Vital Statistics:
| Last | Change | Percent | |
| S&P Futures | 1822.0 | 10.3 | 0.57% |
| Eurostoxx Index | 3128.3 | 11.8 | 0.38% |
| Oil (WTI) | 103.7 | 0.0 | -0.01% |
| LIBOR | 0.229 | 0.002 | 0.97% |
| US Dollar Index (DXY) | 79.82 | 0.365 | 0.46% |
| 10 Year Govt Bond Yield | 2.65% | 0.02% | |
| Current Coupon Ginnie Mae TBA | 105.8 | -0.1 | |
| Current Coupon Fannie Mae TBA | 104.5 | -0.1 | |
| RPX Composite Real Estate Index | 200.7 | -0.2 | |
| BankRate 30 Year Fixed Rate Mortgage | 4.24 |
SPUS are higher this morning after Thursday and Friday’s bloodbath. Bonds and MBS are down small.
Retail Sales came in better than expected, and the previous month was revised upward by a pretty large amount. March sales came in at +1.1% (vs .9 expected) and February was revised upward from .3% to .7%.
We have a short week coming up with markets closed on Friday. In terms of economic data, the big day will be Wednesday, when we get housing starts and building permits as well as industrial production and capacity utilization. After that, expect a lot of position-squaring ahead of the 3 day weekend.
Earnings season really begins this week, with a lot of heavyweights reporting. This morning we got Citi, and later this week we will hear from Bank of America, Google, General Electric, and Goldman.
Ever since Mel Watt took of FHFA, he has been pretty silent about what he is looking for, and how he wants to treat the GSEs going forward. At the end of the day, Watt is an affordable housing CRA guy to the bone and won’t do anything that jeopardizes that.
Filed under: Morning Report |
Any thoughts on the shootings at the synagogues over the weekend right before Passover?
Oh, and Frist!
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Yes. I’ve got a good and compelling reason to carry to Easter Sunday Mass. He Is Risen, but I have no intention of going so easily.
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Read he was a Nazi type from North Carolina. Prolly a bagger.
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Walgreen’s being pushed to re-incorporate overseas…
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/55a76778-c294-11e3-9370-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2yrxQomrC
Our corporate taxes are so high, we just end up subsidizing foreign governments. But then again, I am just a low-information bagger that uncritically buys what my betters like the Kochs feeds me on Faux news.
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Don’t forget you drool too.
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McAuliffe continues to impress.
http://www.bluegrasspundit.com/2014/04/virginia-gov-terry-mcauliffe-d-vetoes.html?m=1
But hey, abortion’s legal so guys can get put of the traps set for them.
Seems fair, no?
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I drool, drink Keystone Light, eat port rinds, watch NASCAR, have about 3.2 junked cars in my front yard, chew tobacco, and believe the WWF is real.
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Do you eat your own boogers? Cause that’s the real tell.
To end the suspense, I do.
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Dirty Harry Reid, as dirty as dirt gets.
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/314025/how-did-harry-reid-get-rich-betsy-woodruff#!
Glenn Reynolds also linked an interesting little article about the vitriolic divorce proceedings of Tony and Heather Podesta. Interesting not so much as to the divorce but as to the window into the Democrat-Sleaze-Industrial Complex.
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“yellojkt, on April 14, 2014 at 8:19 am said:
Any thoughts on the shootings at the synagogues over the weekend right before Passover?”
Assuming the evidence supports it, charge him with murder and if convicted, execute him.
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Ask Yello what his thoughts are
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Please.
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I’m gonna be honest, I see zero chance of the Senate returning to regular legislative order if R’s win a majority in November.
What’s McConnell’s incentive to reduce the Majority Leader’s power.
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I suspect that Charles Pierce pretty much sums up the left’s view on the shooting.
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/The_Kansas_City_Shooting
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Yeah, as a bagger I nutted upon learning my brethren was involved.
Isn’t he a convicted felon? If so, how could he have exercised his second Amendment right? He would no longer possess it. Meh, details.
Aww fuck it. Everyone knows Nazi’s are hard core right wingers. Their love of nationalized healthcare proves it.
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‘execute him”
Are you in favor of the death penalty? I used to be, but largely have come to the conclusion that government incompetence knows no bounds.
