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 | 1872.0 | -1.9 | -0.10% |
| Eurostoxx Index | 3191.5 | -8.2 | -0.26% |
| Oil (WTI) | 101.6 | -0.2 | -0.19% |
| LIBOR | 0.229 | 0.000 | 0.07% |
| US Dollar Index (DXY) | 79.76 | -0.150 | -0.19% |
| 10 Year Govt Bond Yield | 2.70% | -0.01% | |
| Current Coupon Ginnie Mae TBA | 105.2 | 0.1 | |
| Current Coupon Fannie Mae TBA | 104.2 | 0.1 | |
| RPX Composite Real Estate Index | 200.7 | -0.2 | |
| BankRate 30 Year Fixed Rate Mortgage | 4.28 |
Markets are lower this morning as earnings reports continue to pile in. So far, it is looking like most companies are meeting or beating estimates. Bonds and MBS are up.
The Markit US Manufacturing PMI slipped in April. It seems like big revisions have been the order of the day lately, so I wouldn’t fall out of my chair with shock if that preliminary number was revised upward. Like I said before, this could be the year that “recovery summer” stops being a running joke.
That said, new home sales came in at 384k, well below the last month’s 450k pace. Abysmal, abysmal number. The XHB (homebuilder ETF) is getting slammed right now. You can’t blame this one on the weather. Maybe the builders, who have been increasing home size and prices, have finally hit the point where the consumer is saying “uncle.” Shortages of buildable lots and skilled labor continue to be an issue.
Mortgage applications fell 3.3% last week (unsurprising as it was a short week). Both purchases and refis fell. Refi percent fell to 51.3%, and we are seeing ARMs increase – up to 8.5% of all loans.
Hatteras (a mortgage REIT that specializes in ARMs) reported that its leverage ratio increased. ARMs have always been on the illiquid side to begin with, but it looks like they increased their dollar roll position, which put even more pressure on front month TBAs. TBAs (To-Be-Announced) are generic mortgage backed securities, and their price in the market is the starting point of a rate sheet. So if TBAs are in demand, mortgage rates are falling, and if they are out of favor, mortgage rates are rising. In this case, Hatteras has been selling the front-month TBAs and buying the out-month TBAs. So this puts pressure on the front month TBA, which means ARM rates are slightly higher than they otherwise would be. Of course this trade has to be reversed at some point, so ARM pricing could get a bit better in the future. I realize this is kind of “inside baseball”, but it is always good to keep in mind how the buyers of mortgage backed securities (the ultimate lenders here) are positioned.
In the “what passes for analysis” category these days category, the Washington Post (yes that bastion of commercial logic) opines that owning a house is a lousy investment. The author talks about how stocks are so much better over the long term (conveniently, the S&P 500 is at all-time highs, and real estate has gotten pounded over the past six years), and concludes that owning your own home is a stupid investment and you are better off renting. This is a classic case of “in the sciences, knowledge is cumulative, and in the financial markets it is cyclical.” The author (who may be too young to remember) must imagine that inflation is forever vanquished, never to return again. If inflation ever comes back, stocks will get clobbered (as they did from 1965-1982 – the last secular bear market) as will bonds. But your house will go up in value with inflation, and the value of your liability (a 4% 30 year fixed mortgage) will fall. Inflation is a debtor’s best friend, and the Fed is pulling out all the stops trying to create it. At some point, it will succeed. And if you rent, you get to enjoy annual rent increases. If you bought, you have locked in your monthly payment for 30 years.
Filed under: Morning Report |
All Things in Moderation 
And you didn’t even cite me for pointing that opinion piece out to you. Bitter, bitter I am!
But still Frist.
LikeLike
Sorry, Remember, I just copy and paste my morning blog here. Nobody at iServe Residential Lending (which is where the blog post goes) knows who Michigoose is.
LikeLike
Another fascinating tidbit from yesterday’s Sotomayor dissent that may spark interest: her remarking that Michigan has a compelling state interest in diversity in education.
It’s a rather unfortunate point for her to raise, given that she was arguing against the state’s position and what its citizens had decided to do.
