in te hands if the Federal Government.
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So “the hoi polloi” is a perfectly acceptable English phrase. Nothing wrong with it.
And here I thought you were a conservative!
(I’m sure it doesn’t help that I had a year of ancient Greek in college, and “hoi polloi” was one of the first phrases taught)
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” FAR to important to be kept in te hands if the Federal Government”
that’s my conclusion . the local section of the post was running stories about a few parts in the surrounding areas that were closed. but most of them are largely neighborhood/local in nature that happen to be on some historical site. no reason the state/locality couldn’t handle it. or a “Friends of XYZ” nonprofit. or for-profit. Certainly they can present a bill for such services; after all… we are not Communists.
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no reason the state/locality couldn’t handle it. or a “Friends of XYZ” nonprofit. or for-profit.
Well, the Grand Canyon and Statue of Liberty (among others) opened when the states decided to pay for them, but I’d think that you–of all people–would have a good idea of how much paperwork is involved. I think the whole hissy fit about open air spaces being closed was simply that; a hissy fit on the part of some right wing activists to try to make a point.
Which only obscures the larger point–the government never should have been shutdown in the first place. And that can be laid squarely at the feet of the House Republicans.
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Mich:
I think the whole hissy fit about open air spaces being closed was simply that; a hissy fit on the part of some right wing activists to try to make a point.
Interesting. Obama pro-actively prevents American citizens from visiting what are normally unrestricted areas of public parks 24/7/365, and those who object to this are characterized as throwing a “hissy fit”. Again, very interesting.
I am also curious as to how you know the political inclinations (right wing activists?) of the WWII vets who were the original victims of and, apparently, “hissy fit” throwers over, Obama’s decision to do this.
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“And that can be laid squarely at the feet of the House Republicans”
nope. Harry Reid.
http://thomas.loc.gov/home/approp/app14.html
the house voted and passed legislation.
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“a hissy fit on the part of some right wing activists to try to make a point.”
I actually thought this was all Obama being what he is. a petty tyrant.
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nova:
nope. Harry Reid.
You forget…IOKIYAAD
I actually thought this was all Obama being what he is. a petty tyrant.
I did too.
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I am also curious as to how you know the political inclinations (right wing activists?) of the WWII vets
Nice right wing talking point spin there, Scott. It wasn’t the vets who were throwing the hissy fit, it was the Cruz/Lee/Palin contingent who took over their gathering to visit the memorial and turned it into a Tea Party rally. The veterans who were there as part of the Honor Flight tour had nothing to do with it.
And no, it wasn’t Harry Reid. It was the House Republicans.
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Mich:
It wasn’t the vets who were throwing the hissy fit, it was the Cruz/Lee/Palin contingent who took over their gathering to visit the memorial and turned it into a Tea Party rally.
I guess I must be confused as to what constitutes a "hissy fit" in your mind. So when vets and those accompanying them tear down a barricade in order to see the monument, that is not a “hissy fit”? But when Republican politicians stage a rally protesting those very same barricades, that is a “hissy fit”?
Is there anything apart from a partisan desire to belittle and demonize the latter but not the former that distinguishes one from the other?
As an aside, I never cease to be surprised by the mental and linguistic gymnastics that Obama supporters will perform in order to absolve him of any negative judgement over his actions.
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The WWII vets who went through the Barrycades (see what I did there?) should have been arrested for trespassing, no?
If not, why not. Why weren’t they throwing hissy fits?
BTW, did Obama lie when he said he would only sign a clean debt ceiling raise and sign this pig?
If not, why not?
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