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Yes, or to be more precise I’m dismissive of arguments against it based on “cruel and unusual” or some other attempted Constitutional bootstrap.
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Oh, i think it’s Constitutional.
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This El-Arian piece is fascinating.
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-04-14/the-dangers-of-policy-drift
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obama has the Pentagon call the Russians “unprofessional” for buzzing a ship. This sort of stuff used to happen all the time when I was in during the cold war. I cannot imagine Reagan or Bush calling the Soviets “unprofessional.”
What a dingleberry this CIC is. No wonder the military doesn’t respect him
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Was it a sloppy buzz?
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He’s just showing how weak Russia is.
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Didn’t hear about that. here’s a story on it: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/04/14/russian-jet-passes-at-close-range-over-us-warship-in-black-sea/
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Just lay back and think of England.
Jennifer Tolbert, director of state health reform at the Kaiser Family Foundation, a healthcare research group, said that previously uninsured patients living on the cusp of poverty and now required to buy insurance may struggle with the new financial obligations but should focus on the upside.
“These individuals will pay more,” she said, “but they will get better benefits.”
http://touch.latimes.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-79907805/
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quite honestly, i don’t know how the person featured in that LAT story doesn’t qualify for Medicaid.
edit: http://www.dhcs.ca.gov/services/medi-cal/Pages/DoYouQualifyForMedi-Cal.aspx
it’s the marginal case. but when you’re at the margin, she either needs to increase her salary … or cut it back to qualify for Medicaid.
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“It’s not unusual for U.S. Navy ships to operate in the Black Sea. The Donald Cook moved into the region last week for what the Navy called “routine operations,” though the deployment is seen mostly as a symbolic response to tensions along the Ukrainian-Russian border.”
We make our symbolic responses, and then the Russians make their symbolic responses to our symbolic responses.
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Every so often a comment will slip through that’s particularly revealing in a otherwise unremarkable screed:
The problem with McMansions clearly is allowing the upper middle class (professionals and managers) to start putting on airs and the next thing you know they are siding with the 1% against the proletariat.
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Nova, there are two things that are interesting to me here. The first thing is this is accomplishing what the left told us was bad, namely too much health care. What was driving HC inflation, we were told, were all these “unnecessary” tests people underwent. Now, mortality rates will suffer of course as otherwise preventable/curable illnesses will be missed as people forgo testing. Trade offs.
Second, this gives lie to the “affordability” horseshit we’ve heard so much about.
It’s not rational to believe this is better then 2/01/2010. It’s just not.
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Absolutely hilarious piece by Franks. Should be required reading.
But damn, there shore were a lot of 1%’s back then. Seems kinda wierd that there were/are so many considering the state of our economy since Reagan you know?
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“We make our symbolic responses, and then the Russians make their symbolic responses to our symbolic responses.”
Point of order inquiry. are we going to go with Top Gun or Red October for our movie filter for this situation.
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“Second, this gives lie to the “affordability” horseshit we’ve heard so much about”
I was in a meeting on the Hill today with a D staffer. She was lamenting the fact that so many people believed that care would be cheaper and they’d have their pick of provider. couldn’t understand why someone would think that.
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think she was disingenuous or just stupid?
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“Everyone knew that the President didn’t really mean you could keep your health insurance if you liked it. He just had to say it.”
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“Well, we say ‘love your brother.’ Well we don’t literally say it. We don’t literally mean it. But the message should be clear”
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It is hard to believe that Thomas Frank ever wrote for the Wall Street Journal. Can you imagine a left-wing paper running Jonah Goldberg? Inconceivable.
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NoVa, I’m flabbergasted.
And the movie we’re going with is TopGun.
#ThatMiGreallyscrewedhimup
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Basically what JNC said “everyone should have remembered from HMOs that you control costs by restricting provider networks.”
that we were dealing with folk who didn’t have HMOs .. which, you know, is insurance, didn’t seem to matter.
FWIW, we weren’t’ even talking ACA reform.
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New CBO report on PPACA costs is out apparently.