And another: she claims to show that the Michigan amendment invidiously discriminates against racial minorities, but her own reasoning is in fact that it distinguishes only between those who advocate for racial preferences and those who advocate for other preferences. Those who advocate for racial preferences are hardly limited to racial minorities, and they are the same constituency who lost the popular vote in the first place. So there just isn’t any rational bottom to the dissent’s analysis. It amounts to a convoluted argument that states may not decide against racial preferences. It’s thoroughly disingenuous. The dissenters disavow any contention that the popular vote was racist, but that is exactly what they are saying.
LikeLike
Giggle.
I’d ask if there are any historical examples that prove that skewed wealth in a generally prosperous nation is more damaging to its democratic institutions than the reallocation of wealth by a coercive state. But then I realize, as with any Marxist revival, the answer is: This time we’re gonna do it right!
http://thefederalist.com/2014/04/23/pundits-of-the-world-unite-what-thomas-pikettys-popularity-tells-us-about-the-liberal-press/
LikeLike
“secular bear market”
great band name.
LikeLike
I saw them open for Lickspittle at CalJam in ’83.
LikeLike
The self-hate drips literally drips off the page.
This could have all been solved by her parents simply encouraging her to ask for the toy she wants. If girls are continually taught that they as individuals have no power to negotiate a situation as simple as “I’d like that toy” without the Connecticut Commission on Human Rights getting involved, I submit that these women are proving the case that they should not be put in positions of leadership or power.
http://thefederalist.com/2014/04/23/feminists-fighting-mcdonalds-are-learning-the-wrong-lessons/
This case should have broken McDonalds. Connecticut Human Rights Commission MUST be conducting a War On Women! Why else the hate?
LikeLike
She was a high school junior and probably just cemented acceptance into whatever university she wants…
LikeLike
“You did what you were supposed to and fought with your siblings over who got the best toy”
and when you won, it was what was best in life. and now, years later, we get to hear the lamentation of the women
LikeLike
Clearly it’s yet another post 2nd wave feminist vs Marxist issue:
The clear lack of class solidarity with the fast food worker by the first author in Slate is appalling.
LikeLike
That girl is a sick product of a sick liberal society. And yes no doubt punched her ticket to Princeton by doing her part to ruin America for the rest of us.
LikeLike
You have to be pretty miserable to be upset about the toy distribution process at McDonald’s.
LikeLike
Sotomayor’s racism was well known before she was confirmed to SCOTUS, as was her weak intellect.
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB124354041637563491
LikeLike
qb:
Sotomayor’s racism was well known before she was confirmed to SCOTUS
I remember when she was getting confirmed I read her infamous and absurd “wise latina” speech. It still amazes me that a person who delivered that speech could possibly get nominated much less confirmed to the highest court in the land. At the time I sent a series of questions to some friends of mine that I really wished members of the senate committee had the ‘nads to ask her about that speech.
Judge Sotomayor, you spoke of America’s “deeply confused self image” saying that we “insist that we can and must function and live in a race and color-blind way that ignores these very differences that in other contexts we laud.” Could you please list for us 5 differences between blacks and whites in America, and explain what it is that find “laudable” about those differences?
Judge Sotomayor, you went to great lengths to explain how the “Latina side of my identity” has impacted on your judicial outlook. How many sides to your identity are there, what are they, and please explain how you expect each of these various sides to impact your ability to understand and apply the law as written in the constitution.
Judge Sotomayor, you spoke about how “wonderful and magical it is to have a Latina soul”. Do you also have an American soul? If so, is it more or less wonderful and magical than your Latina soul? How many souls do you have, and which is the most magical and wonderful of them all?
Judge Sotomayor, you once claimed that “…achieving success [in America] is no easy accomplishment for Latinos or Latinas”. For members of which race or ethnic group in the US is achieving success an “easy accomplishment”?
Judge Sotomayor, during the course of your lecture, you showed much concern about and cited several statistics regarding the number of women, African-Americans, and Latinos who held positions on various courts between the time of your graduation from law school and the time of your lecture. Have you ever concerned yourself with the statistics on the number of judges of Southeast Asian ancestry that served on those courts during that time? How about judges of Scandinavian ancestry? If not, why not?
Judge Sotomayor, one of the statistics you cited was that there were only 10 Latinos out of 147 Circuit Court judges, and 30 Latinos out of 587 district court judges. Although you referred to the growth in these numbers as “heartwarming”, you also said that “much still remains to happen.” How many Latinos need to be on the Federal Bench before, in your opinion, nothing “remains to happen”? If that number ever gets exceeded, is it your position that steps should be taken to prevent any more Latinos from gaining seats on the Federal Bench?
