Brent Nyitray
Fairlington Blade
Let the mutherfuker burn!
jnc4p
Kevin S. Willis
Michigoose
lmsinca
markinaustin
Memetrics
novahockey
quarterback
ScottC
yellojktVital Statistics:
| Last | Change | |
| S&P Futures | 2448.5 | 1.5 |
| Eurostoxx Index | 368.4 | -3.8 |
| Oil (WTI) | 46.3 | -0.1 |
| US dollar index | 85.5 | -0.1 |
| 10 Year Govt Bond Yield | 2.15% | |
| Current Coupon Fannie Mae TBA | 103.33 | |
| Current Coupon Ginnie Mae TBA | 104.21 | |
| 30 Year Fixed Rate Mortgage | 3.84 |
Stocks are higher this morning on some strong economic data. Bonds and MBS are down.
The economy added 237,000 jobs in August, according to the ADP jobs report. The Street is looking for 180,000 jobs in this Friday’s jobs report. In a reversal of recent trends, large businesses are starting to add workers.
Second quarter GDP was revised upward to 3% from 2.6% as consumer spending increased 3.3%. The GDP price index was unchanged at 1%, which gives the Fed the leeway to maintain an easy monetary policy.
Mortgage Applications decreased 2.3% last week as purchases fell 3% and refis fell 2%. The 30 year conforming rate fell by a basis point to 4.11%.
Corporate profits fell in Q2 from 11.5% to 8.1%.
The FHFA is changing some of the limits for reverse mortgages, after it found that the program amounts to a 7.7 billion a year loss for the government. The borrowing caps will fall, such that a 62 year old would be able to only access 41% of the equity in their property, down from 52%. An 82 year old would only be able to access 51%, down from 60%. Reverse Mortgages are a way for seniors to tap an illiquid asset (their home equity) and turn it into a liquid asset (cash) while still living in their home. They are a great deal for the senior, however they are a money-loser for the taxpayer.
CoreLogic takes a look at which housing markets are most at risk for a downturn, using its Market Health indicator. This looks at home price appreciation relative to income growth and rental inflation. 8 of the top 10 riskiest markets are in Florida. Note that the highest risk areas are the ones that fell the furthest when the bubble burst. The low risk ones are the areas that didn’t really experience the huge peaks and valleys.
Wells Fargo is being sued over lock extension fees. The suit claims that they charged extension fees when the bank was the reason the lock was blown.
Filed under: Economy, Morning Report |
All Things in Moderation 
There’s your Trump economy.
All that good stuff is just holdover from Obama.
LikeLike
They still increased 8.1%, just not as big as Q1 was. These are YOY comparisons, so Q117 was way better than Q116…
The GDP number is good though, as is the ADP numbers. Gotta give the media chest pains to print that though.
LikeLiked by 1 person
“They still increased 8.1%”
Then that part was Obama. Just a little Trump drag on it, is all.
The metric, I am told, is anything that good that happens during the Trump presidency is a holdover from Obama policies, but everything bad will clearly be because of Trump.
Except for the people informing me that everything good that happens is entirely Trump, and anything bad that happens was caused by Obama.
The president has a lot of power! 😉
… I expect the media will continue to spin good news as irrelevant to Trump, or happening despite him. They will suddenly discover that individuals and businesses and global economic trends impact the economy, and that the president is largely (thank goodness!) irrelevant.
LikeLike
“lock extension fees”? “Lock was blown”?
I am imagining WF blowing open safety deposit boxes on July 4th.
What does this mean?
LikeLiked by 1 person
more relevant to my mortgage banking audience.
if you are getting a mortgage, you have the option of “locking in” your rate for 45 days or so. It costs the originator money to guarantee that rate to you, so once the 45 days are up, you usually have to pay an extension fee. If it is the borrower’s fault (typically they didn’t get something in on time, or they had to delay the mortgage closing to coincide with the sale of their existing house) then that cost it is charged to the borrower. If it is due to something on the bank’s side, then the bank usually eats the fee.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks. Makes perfect sense.
LikeLiked by 1 person
The Hollywood Diversity mob wins one.
https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/8/29/16222324/skrein-hellboy-white-washing
LikeLike
jnc:
The Hollywood Diversity mob wins one.
