Vital Statistics:
Last | Change | |
S&P Futures | 2432.0 | 1.3 |
Eurostoxx Index | 390.4 | 1.6 |
Oil (WTI) | 47.7 | -0.5 |
US dollar index | 88.1 | 0.1 |
10 Year Govt Bond Yield | 2.15% | |
Current Coupon Fannie Mae TBA | 103.47 | |
Current Coupon Ginnie Mae TBA | 104.33 | |
30 Year Fixed Rate Mortgage | 3.92 |
Stocks are flat this morning on no real news. Bonds and MBS are up small.
Mortgage Applications increased 7.1% last week. There was an adjustment made for the Memorial Day holiday. Purchases rose 10% while refis increased 3%. Mortgage rates fell to the lowest levels since November, however the refi share of applications fell again to 42%.
HSBC is calling for a 1.9% 10 year yield by the end of the year. This call is well below the average Street consensus view of a 10 year yield around 2.7%. Given the fact that nothing much is changing between Trump and Obama policy-wise (at least as far as legislation that will be passed) that probably is the right call. That move will be good for mortgage origination activity, however it will generally be bad for banks which rely on a big spread between short-term rates and long-term rates. Given that the Fed does tend to follow the markets, it will be interesting to see if they continue on their plan of 3 hikes this year.
House Democrats look like they aren’t going to offer much in the way of resistance to the financial deregulation bill (the CHOICE act). The bill is expected to pass the House this week on a party line vote, but Democrats have chosen not to force their Wall Street friendly members to walk the plank for the banks. The bill will go to the Senate, where it will undoubtedly need 60 votes to pass and will be watered down. There is a good chance that something will pass, as there is a pretty much bipartisan consensus that Dodd-Frank imposed too big of a regulatory burden on smaller banks.
Gallup’s Job Creation Index ticked up to a record last week. In May, 46% of respondents said their company was hiring, a 1% uptick from April, while the number of respondents who said their company was laying off workers was steady at 9%. The East Coast is lagging the rest of the country, which makes sense in that it is the most levered the financial industry which has been going through a wrenching technologically-driven transformation over the past 20 years. In fact, states like Connecticut (which have historically funded the majority of their budget on taxes from Fairfield County) are having major issues as the tax receipts have fallen off a cliff. This helps explain why the Northeast real estate indices have lagged the rest of the country (especially if you strip out New York City).
Realtors reported low inventory as a major issue in the latest survey. Lender closing delays was also cited as a major issue.
Filed under: Economy, Morning Report |
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2017/06/07/vladimir-putin-i-am-not-woman-so-dont-have-bad-days/376589001/
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Trump and Putin are definitely kindred spirits.
Understand why its bad that Russia may have attempted to influence the election, although by the mechanisms cited I don’t see how they could have had any real impact. The fake news was directed at people who were never going to vote for Hillary, anyway. As were the leaks, of real things, that did not reflect well on HRC. None of that did as much damage, IMHO, as “I’m With Her” as a campaign slogan, versus “Make America Great”. If her slogan had been “Jobs, Jobs, Jobs” we might be dealing with president Clinton right now.
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Let this sink in:
“Political scientists have long acknowledged that referendums are a poor gauge of voters’ actual preferences. Electorates are especially vulnerable to manipulation when complex issues are reduced into a simple yes or no question.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/democracy-post/wp/2017/06/07/dont-be-fooled-by-the-u-k-election-theres-nothing-democratic-about-brexit/
Up is down, Left is right, having voters decide something directly isn’t democracy.
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Polling 101….
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I read this as “I don’t like the results of referendums, ergo voters are stupid.”
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I love stuff like this because I think the idea is to cast doubt on referendums, but who in politics is going to want to tell their voters that they (the voters) are idiots and have no right to vote on things, leave it to your betters, now vote for me. I’m sure they’d like to, but this is just ideological masturbation. “You’re voting for things you really don’t want, so we want to take that choice away from you,” is never going to sell.
If the argument is that the system can be manipulated, the obvious response seems to me to be that every system can be manipulated, and a congress or parliament is much more amenable to direct manipulation by a few special interests than an entire country of voters. By definition. Referendums, manipulated and propagandized or not, are by definition more democratic and more representative of the voter’s will than a handful of politicians voting on things in the proverbial smoke-filled room.
