Morning Report: Incomes up, spending flat 9/30/16

Posted on September 30, 2016 by Brent Nyitray

Vital Statistics:

Last Change
S&P Futures 2150.0 1.0
Eurostoxx Index 340.9 -2.0
Oil (WTI) 47.9 0.0
US dollar index 86.6 0.4
10 Year Govt Bond Yield 1.55%
Current Coupon Fannie Mae TBA 103.3
Current Coupon Ginnie Mae TBA 104.2
30 Year Fixed Rate Mortgage 3.47

Stocks are lower this morning as the markets fret about Deutsche Bank. Bonds and MBS are up on the risk-off trade.

Deutsche Bank, which is being fined by the US government for $14 billion is starting to see some hedge fund clients back away from it. While it probably doesn’t really pose any systemic risk (the US government isn’t about to bankrupt German’s biggest bank) it will cause a flight to safety, which will push down Treasury yields. If this snowballs, look for more easing out of the ECB, and potentially another excuse for the Fed to stand pat.

Personal Incomes rose 0.2% last month while personal spending was flat. The core personal consumption expenditure index (the Fed’s preferred inflation measure) rose 1.7% YOY, which is below the Fed’s 2% inflation target. Larry Summers says income inequality is depressing spending by about 3%.

The Chicago Purchasing Manager Index rose in September.

Consumer confidence improved in September.

Janet Yellen mused about the Fed buying corporate bonds and stocks in order to respond to a downturn after they have hoovered up all the government debt out there.

Seriously delinquent loans fell to 1.24% in August, the lowest level since April 2008. Pre-crisis it was below 1%.

Filed under: Economy, Morning Report |

« »

28 Responses

  1. Brent Nyitray, on September 30, 2016 at 10:42 am said:

    Because stock prices are too important to be determined by a mere market…

    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-30/summers-floats-idea-of-sustained-government-stock-purchases

    Like

    Reply
    • novahockey, on September 30, 2016 at 12:33 pm said:

      Q: Can Trump win PA. If yes, he’s the winner. No? then not.
      i’m 50/50 at this point.

      There’s the WI and MI options. but those just seem too much.. maybe

      Like

      Reply
  3. novahockey, on September 30, 2016 at 12:45 pm said:

    OT: i’ve been so busy with other stuff I haven’t looked into this ACA slush fund thing. knee-jerk. it stinks. but what else is new.

    Like

    Reply
    • Kevin S. Willis, on October 3, 2016 at 9:12 am said:

      Eventually, all movements that require ideological purity will eat themselves (or at least eat a bing chunk of themselves).

      I’d argue the idea that abortion would be sacrament if men could get pregnant is stupid. Women object to abortion in similar numbers as men. While men cannot get pregnant, and thus would never want an abortion for themselves, men get women pregnant and it’s not uncommon for the man to want the abortion as much as the woman, or to want the abortion when the woman does not. Also, for abortion to become a “sacrament”, there would have to be a general consensus among most men and women, not the near 50/50 split there always has been. The most that could be said would be that if men could become pregnant, between 3% and 7% more men might support abortion than presently do.

      Like

      Reply
  5. novahockey, on October 1, 2016 at 8:41 am said:

    Post editorial against Johnson. They’re seeing something in the numbers. Only explanation.

    Like

    Reply
    • Brent Nyitray, on October 1, 2016 at 10:44 am said:

      racist

      Like

      Reply
    • Kevin S. Willis, on October 3, 2016 at 9:00 am said:

      Another case of people being idiots. Such voter fraud is common, on both sides of the aisles, and always comes from front line workers “with initiative”, either thinking their extra 19 voters will carry the day for their candidate, or hoping to get a particular reward, based on whatever incentives the GoTV organization has put into place, by gaming the system rather than going out and canvassing and doing the hard work.

      And then they get caught. So it’s all for naught.

      Like

      Reply
  7. ScottC, on October 3, 2016 at 8:24 am said:

    Why do entertainers insist on imposing their politics on their audiences?

    I was in Boston this weekend, and went to see the Boston Pops perform with Kristen Chenoweth at a Boston College fundraiser on Friday night. Chenoweth is a spectacular singer, but three songs into her set she spoiled it (for me, anyway) by introducing her signature song, Popular from the play Wicked, with a bunch of cheap mockery of Donald Trump. (If you know the song, you can imagine.) Of course, it went over well with the crowd, a bunch of New England limousine liberal elites who were paying up to $25k a table to see her. (For the record, my tix cost $100.) But in an auditorium filled with roughly 12,000 people, surely there were a couple thousand who will be voting for Trump, and her pre-song (and mid-song) anti-Trump schtick surely alienated those people. It certainly ruined the show for me, and I am not even a Trump supporter.

    BTW, the mocking intro would have been equally relevant had she used HRC as her hook rather than Trump. Hillary is almost as unpopular as Trump is, and in equal need of advice on increasing her popularity. Or, given the unpopularity of both candidates, she could have done almost the exact same routine without actually naming a candidate specifically, allowing her audience to fill in the blank with the demon of their choice. But no, that’s not good enough, because ultimately it is not about simply entertaining, but rather it is about pushing a political agenda, and screw those who might disagree. The attitude seems to be that if you feel uncomfortable, good…you should.

    We often hear laments about how society is becoming increasingly polarized. If so, I think it is in no small part due to the increasing inability to share a cultural experience in the absence of liberal political posturing. Whether it is a sporting event or a concert or TV programming, there is just no escaping an ideology that seems to have the need to politicize everything.