I went to see Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 on Broadway last night. It is a musical based on a section of Tolstoy’s War and Peace, and is set in Russia in 1812. Not a lot of black people roaming around Moscow in 1812, but the lead female role, Natasha, is played by a black woman.
I saw no one protesting while I was there. I guess the “blackwashing” of Russian history is acceptable.
LikeLiked by 1 person
There’s a hierarchy of acceptable racial replacements in entertainment. White people cannot replace any ethnicity. Black people can replace any ethnicity. Asians can replace white people. Other races and nationalities, it depends on the context.
Jewish people can only replace WASPs.
Comic geeks and film geeks often get accused of racism because they don’t like racial recasting of any kind. Although it’s actually fairly broad (they want someone who fits the type of the traditional character: it’s traditionalism, rather than racism), because so many of the powerhouse fantasy, sci-fi, and comic characters are white, they are often complaining about the recasting of white characters as African-American or another race. But they’d bitch just as loudly if they tried to cast some white, blonde chick as Amanda Waller (head of Argus, African-American). Many complained that she wasn’t a heavyset black woman, because one of the more popular depictions of Amanda Waller was heavy-set). They want it the way they want it. Some deviation is allowed, but not much.
If you are going to deviate, best it have been set up in the source material. Nobody has really ever complained about Nick Fury (for years, and archetypical John Wayne-type old-white-man) conversion to African-American. But that was because the Marvel Ultimates series did that reimagining first, in the comics, and because Nick Fury isn’t regarded the same way that Captain America is, for example.
When it was rumored the next Spider Man was going to feature an African American Peter Parker, the rumor was not received well. But not because most comic geeks are racists, but because Peter Parker has always been a nerdy white dude. They have also complained that the Amazing Spiderman version of Peter Parker was not remotely nerdy, and that Toby MacGuire’s Spiderman didn’t make his own mechanical webshooters.
Eh, Whitewashing is generally a hyper-simplification. I was listening to the recent GLOP podcast where they complained about the racism of Gone With the Wind. Which I think ignores the time period even as they talk about it. Of course, I’m a fan of Gone With the Wind so I’m biased and perhaps willing to overlook flaws.
LikeLike
The fact that this is an issue is one of the reasons why i have not gone to a movie (not under duress) for years. And why I haven’t watched anything regularly on TV since Hill Street Blues..
LikeLiked by 1 person
Then you missed Sons of Anarchy, which was AWESOME!
Edit: except for the ending, Jax Teller seemed to cut a deal in which he traded his life to integrate the club.
It was weird.
Shitloads of murder though, prolly the most murderous show I’ve ever seen.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Last night we watched some of “What Would You Do?” an ABC show that should be called “Are You A Good Liberal?”
The original conceit of such shows was to see how people would react to situations where someone needed help, or you found money, or something like that. Now it’s 95% setting up some liberal bogeyman to say mean things to a fat person, a Muslim, or gay person, or girl who wants to play videogames, or transgender person (seriously, one of the one last night was making a really big deal about how awful it is not to use the right pronoun with a transgender woman) and so on. Most of this appears to be shot in LA or New York or somewhere where EVERYBODY is going to want to step in a virtue-signal their moral superiority to the hateful bogeyperson who dares to be mean to transgender womyn.
It’s straight out propaganda and mind-control. A couple of things strike me: these are utterly Victorian morality tales, set-up stories meant to educate the unwashed masses on correct moral behavior and Godly (or should that be godless?) virtue. There is a large contingent of the American left that are the New Victorians. A very large contingent.
And this, which I like and I think is smart: even though the “bad guy” in these morality tales are always outrageous cliches, the show focuses on why Muslims or transgender people or black people or womyn needed to be treated and praised, why everybody is beautiful no matter what they look like, etc. It’s the old school liberalism: I’m okay, you’re okay. Yeah, that person said awful things, but it wasn’t real, so let’s just focus on how everybody should love each other. There’s really no tear-down of the strawman bad guy in each vignette.
