Vital Statistics:
| Last | Change | |
| S&P Futures | 2281.5 | -7.5 |
| Eurostoxx Index | 364.2 | -2.2 |
| Oil (WTI) | 53.1 | 0.0 |
| US dollar index | 91.4 | 0.0 |
| 10 Year Govt Bond Yield | 2.48% | |
| Current Coupon Fannie Mae TBA | 102.1 | |
| Current Coupon Ginnie Mae TBA | 103.2 | |
| 30 Year Fixed Rate Mortgage | 4.16 |
Dow 20,000 hats are off this morning as corporate earnings continue to come in. Bonds and MBS are up.
Donald Trump temporarily restricted immigration from 7 countries over the weekend until new vetting procedures are put in place. This story dominated the news cycle.
Personal Incomes rose in December by 0.3% while spending rose 0.5%. The core PCE index (the Fed’s preferred measure of inflation) is up 1.7% YOY.
Pending Home Sales increased in December, according to NAR. The challenge for 2017 will be increasing inventory enough to offset higher borrowing costs. NAR is forecasting housing starts to increase 8% this year to 1.26 million. Normalcy is closer to 1.5 million, so we have a ways to go there.
We have a big week for data, with the FOMC meeting and the jobs report on Friday. We also get productivity and employment costs, which is another huge number. We are also in the middle of earnings season with several heavyweights reporting this week.
Steve Mnuchin doesn’t appear to be interested in removing the Volcker Rule, which prohibits banks with FDIC backing to conduct proprietary trading. He does believe that it has restricted market liquidity in its implementation however and he is interested in tweaking it. Overall, it looks like Dodd-Frank will be fixed but not repealed.
A war is brewing over the state of the CFPB. Donald Trump has yet to weigh in on the agency or the fate of Richard Cordray. Also, it is looking like the CFPB will be remade into a bipartisan board as well.
80% of all mortgage borrowers are completely honest on their loan applications, according to a study by UBS. The inaccuracies generally fall into four buckets: overstated income, underreported debt, underreported expenses, and overstated assets.
The NAR’s quarterly survey of mortgage lenders is out, and problems with appraisers (or lack thereof) dominate the headaches. Over half of all respondents reported issues in this area, with 11% characterizing them as significant. One problem is the lack of new entrants, however 28% of lenders won’t accept an appraisal done by a trainee, and 44% require direct supervision of all aspects performed by a trainee. Non-QM lending fell slightly during the quarter, however investor demand for the product is rising. Rising rates are expected to have some effect on purchase demand, however there is such tight supply that it shouldn’t affect volumes overall.
Home prices are now within 0.3% of their peaks on a national level according to Black Knight Financial Services.
Filed under: Economy, Morning Report |
80% of all mortgage borrowers are completely honest on their loan applications, according to a study by UBS.
Any feel for how many of the remaining 20% are deliberately lying vs simply making mistakes?
Frist!
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No, plus there were quite a few “refuse to answer” responses as well.
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On my last loan application, I felt like I was being interrogated by the gestapo. It was truly awful. I hope its better before the next time I look to move. My previous two loans had been a cakewalk, by comparison.
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Adams’ theory on the Trump immigration EO’s.
“The Persuasion Filter and Immigration
Posted January 29th, 2017”
http://blog.dilbert.com/post/156532225711/the-persuasion-filter-and-immigration
This is starting to remind me of PL too:
“Be Careful What You Wish For (especially if it is Hitler)
Posted January 29th, 2017
…
But lately I get the feeling that Trump’s critics have evolved from expecting Trump to be Hitler to preferring it.
…
If you are looking for the tells that this dangerous situation is developing, notice how excited/happy the Trump critics seem to be – while angry at the same time – that Trump’s immigration ban fits their belief system.”
http://blog.dilbert.com/post/156540315831/be-careful-what-you-wish-for-especially-if-it-is
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“But lately I get the feeling that Trump’s critics have evolved from expecting Trump to be Hitler to preferring it.”
I think this is disingenuous. I suppose it’s a nice set up, giving Trumps more vociferous critics the benefit of the doubt, but they have always, unambiguously preferred that Trump be Hitler. He’s not really Hitler, he’s never going to be Hitler, but in the right light, if they squint, he looks enough like Hitler that they can protest, condemn, finally cut off their Trump-supporting family members they always wanted to cut off, but lacked a morally virtuous way to do it . . . etc.
BTW, I think this is (as everything) human nature. But something else is human nature, too: if you aren’t praised by Hollywood and the press for this kind of stuff, the lunacy doesn’t catch on. There was plenty of insanity, in pockets, around Obama’s election. But those folks were pilloried, ridiculed, or ignored. There were the Tea Partiers, too, but they were holding gatherings for a purpose, working at the right level (local and district elections) to effect change. I’m sure some of them had posted something racist about Obama to Facebook or were birthers or whatever, but not even much of their own movement was praising and lauding them for the awesomeness of their birtherism or racism. For (many, not all) of the left, it’s not just their own social network bubble that reinforces their lunacy, but everything. Their heros, Hollywood, the MSM, The View, the SAG awards, the Oscars, the MTV VMAs, I’m sure. The entire media culture will reinforce their alternate facts and praise them for their Trump-is-Hitlerism. So, unfortunately, they can’t be marginalized.
A wise critic might point out that Trump was a birther, and now he’s president, and that’s hardly “being marginalized”, and while that is true, he also did not run on birtherism. I don’t think he would presently see his time being a birther as the pinnacle of his power, nor was he ever asked to make presentations on his birthery-opinions and praised for them in laudatory editorial columns in the NYT and WaPo.
My point is that the left, generally, can go much more insane in this country because their bubble is so much larger, and can easily encompass every where they interact with life. The crazy right-winger bubble is a lot smaller, and often requires an intentional elimination of outside sources of information and opinion (in the real world or just inside their head) to be comfortably maintained.
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Worth a read:
“In Venezuela, we couldn’t stop Chávez. Don’t make the same mistakes we did.
How to let a populist beat you, over and over again.
By Andrés Miguel Rondón
January 27”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/01/27/in-venezuela-we-couldnt-stop-chavez-dont-make-the-same-mistakes-we-did/
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Here, term limits for the president are in the constitution. That’s a good thing.
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Are you now, or have you ever been a friend of Donald Trump?
http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/2017/01/30/tom-brady-donald-trump-super-bowl-li-51-patriots-falcons/97235644/?hootPostID=4bcafd7136c3831809b9a396bab080fe
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Why morality, so-called, has no place in politics or anything else. If you are morally correct group, if your goals and beliefs are the moral, objectively good ones, then anything is justified, if it’s you or your side doing it.
McCarthy would have been fine if he was a Democrat going after racists or something. If he was still a drunk accusing innocent people.
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