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-04-14/more-good-news-on-obamacare-just-when-democrats-need-it
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actual CBO report: http://www.cbo.gov/publication/45231
“CBO and JCT can no longer determine exactly how the
provisions of the ACA that are not related to the expansion of
health insurance coverage have affected their projections of direct
spending and revenues. The provisions that expand insurance
coverage established entirely new programs or components of
programs that can be isolated and reassessed. In contrast, other
provisions of the ACA significantly modified existing federal
programs and made changes to the Internal Revenue Code.
Isolating the incremental effects of those provisions on previously
existing programs and revenues four years after enactment of the
ACA is not possible.”
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I’m sorry, but Gordon Lightfoot’s Sundown IS NOT a Deep Track SiriusXM!
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“novahockey, on April 14, 2014 at 2:46 pm said:
“We make our symbolic responses, and then the Russians make their symbolic responses to our symbolic responses.”
Point of order inquiry. are we going to go with Top Gun or Red October for our movie filter for this situation.
“Russians don’t take a dump, son, without a plan.”
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099810/quotes?item=qt0458304
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If only we listened to that Senator.
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Thomas Frank = peak asininity. Living proof that you can get a fancy PhD and still spend your life as a purveyor of obtuse cliches and resentful banalities. What a poor thinker.
One of the many ironies dripping from that piece is how much he sounds like Old Man Potter complaining about how that Building and Loan is letting all his former slum residents move into nice new tract homes that are cleaner, larger, and more comfortable.
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Great point QB.
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The California miracle.
http://hotair.com/archives/2014/04/14/california-budget-surplus-nope-not-so-much/
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Thomas Frank probably lives in some fancy brownstone worth three McMansions, in the right sort of neighborhood, you understand, not too uncomfortably close to the undesirables and untouchables. He no doubt thanks Gaia that he is not like those sinners who move clear to the suburbs; he keeps a less insulting distance between himself and the lower classes.
Is there any sort of person more despicable than him?
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We make our symbolic responses, and then the Russians make their symbolic responses to our symbolic responses.
Well, crap, McWing. Here I was, going to riposte with “one ping only, please.” But I believe jnc already screwed it up with his quote, so I’m not going to take the blame for going all Hunt for Red October on you.
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Is there any sort of person more despicable than him?
Not gonna touch that one with a 10-foot pole. Nope!
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And if I tell you that I agree to run the SLC Race for the Cure from Baltimore next year, somebody just find me and shoot me, please.
Twenty-six days till Race day. Just got back from one trip, two trips more, then the Race. I should’ve probably just packed up dog and cat food, thrown Daisy and Quark back into the CRV, and driven there for the last month before the Race.
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This business will get out of control. It will get out of control and we’ll be lucky to live through it.
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Crazy Ivan!
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his next one is going to be to starboard.
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“quarterback, on April 14, 2014 at 8:27 pm said:
Thomas Frank = peak asininity. Living proof that you can get a fancy PhD and still spend your life as a purveyor of obtuse cliches and resentful banalities. What a poor thinker.
One of the many ironies dripping from that piece is how much he sounds like Old Man Potter complaining about how that Building and Loan is letting all his former slum residents move into nice new tract homes that are cleaner, larger, and more comfortable.”
I don’t think it’s the slum residents per se. It’s a combination of resentment of the upper middle class (not the very rich) coupled with a critique of their bad taste.
The key tell for me is the whole “professionals and managers” observation which is both absolutely accurate as to who benefited and shows the real reason for his resentment.
These aren’t the usual out of touch rich and famous celebrities, who have always had large houses, but rather people from his peer group. He may have even (God forbid) gone to high school with someone who now has a larger house than he did and now have to hear about it at the reunions.
This could lead to all sorts of self refection and self doubt over the choices he made in life (as evidenced by the hanging out under the overpass remark) and we can’t have that. Better to blame the tax code for letting those people think that they are better than him.
Class envy isn’t about the very rich. It’s about the person you knew growing up.
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Covetousness.
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Frank has this underlying assumption that the management and CEO pay comes at the expense of the worker bees. In his mind, if we raise taxes enough on income, businesses will pay executives less, and will spend more on capital expenditures and worker bee salaries in order to lower their tax burden. This will increase productivity, create a stronger middle class and a better economy for everyone. This is the typical Robert Reich argument that inequality is bad for the economy and raising taxes is the way to fix it.
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