Brent Nyitray
Fairlington Blade
Let the mutherfuker burn!
jnc4p
Kevin S. Willis
Michigoose
lmsinca
markinaustin
Arcanaut
novahockey
quarterback
ScottC
yellojktStocks are lower this morning on no real news. Bonds and MBS are down as European bonds sell off.
Mortgage Applications fell 7.2% last week as we had the Labor Day holiday and rates backed up. Purchases fell 2.6% while refis fell 10.7%. Refis accounted for 55.4% of all loans. The refi index just hit its lows for the year, even though rates have fallen almost 50 basis points. This effect is called prepayment burnout, and it is due to the fact that anyone that has been able to refinance already has. The driver of refis going forward will be home price appreciation, not rates.
Note that the overall mortgage application index is hitting lows not seen since 2000.
On the plus side, all-cash transactions are down to a six year low. Cash sales fell to 33% of total home sales in June, down from 36.3% a year ago.
Rep Maxine Waters (D-CA) is introducing legislation to change what goes on credit reports. One fix being considered is eliminating medial debt, which accounts for more than half of all unpaid debt in collection, from credit scores. Other changes would remove settled debts, remove black marks after 4 years instead of 7, and remove student debt defaults if the loan performs for a set period thereafter. The idea is to open access to credit.
Think fast food workers are irreplaceable? Think again. McDonalds is expanding a test concept allowing people to order via a tablet. This makes a good juxtaposition to the “living wage” strikes and legislation being considered.
Unintended consequence of ZIRP, number 1,234,567 – LBO funds are ratcheting up the leverage to boost returns. Not only that, but credit quality and covenants have been declining in these deals. The S&P 500, sitting at record levels, is assigning a 100% probability that the Fed can stick the landing and start raising interest rates without anyone blowing up. As we saw when the Fed started raising rates in 1994, 1999, and 2004, bad things tend to happen (Orange County in 94, the end of the stock market bubble, the end of the real estate bubble). If I was fully invested in the market, I would begin to finish my drink, find my coat, and watch the door.
Filed under: Morning Report |
All Things in Moderation 
This is a perfect (and hilarious) example of my assertion that THERE ARE NO SECRETS.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/09/09/Letter-Holder-Aide-Accidentally-Calls-Issa-For-Help-Spinning-IRS-Scandal/
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“This is a perfect (and hilarious) example of my assertion that THERE ARE NO SECRETS.”
Nothing to see here, bagger..
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There sure seems to be a strong, bi-partisan Establishment desire to bomb ISIA / ISIL. Why though? If it’s a threat to the various shitty Arab stated so what?
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The principle of helping nations which truly can lead in helping themselves only works for helping Turkey and the Kurds; maybe Jordan. Probably helping Assad is a bridge we should think is too far. Syria in the hands of a brutal dictator or in the hands of a brutal dictator is the apparent choice. Bombing ISIL forces anywhere but near the borders to Turkey, the Kurds, and Jordan then would make no sense either.
Defending Iraq seems like deja vu all over again. They are supposed to be able to stand up now, but obviously can’t be bothered.
I have to think old guys in DC always are invigorated by tales of glorious war. Especially when the press is in full Hearst mode about “the threat”. They already forgot that Iranian nukes might be a threat and are ready to line up with Iran against this “new” threat.
If this goes south, so much for budgetary constraints.
Addendum: some of them may feel guilty that they are afraid to bomb Russian troops in the Ukraine. Not bombing Russians is a good idea so they shouldn’t feel guilty, but I can imagine Graham might so want to bomb Russians that he would take his frustration out on stone age desert warmongers.
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I suspect this will backfire. There will be even less access to credit for those groups as every lender will wonder what’s not in the report and assume the worst.
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It is mandatory to call her “the idiot, Maxine Waters”. She and Louis Gohmert could make a left/right, black/white marriage from hell and they would have grey colored moderate idiot children, who thankfully could not be elected from anywhere.
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I don’t think that she’s stupid. I think her goals are the exact opposite of mine and that her stated reasons for wanting something may not be her real motivations.
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jnc:
I don’t think that she’s stupid. I think her goals are the exact opposite of mine and that her stated reasons for wanting something may not be her real motivations.
In this instance, what do you think her goals are? (I have to admit that I have long been in Mark’s camp assuming she has a truly dull intellect. But I could be convinced otherwise.)
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However, I do believe that Rick Pearlstein looks stupid with this piece:
“Here is Ronald Reagan, nearly 40 years ago, making fun of healthy school lunches
By Rick Perlstein
September 10 at 9:30 AM”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/09/10/here-is-ronald-reagan-nearly-40-years-ago-making-fun-of-healthy-school-lunches/?hpid=z3
Reading Reagan’s actual remarks in full, which Perlstein to his credit does include, actually makes Reagan look good 40 years on.
The more precise title of his piece should be:
“Here is Ronald Reagan, nearly 40 years ago, making fun of people who believe that they can successfully force kids to eat healthy school lunches”.
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“When the lunch bell rings now in the Washington schools, students happily flock to the nearest places where the so-called junk food is for sale. The school eat shops with their healthy new menus are deserted.”
you could leave school?
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Yep. That was the case when I was in high school as well.
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Cause it’s about the Republican WAR ON WOMEN, not about access.
http://capsules.kaiserhealthnews.org/index.php/2014/09/womens-groups-challenge-gop-candidates-on-otc-birth-control/
Women will believe anything, AmIRight?
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It’s hard for me to understand why Republicans aren’t running on this.
http://m.washingtonexaminer.com/someone-is-loving-obamacare-among-them-wellpoint-shareholders./article/2553129?custom_click=rss&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
Or Elizabeth Warren or other D’s getting to the left of Clinton.