I got a feeling when the show comes back in 15 years, and is being directed by millennials, it will be nothing but 20 minutes hate about the bad Christian who dared to look directly at a transgendered Muslim, and didn’t apologize for breathing the same air.
LikeLike
Hellboy is a more obscure title, but generally, genre geeks don’t like (pointless) race-swapping. They consider the character to be as created, and don’t like swapping. Of any kind. Which is noble when it’s a non-white character they are complaining about, but racist when it’s a white character.
The same people bitched that Chris Evans wasn’t super-blonde in the first two Fantastic 4 movies. And that an African American was cast as Johnny Storm in the Fantastic 4 reboot.
Make Gandalf a woman in a LoTR reboot, and you’ll get the same kvetching. Comic/fantasy/sci-fi geeks don’t like whitewashing or diversity hires.
LikeLike
Hilarious how some on the left are rediscovering the Constitution now that Trump’s president:
“Trump Doesn’t Have the Authority to Attack North Korea Without Congress
The decision to engage in armed conflict rests with the legislative branch, a requirement that is neither a formality nor outdated.
Garrett Epps”
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/08/trump-doesnt-have-the-power-to-attack-north-korea-without-congress/538425/
LikeLike
Interesting, isn’t it, how interested pundits and the media and critics have become in the constitution since last November.
I’ve heard them diving into the minutia of the constitution since then in a way I can never recall. So much discussion about the 2th amendment, the emoluments clause, etc. I don’t think they brought of the emoluments clause, or the 25th amendment, once during Obama’s presidency.
LikeLike
doesn’t the Constitution simply mean whatever my feelings dictate it should mean?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Brent:
doesn’t the Constitution simply mean whatever my feelings dictate it should mean?
I think it means whatever it needs to mean in order to advance progressive goals.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Interesting take on the Palin v NYT ruling:
The Times’ attorneys argued that Palin’s claim could not fulfill all of these elements even if everything she alleged were true. Rakoff agreed that four of the five elements could possibly be proven at trial. On the third element, however, he held that Palin could not possibly prove that the Times and the primary author of its unsigned editorial, James Bennet, acted with actual malice. As a result, he dismissed the case.
“Actual malice” is a tough requirement to meet, and purposely so. The court in Sullivan wanted to ensure that libel suits did not stifle free speech, especially where the subject of the speech is a public figure of the type about which newspapers should be expected to publish opinions. They held that the statement in question must have been published “with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.”
Palin alleged that Bennet, the brother of Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado, had a motive to defame her, both out of political animus and of a desire to please the Times’ subscribers. Whether or not political disagreement alone is sufficient to prove animus—and Rakoff rightly says that it is not—it is useless to deny that the Times opposes Palin and other social conservatives. Palin needed to prove that such opposition led Bennet and others either to ignore what they knew (that the connection to Loughner was false) or that they recklessly made no effort to even verify their wrong assumptions.
Rakoff held an evidentiary hearing to look into what Bennet knew about the five-year-old falsehood. Even holding such a hearing arguably shows that the facts of the matter are in doubt and should be heard by a jury—which rules on the facts—rather than a judge, who rules on the law. By holding that hearing, questioning Bennet, and weighing the evidence, Rakoff stepped into the role properly granted to jurors.
http://thefederalist.com/2017/08/30/sarah-palin-appeal-dismissal-nyt-defamation-lawsuit/#disqus_thread
I don’t know the full legal standard for establishing malice, but that the NYT acted with reckless disregard for the truth seems pretty indisputable.
LikeLike
Good piece.
“but that the NYT acted with reckless disregard for the truth seems pretty indisputable.”
Or at least plausible enough to send to a jury.
LikeLiked by 1 person
“On the third element, however, he held that Palin could not possibly prove that the Times and the primary author of its unsigned editorial, James Bennet, acted with actual malice.”
How do you prove the obvious?
I kind of feel in the vein of freedom of speech and the press, the NYT should have ultimately been immune from this suit. It’s up to Palin to use her power as a public figure it call out the fake news, and maybe the lawsuit was ultimately part of that. But I still don’t think she actually should have won.
And I suppose proving they acted with malice would not be possible, but . . . does anyone really think they took gratuitous shots at Palin without malice?