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I assume they want Sessions to ignore the outcomes of all the medical and recreational marijuana referendums? Because, you know, the electorate was vulnerable and manipulated when they decided to legalize Mary Jane?
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The left is in favor of democracy as long as they get the results they want, they are in favor of free speech as long as they approve of what you say..
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I, too, am in favor of the things I like and opposed to everything I am against! And I am for those things when they benefit me, but opposed to them when they benefit others.
That’s called “being principled”!
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Everything I dislike must be banned.
Everything I like must be mandatory and paid for by others…
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I like the way you think!
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I’m fine with them saying that the results of the referendum and whatever other arguments they want to marshal show that democracy is bad (or imperfect, etc).
Pretending that they show that the EU is somehow more “democratic” than the referendum is simply bullshit. In fact, it’s Trump level bullshit.
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You would think the ability to distinguish between legal and illegal immigration would be a job requirement to become governor of a state, but apparently it isn’t….
http://www.cnn.com/videos/tv/2017/06/06/nancy-pelosi-andrew-cuomo-2018.cnn
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There is no illegal immigration, not really. They are just undocumented workers. Or, as I like to call them, “unsung heroes”.
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They’ve lost it again:
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“No, a dictator or a fascist would have you arrested or shot.”
I love that first-world snowflakes think the ultimate expression of authoritarian dictatorship would be the dictator blocking them on Twitter. That says so much about America (well, that and the fact a guy like Trump was elected president) right there.
I feel like the underlying implication here is that Twitter needs to be nationalized and turned into a national public utility. For freedom.
Seriously. Anyone can block anybody in Twitter. That’s the whole point. It’s the only mechanism on social media to control stalkers and harassers and trolls.
Don’t want Trump to block you? Don’t troll him. That’s his job, and don’t waste time trying to teach the master, padawan.
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This is an elected official trying to silence an entire sector of the dissenting populace
Not talking to someone is now silencing them… Good to know…
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I have a right for the president to have to read my Tweets and all other social media posts. It’s in the 1st offendment! Don’t you read the Constipation?
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“I have a right for the president to have to read my Tweets and all other social media posts.”
No, it’s asserting a right to use Trump’s feed as her platform to reach others.
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Brent:
Not talking to someone is now silencing them… Good to know…
Akin to not paying for something is "denying access" to that something.
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Or you are oppressing me because you won’t make me a cake.
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Pastry oppression is a thing.
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Juiceboxers attempt to explain why the right hates Gaia…
https://www.vox.com/2017/4/22/15377964/republicans-environmentalism
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Really? Was it really? I mean, other than the progress that has been made incrementally year over year like forever, no matter who was in charge?
Really? I can see them perhaps looking to curb obvious pollution for the sake of appearance and quality of domestic life, but curbing CO2 for climate alarmism, or an accord signed in Paris? Really.
Which is just one of the many ways that Nixon was a big government liberal, and awful in his faith in the state to micromanage everything. Also, the law of unintended consequences might be in play there, too.
Never, ever heard this at the time. Again, if the only good Republican is always an out-of-office Republican, you’re going to get the Tea Party and you’re going to get Trump (not just because of that, but it’s part of the mix).
Note what is missing here is “public outcry” or “Reagan heard from the voters”.
And, there you go. The go to explanation: racism!
What a crazy proposal: that people who purchase and build and use property and good faith with the government steps in to destroy the economic model that the built their livelihoods on.
Hmmm. Well, nothing to learn there. Nope. No lessons to be drawn. Whatsoever.
OMG. Juiceboxers. Millennials. Journalism, and profession about as respected by the general public as “used car salesman”, and social media is how they are going to rule the world. No wonder they keep losing.
I predict they will not do well with that argument.
Not familiar with this election, but I’m guessing that it’s going to be close.
Which does not remotely suggest they see Democratic solutions or things like the Paris Accord as being useful to addressing climate change.
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Or, perhaps the early environmental policies were things that everyone could get behind – i.e. not permitting Eastman Kodak to dump chemical waste into the Genessee River, litter prevention, etc. Tough to oppose that stuff.