    Like

    Reply
      • Kevin S. Willis, on October 3, 2016 at 8:57 am said:

        If we have a common enemy. In humans, unity is generally produced over large masses of people by them all sharing a common enemy. By definition, our common enemy can’t be our neighbors (conservatives! christians! liberals! atheists) because those are our neighbors.

        I don’t object to the idea of a national reserve for disaster relief. In theory, any way. But the idea that expanding AmeriCorps will bring us together in any way is stupid. I’m constantly in awe at how many adults can observe the same world I do and think such things would help us to “all get along”. It’s so naive. Have they never observe the tribal nature of sports fandom? Or geek fandom? Geeks can get into blood feuds over Marvel vs. DC.

        Like

        Reply
      • Let the mutherfuker burn!, on October 3, 2016 at 9:05 am said:

        Curious when E.J.’s ideal time of Unity was?

        Jesus do Democrats love slavery.

        Like

        Reply
        • Kevin S. Willis, on October 3, 2016 at 9:18 am said:

          If unity is the most desirable end, then freedom, liberty, self-determination, and free expression are all expendable.

          I’d like a world with more civil and honest and thoughtful discourse than we have, but my experience is that principled partisans consider unity to be a state of beneficent conforming and obedience. Which makes that goal kind of hard.

          Right now, they are in the process of creating slots in their programs (or that’s what HRC is advocating): expansion. But, except for spending taxpayer money on it, it’s all voluntary. Ergo, not slavery. At least, not yet.

          But how can you really ensure that people create greater affinity, unless you make it mandatory?

          Like

  8. Kevin S. Willis, on October 3, 2016 at 8:50 am said:

    @Scottc1: “But in an auditorium filled with roughly 12,000 people, surely there were a couple thousand who will be voting for Trump, and her pre-song (and mid-song) anti-Trump schtick surely alienated those people. It certainly ruined the show for me, and I am not even a Trump supporter.”

    I’ve learned to tune that stuff out. So I can enjoy entertainment.

    For the most part. I’m listening to Under The Dome by Stephen King again, seeing if I can enjoy it despite the fact it is primarily an anti-Republican, anti-Christian polemic. I want to be able to enjoy various entertainments, even if the political message is as much a fiction and fantasy as the entertainment content. Necessary, when many of the most talented performers are liberal (and likely to stay that way, given the nature of the bubble they inhabit, and the degree to which conservatives in the entertainment industry are discriminated against).

    As to why entertainers insist on foisting their politics on their audiences, I think there are probably a couple of reasons.

    One: it’s low-hanging fruit. Many of their fans will be right there with them, and it’s a bunch of easy applause lines, and rapturous reviews from a very liberal entertainment press. Critics insist on doing the same sort of thing, I’ve found, injecting their reviews with their politics and generally producing a naive, junior high school diatribe while believing they penned a work of brilliant political insight, and are noble and courageous for having explained to people the unique Truth that Trump is a fascist and Hitler started just this way and only an honest expression of their enlightened opinion can save the world. It might be interesting if they had a unique take, but generally their opinions are obvious and shallow, little better than a “Trump is a Nazi” or “Clinton Murder List” meme on Facebook. What is insufferable tends to be their utter lack of self-awareness about how obvious and tedious their opinion is.

    Challenge on the tedious and obviousness of their opinion, they reaffirm their nobility and insight. Which brings me to:

    Two: People in the public eye have an ego to feed. It’s a way to self-affirm their importance and relevance, to make themselves out to be more than mere entertainers, to pat themselves on the back, to flatter themselves. They begin to see themselves not just as actors or musicians or critics, but as the French resistance. Their peers with congratulate them on the brilliance and insight in agreeing with everybody else’s shallow and vapid opinions, they signal their virtue . . . it’s a big win for the ego, generally.

    Three: Which is kind of part of two, and that’s the immensity of the ego that tends to go with the irrational confidence that helps make these people push forward and become famous in the first place. They think their opinion matters. They mistakenly believe that because I’m a fan of their work, I will somehow be “enlightened” by their usually incoherent and unconsidered opinions because I like their movies or music. They feel they can single-handedly move their adoring public from possibly making the wrong choice to making the right choice. They believe they are influential in this respect, and that their coming out as opposed to the Republican de jour is just the same as, say, a bunch of historically Republican or non-endorsing papers coming out against Trump would be. They think they might just possibly change your mind by attacking a particular politician.

    However, when their incoherent ramblings are just absurd (say, Cameron Diaz speculating that George W. Bush might legalize rape) they just confirm they are ill-informed and thoughtless, and very lucky they live in a society where pretending to be somebody else and looking good while doing it is so richly rewarded. When their biting sarcasm is objectively unfunny, they just come off as bitter or angry and irrational (but, fortunately, being bitter and spiteful in front of fellow travelers is often considered to be “humorous”).

    I enjoyed Jon Stewart (when he wasn’t taking himself too seriously) and I like John Oliver. I find his show very entertaining, though very liberal. He knows how to set up a joke and deliver it. He understands the fine art of sarcasm. Alas, most performers would be better of sticking to their knitting. Because (a) most people didn’t pay to hear their favorite performer spout their uninformed political opinions, and (b) just because you’re a good singer doesn’t make you a good pundit.

    Like

    Reply
  9. Kevin S. Willis, on October 3, 2016 at 9:04 am said:

    BTW, all endorsements for Clinton for historically non-partisan or Republican venues should be: “She awful and corrupt, but at least she’s not Trump.” Too many of them have seemed too positive about Clinton.

    Also, OT tangent, I can’t get over the fact that Tribune Publishing actually changed it’s name to “Tronc”. Either that won’t last, or “Tronc” won’t.

    Tronc. My god, the world is run by idiots. 🙂

    Like

    Reply

Be kind, show respect, and all will be right with the world.