Judge Sotomayor, at one point in your lecture you suggested that the next day your audience would get to hear the “Latino perspective” on a given topic. By “Latino perspective”, do you mean that all Latino’s should have this perspective? Or that all Latinos do have this perspective? Or is it a case of a simple majority of Latinos? Do you personally ever have a “non-Latino perspective” on a given topic, or, by virtue of your Latino-ness, is every perspective you have necessarily a Latino perspective? If two Latinos have a different perspective on the same topic, how is it decided which is the “Latino perspective”?
Judge Sotomayor, you raised the possibility (while attributing the theory to “others”) that members of different ethnic groups or genders may have “basic differences in logic and reasoning.” Do you really think this is possible, and if so, what could it mean to have differences in logic? For example, do Latino thinkers not make use of the law of the excluded middle or the law of non-contradiction when analyzing a problem? Is the scientific method (which is founded on logic and reason) as practiced by women different than as practiced by men? If so, how?
Judge Sotomayor, in one section of your lecture you highlighted Judge Miriam Cedarbaum’s belief (a belief, BTW, which has been the very foundation of the notion of justice in this country from its beginning) that a judge must “transcend their personal sympathies and prejudices and aspire to achieve a greater degree of fairness and integrity based on the rule of law.” You then when on to say that:
“Although I agree with and attempt to work toward Judge Cedarbaum’s aspiration, I wonder whether achieving that goal is possible in all or even in most cases. And I wonder whether by ignoring our differences as women or men of color we do a disservice both to the law and society.”
How is it possible for you to both agree with Cedarbaum’s aspiration while at the same time wonder whether applying it does a disservice to the law? Doesn’t your “wonder” imply at the very least uncertainty about the correctness of Cedarbaum’s position? Or is this an example of how Latino-woman logic does not conform to standard, white-man logic?
Judge Sotomayor, you said at one point that “No one person, judge or nominee will speak in a female or people of color voice. I need not remind you that Justice Clarence Thomas represents a part but not the whole of African-American thought on many subjects.” How do you reconcile this belief with your earlier mention of a “Latino perspective” on a given topic? Surely if there can exist a “Latino perspective”, it can be voiced by a single Latino person. Alternatively, if it is true that no one person can speak as the Latino voice, then it makes little sense to speak of a “Latino perspective”. If “African-American thought” can encompass both the thoughts of Clarence Thomas and those whose thoughts are diametrically opposed to his, of what use is it to place the same label on them, ie “African-American thought”?
Judge Sotomayor, quoting Professor Martha Minnow, you say that you agree with the proposition that “there is no objective stance but only a series of perspectives – no neutrality, no escape from choice in judging.” Does this mean that when the Constitution says “Congress shall make no law…”, you as a judge have the choice of deciding whether Congress shall or shall not make a law”? If there is no objective stance with regard to the law, what, apart from your own whims and arbitrary feelings, will you be basing your decisions on?
Judge Sotomayor, the oath that is taken by every confirmed Supreme Court justice states explicitly that he/she will “administer justice without respect to persons” and that he/she will “faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all duties incumbent upon me…under the Constitution…” Why in the world should we confirm a person who has openly proclaimed it an impossibility to honor that oath of office?
Judge Sotomayor, in a part of your lecture that has since become quite famous, or perhaps I should say infamous, you said that “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” In light of your stated belief that “there is no objective stance…no nuetrality”, by what measure could you possibly determine that a given conclusion was “better” than another? Aren’t all decisions necessarily equally valid, albeit coming from different “perspectives”? Is this another example of how Latino-woman logic works?
LikeLike
That is a masterpiece, Scott, and a challenge above the courage and intellectual capacity of anyone who has been in the Senate within memory.
But you must have missed the class in college where a some prof like Bernie (shallow and dimwitted) explained that the scientific method is indeed an expression of patriarchal oppression. And rape-like in its penetrative nature. Science is like rape of nature. If only I were making that up.
LikeLike
qb:
Science is like rape of nature. If only I were making that up.
lol
LikeLike
Hyperpolitical black AGUS appointed by black POTUS claims we haven’t even started the necessary affirmative action for blacks to get what they’re entilted to.