Stupefying.
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“In this instance, what do you think her goals are?”
Increase low-income lending. They can’t get credit because of their lousy scores. so the only alternative is to change the scoring system.
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Wow!
“San Francisco would become the first jurisdiction in the country to go on record opposing sex-selective abortion bans if a resolution stating they perpetuate racial stereotypes, being introduced by Supervisor David Chiu today, is adopted by the Board of Supervisors.”
The bans “encourage racial profiling of women by some medical providers,” according to Chiu’s resolution, and can lead to women being denied services.
http://m.sfexaminer.com/sanfrancisco/supervisors-to-consider-resolution-opposing-sex-selective-abortion-bans/Content?oid=2894469
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McWing (from the link):
Sex-selective abortion bans have been introduced in 21 states and passed in eight and became the second-most proposed abortion ban in the country last year.
I’m not at all sure how such laws could possibly withstand a constitutional challenge in light of the Supremes abortion policy.
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I think the other interesting thing she is proposing is to make it okay to simply blow off paying your medical bills.
Edit… I guess that isn’t actually in the proposal, but the CFPB is pushing to have unpaid medical bills expunged from credit reports…
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“so the only alternative is to change the scoring system.”
and ignore the fact that should the scores become meaningless, something else will replace them.
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“ScottC, on September 10, 2014 at 12:15 pm said:
In this instance, what do you think her goals are? (I have to admit that I have long been in Mark’s camp assuming she has a truly dull intellect. But I could be convinced otherwise.)”
Either passing the bill which she believes may actually increase access to credit, at least in the short term (granted this argument plays into the stupid theory) or to provide a potential cause of action or shakedown opportunities against the banks when they don’t increase credit or reduce it as she works in conjunction with the CFPB to target them.
It also provides grist for an appeal to populism with the Democratic base.
As evidence of stupidity, it’s certainly not any worse than the people in California advocating for trying to foreclose on mortgage loans via eminent domain and expecting there to be no adverse side effects.
Mind you, I don’t think she’s a genius but the proposal strikes me more as typical Congressional grandstanding on a pet issue than evidence of active stupidity.
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“I have to march because my mother could not have an abortion.”
“‘Over 170 million jobs could be lost’ due to sequestration”
Don’t have time for more. EZ to dig these up online, however.
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jnc:
Either passing the bill which she believes may actually increase access to credit, at least in the short term (granted this argument plays into the stupid theory)
Pretty much what I was thinking.
or to provide a potential cause of action or shakedown opportunities against the banks when they don’t increase credit or reduce it as she works in conjunction with the CFPB to target them.
If it was someone like Barney Frank or Elizabet Warren, I would lean towards this. But having seen Waters in action, I really don’t think she is clever enough to have thought of this.
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It’s obvious that the Federal Government should control our healthcare too.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/data-on-800-billion-in-stimulus-spending-will-disappear-this-year-here-is-why/2014/09/09/ad277ff4-350a-11e4-8f02-03c644b2d7d0_story.html
Single Payer Now!
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Central Planning.
This absurdity stemmed from an oversight deep in the bowels of the Soviet bureaucracy. Whaling, like every other industry in the Soviet Union, was governed by the dictates of the State Planning Committee of the Council of Ministers, a government organ tasked with meting out production targets. In the grand calculus of the country’s planned economy, whaling was considered a satellite of the fishing industry. This meant that the progress of the whaling fleets was measured by the same metric as the fishing fleets: gross product, principally the sheer mass of whales killed.
Whaling fleets that met or exceeded targets were rewarded handsomely, their triumphs celebrated in the Soviet press and the crews given large bonuses. But failure to meet targets came with harsh consequences. Captains would be demoted and crew members fired; reports to the fisheries ministry would sometimes identify responsible parties by name.
http://www.psmag.com/navigation/nature-and-technology/the-senseless-environment-crime-of-the-20th-century-russia-whaling-67774/
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Does anyone here really think that this was “racist”?
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Does anyone here really think that this was “racist”?
no.
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No. I don’t get it. Even Capehart wrote an article saying the guy was simply doing a business analysis, not casting aspersions on a race of people.
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Brent:
Even Capehart wrote an article saying the guy was simply doing a business analysis,
Exactly. He was doing exactly what businessmen are supposed to do. What bugs me is how he has prostrated himself in the face of this, apologizing and calling it both “offensive” and “inflammatory nonsense”. I think that is what is offensive and inflammatory nonsense.
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Scott, Kean and Hamilton have an op-ed in the WSJ this morning on cyber-security that I cannot get to b/c of paywall. Please help! If there is ever a story in the Austin American-Statesman you cannot get to I will reciprocate, of course.
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Mark, just sent it to your operamail account. Let me know if you don’t get it and I will reproduce it here.
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thanx.
Addendum: I just read it. This is where some really serious national security issues abide and the op-ed lays them out as well as names some pending legislation the 9-11 Commission wants to see passed.
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I think that is what is offensive and inflammatory nonsense.
True, if taken at face value. But wily, if intended to pull back his fear as misplaced, in order to raise the price of his franchise, that he wants to sell because, well, because his live audience doesn’t have enough buying power to continue to make the franchise ever more valuable.
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mark:
But wily, if intended to pull back his fear as misplaced, in order to raise the price of his franchise
Good point.
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Catching the date, I just changed the quotation.
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Good choice.
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Note that NOW wants Roger Goodell’s scalp. If he resigns the next commissioner should get rid of that annoying month of pink crap for breast cancer awareness.
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