Now, it is all about using environmentalism as a Trojan Horse for a bunch of items on the leftist wish list that are only tangentially related to the environment.
Lot easier to get people behind not letting the Cuyahoga River burn than getting them behind taxes that will double their electricity bill and gasoline bills..
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Damn those Republicans who hate people who make a living wage….
http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/336698-republican-in-georgia-race-i-do-not-support-a-livable-wage
I’ll never understand the logic of the left which says that if a person’s labor isn’t yet worth a living wage, the thing to do is to prevent them from working and gaining the experience necessary to earn a living wage.
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Comey’s prepared opening remarks
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/06/james-comeys-opening-statement-on-trump-annotated/529521/
Lawfare commentary
https://lawfareblog.com/initial-comments-james-comeys-written-testimony
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I hear a sad trombone noise coming from the pro-impeachment MSM…
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Which kind of leads to the presumption that Trump, also not steeped in federal law enforcement, was not aware that he was doing anything particularly inappropriate. My presumption would be that Trump was just doing what he does. And without explicit warnings that lines of inquiry or conversation were inappropriate and potentially illegal, he would actually have no way of knowing. And those, such as Comey, failing to provide those warnings even though they did know would turn out to have been derelict in their duty, and perhaps even viewable as attempting to leverage Trump’s ignorance against him and set him up.
I continue to have a problem with the characterization that Trump urged Comey to drop the case, based on what Comey himself has reported. “I hope you can see clear to drop this” or whatever is not “urging”, at least in a laymen, man-on-the-street sense. It’s expressing a preference. I expect Trump hoped his preference might influence Comey’s decisions, but that is not “urging”, it’s not even saying, “look, I want you to drop this case. Find some way to drop it.” That would be a command, an attempt to directly compel.
Which gets to why Trump so offends the DC establishment. It’s like Jon Stewart’s tirade about Trump eating pizza with a fork. It just isn’t done.
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Counterpoint.
http://thefederalist.com/2017/06/07/james-comeys-latest-statement-is-an-indictment-of-comey-not-trump/
And Ace’s take on the Loyalty freak out.
http://acecomments.mu.nu/?post=370099
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Ride the lightening.
https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/266916/
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Women who have been raised on CGI girls kicking boys asses movies have no idea just how far behind men they are athletically.
World class Olympian women would not be fast enough to qualify for the state high school boy’s championships in their own states.
Just wait until some drag queen who can crush the ball 300 yards decides to become a millionaire by dominating on the LPGA tour…
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Why you hate women? And womyn? And zwimen? And neutral? And . . .
All the new genders are going to make it a lot harder to figure out whose at war with who in the genderverse.
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Brent:
World class Olympian women would not be fast enough to qualify for the state high school boy’s championships in their own states.
The renowned US women’s soccer team, winner of the last World Cup, got trounced 5-2 by FC Dallas’s under 15 boys team.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-4389760/USA-women-s-team-suffer-5-2-loss-FC-Dallas-U-15-boys.html
Women simply cannot compete athletically with men, (or even boys apparently), on a level playing field. That’s why they need special treatment like that provided for under Title IX.
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Comey seems like he was desperate to keep his job. In what way is different than any other politician?
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I think the problem is everybody fantasizes that everything they don’t like is impeachable. I think this is because of the inclusion of “misdemeanors” in the impeachment clause. Take that out, that should raise the bar enough to suggest that looking meaningfully at the wrong person while you saying you hope something happens (or denying you had extramarital sex with someone) is not impeachable.
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Who over at The PL is the wokest?
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This is a good question. I honestly don’t know. Many of them seem pretty woke, to me. But I don’t think many of them could qualify as millennials.
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Follow up question, has anyone ever heard someone refer to themselves as woke in a non-ironic manner?
If so, what’d you say?
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Breaking: NYT Thinks Comey Is A Goddamned Liar!
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This is something that has always bugged me:
Mr. Comey did not say exactly what he believed was incorrect about the article, which was based on information from four current and former American officials, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because the information was classified.
Wouldn’t it be more honest and accurate to say “…all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are breaking the law and do not want the FBI to know who they are”?
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