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/204162-holder-sotomayors-affirmative-action-dissent-was-courageous
Have I mentioned that people who know Holder generally despise him?
LikeLike
Holy shit, Hack Sargent got a Drudge link!
It’s for this post,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2014/04/23/morning-plum-conventional-wisdom-about-2014-takes-another-hit/
LikeLike
The next realm of the law.
“Should a Chimp Be Able to Sue Its Owner?
By CHARLES SIEBERTAPRIL 23, 2014”
LikeLike
best comment: “Does this mean that thanks the Citizens United the chimp can donate to the candidate of his choice?”
LikeLike
“scientific method is indeed an expression of patriarchal oppression”
get out. no way.
out of town for a few days. see you all later.
LikeLike
You guys obviously weren’t paying attention in college. Privileged, arrogant white men.
LikeLike
I didn’t have to pay attention. I received my diploma on the first day if my freshman year, like all the other white men there, and was told that attendance was optional.
Then I went to a Kegger.
LikeLike
My application fee was waived and my diploma mailed to me, but I attended a few feminist and crit theory classes to mock them as part of my war on women.
LikeLike
Great comment by NR on Sotomayor.
Her opinion is legally illiterate and logically indefensible, and the still-young career of this self-described “wise Latina” on the Supreme Court already offers a case study in the moral and legal corrosion that inevitably results from elevating ethnic-identity politics over the law. Justice Sotomayor has revealed herself as a naked and bare-knuckled political activist with barely even a pretense of attending to the law, and the years she has left to subvert the law will be a generation-long reminder of the violence the Obama administration has done to our constitutional order.
The “case study” line is exactly correct. But no one can be surprised. Sotomayor was perfectly clear in her pre-confirmation comments that she would not judge the law objectively and impartially (as required by her oath), and that racial/ethnic/gender sentiments would influence, if not dictate, her legal decisions.
LikeLike
Hah, I stepped on the toes of a lot of Men (boys really) on my way to the front of the line!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hah, I stepped on the toes of a lot of Men (boys really) on my way to the front of the line!
Heh.
LikeLike
Just in case anyone still thinks I was joking or exaggerating about science = rape feminism, trust me, I’m not. Sandra Harding wrote a whole feminist theory book arguing that Western science is androcentric and rape-like. It is men raping nature. She called Newton’s Principia a rape manual. No, I still am not kidding. There is an ocean of “academic” writing out there like that. One achieved a sort of ne plus ultra by claiming that Einstein’s relativity equation (I can’t type superscript) is sexed or sexist. Do a little googling; you should be able to find it.
You really missed out if you didn’t study some of this stuff instead of stuff like math and physics or epistemology. You can’t understand the people who now run our country or the sorry state of its decline without knowing what they “learned” in college. It was this kind of stuff.
LikeLike
Damn QB, was there at least naked pictures?
LikeLike
https://twitter.com/NoahCRothman/status/459062963245416448
LikeLike
Approaching a year after the trial, Newsday is still repeating falsehoods about Trayvon Martin, like the claim that he bought iced tea, and that Zimmerman was acquitted under the SYG law. And Tracy Martin shows what it looks like to live in a bubble of unreality, greed, and extreme vanity. I am not sure how to describe his advice to utes about using discretion with social media. Your life of crime and immorality might be brought up in court, like it almost was about my civil-rights-hero son, so keep it off of social media. Good advice, Mr. Martin.
http://www.newsday.com/news/nation/trayvon-martin-s-father-wants-son-s-death-to-renew-civil-rights-movement-1.7807409
How is it that reporters are still, still repeating these stock falsehoods of the Martin PR machine, and no one is fired for it?
LikeLike
qb:
How is it that reporters are still, still repeating these stock falsehoods of the Martin PR machine, and no one is fired for it?
Because they are more akin to political activists working for a propaganda organ than to reporters working for a newspaper. (And they are probably not very bright, either.)
LikeLike
Rand Paul continues to define is own niche of RINOism and demonstrate his surprisingly poor–for a supposed constitutionalist–grasp of the Constitution.
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/06/rand-paul-on-gay-mmarriage-gop-needs-to-agree-to-disagree/
His praise for Anthony Kennedy as trying to avoid a culture war is absolutely daft, downright idiotic.
LikeLike