LikeLike
LikeLike
I don’t give two shits about this broad. I do see the in-house complaints about her as consisting of two elements. First, jealousy over her deal, and, second, she came from FOX News and so is being “otherized.” No one from the dreaded FOX News must be allowed to succeed.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/nbc-insiders-total-panic-over-megyn-kellys-morning-show
LikeLiked by 1 person
Worth noting
“The FDA Approves a Landmark Cancer Drug
CAR T-cell therapy turns the body’s own immune systems against cancer with genetic engineering.
Sarah Zhang 4:19 PM ET ”
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/08/fda-approves-landmark-cancer-drug-using-gene-editing/538446/
LikeLiked by 1 person
Sorry buddy, ain’t gonna get you out of the friendzone for that hot number you have your eye on in Gender Studies 101…
http://affinitymagazine.us/2016/12/27/actually-straight-white-men-are-the-root-of-our-problems/
LikeLiked by 1 person
Racism is a manifestation of tribalism, and everyone can (and does) experience both internally and externally, in some form.
Dude needs to study some history. Also, a dictionary, as that is not the definition of racism. That’s the new spin.
Racism is an expression of natural tribalism, competition for resources, and drive to dominance that is part of the human condition.
As opposed to a long history of enlightened Muslim, South American, African and Haitian matriarchies. Oh, and China. The women always loved the foot-binding.
Well, minority politicians are given a pass, but I don’t much care on this point as I believe “politician” and “corrupt” are redundant.
No real suggestions about how white dudes can improve themselves.
I like the first comments:
Our natural and unavoidable tribalism, illustrated succinctly.
LikeLike
The one thing to keep in mind is that he is still in high school…
Second, his parents and educators have done him a huge disservice. Nobody needs to apologize for who they are.
I have talked to my son extensively about this shit and how it is all just a bunch of bullshit.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’d much rather be your son than that dude.
The ahistorical nature of his assertions are breathtaking. Also the narcissism. Good or bad, it’s still All About Me!
LikeLike
The 3.0% GDP revision has to be eating at Obama.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Unmentioned is that DiFi is ranking memeber of the Senate Committe looking into the (bullshit) Russian Collusion conspiracy. She’s in a position to know if there is any There, there.
Saying Trump’s gonna finish his term ain’t exactly an endorsement that they’re gonna get the goods on him.
http://hotair.com/archives/2017/08/30/sen-feinstein-backtracks-saying-trump-can-good-president/
LikeLiked by 1 person
I think this counts as a crack in the antifa “as a movement” thing.
http://acecomments.mu.nu/?post=371357
LikeLike
That leftism is essentially a secular religion is hardly a new insight, but this piece on the subject is still pretty interesting:
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2017/08/the-lefts-values-are-our-state-church.html
There can be no political freedom where there is no religious freedom. Religion is more encompassing than politics can ever be. Politics addresses which policy best accomplishes a particular goal. Religion tackles the question of what the goal should be. If you don’t have the freedom to determine your own goals, then your ability to choose policies is as meaningless as some European elections.
Leftist systems seek to create “democratic” arenas in which we are free to disagree on policies, but not goals. They do this by writing values into the system so that only one sort of goal is deemed acceptable.
Deviations from the goal are not acceptable. Questioning the goal is heresy. And leads to sanctions.
LikeLike
Religion finds a way. When ostensibly banned from public life, the banning is either ignored (evangelicals in politics are rarely shy about prayer or invoking God and Jesus) or all the trappings are relabeled, to be just as much a religion as any other, but having renamed all the rites, prayers, traditions and saints (and, of course, the god or gods) so that they can technically claim to be non-religious, or completely secular. And I’m sure the vast majority of them believe that claim to be true.
LikeLike
This typically seems to transform to being disallowed from disagreeing on policies as well. Or, the policy essentially becomes the goal. Elevating the poor becomes reducing income inequality becomes wealth redistribution by taxes, and any other solution to the government enriching the poor becomes unacceptable and heresy.
LikeLike
Some sense from Trump’s EPA
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/08/30/epa-extends-a-waiver-on-motor-fuel-contents-to-apply-nationwide-not-just-to-texas/
LikeLike