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 | 3120 | 7.25 |
| Oil (WTI) | 57.79 | 0.24 |
| 10 year government bond yield | 1.78% | |
| 30 year fixed rate mortgage | 3.93% |
Stocks are higher this morning after China agreed to take more steps to protect US intellectual property. Bonds and MBS are flat.
The upcoming week should be relatively quiet with the Thanksgiving holiday. SIFMA is recommending early closings for Wednesday and Friday. Wednesday will have some important economic data with GDP and personal incomes, but with the Fed on hold, economic data is going to take a backseat. Note Jerome Powell is expected to give a speech tonight after the market close.
The CFPB is taking a look at loan originator compensation, and is thinking about relaxing some of the rigid rules regarding variations in compensation. The biggest issue surrounds state loan programs, which are meant to make a mortgage more affordable and help get people into homes. Most of these programs have strict limits on how much the originator is permitted to make on a loan, and is often well below what the lender will make on normal conforming loans. This rule change will allow loan officers to lower their compensation to make these programs work financially for the lender. The Bureau is also looking at allowing lenders to decrease LO comp on loans where there are errors due to LO mistakes.
The investment community (firms like Blackrock, PIMCO, and Fidelity) are encouraging the Trump Administration to include an explicit government guarantee for Fannie and Freddie loans in its housing reform. The Trump Administration’s plan to privatize the GSEs does not contemplate an explicit government guarantee – and they would like to reduce the size of the government’s footprint in the mortgage market. Note they never had one – the GSEs were “government sponsored” entities, which doesn’t mean “government guaranteed.” Fannie and Fred were always public-private hybrids. Any sort of explicit government guarantee would require legislation, and that is probably going to be almost impossible absent another crisis.
Filed under: Economy, Morning Report |
All Things in Moderation 
The Democrats are struggling to keep their side united on impeachment
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-impeachment-townhalls/on-trump-impeachment-divisions-between-urban-and-rural-democrats-idUSKBN1XZ174
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Somebody who IS a D must tell the Boston-Hollywood strain of Ds that Impeachment takes substantial buy-in from both parties to work as a governing tool. This is obvious to Independents, of whom we are apparently few. I am not sure it was obvious to Rs in ’98, of course.
Meanwhile there is SO much stuff to investigate and create soundbites with! See the SecNav’s resignation letter! Get Bolton to testify at Judiciary! Tax returns! Crony contracts! Pence in Scotland! Ukranian mooks and Giuliani!
Phony Trump Foundation charity!
Much of that is real. All of it makes sound bites.
Start negotiating Censure with Rs if DJT’s polling drops to Nixonian low levels [31%].
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Interesting column by Ted Rall in the WSJ about how the hard left (Jacobin) is ignoring the spectacle as well..
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-left-shrugs-at-impeachment-11574634612
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I don’t subscribe, alas. That being said, I could see the first paragraph, and so was going to look up Patrick Lawrence, whom the author was citing, and the Nation is behind an ad wall. Unfortunately, our internet provider acts as an ad blocker you can’t turn off, so I can’t read anything there, either.
Dang it.
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Brent,
It’s behind the paywall for me. What was the reasoning the left is meh?
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‘Will the Democratic Party, this time in open collusion with the intelligence apparatus, succeed in its second attempt to depose President Donald Trump in what might fairly be called a bloodless coup?” asks columnist Patrick Lawrence. What’s surprising is that Mr. Lawrence is a man of the left. Like many progressives, he has as much disdain for Democratic centrists like Hillary Clinton as he has for Mr. Trump.
He may be unusual in his ferocious opposition to impeachment. But few progressives are excited at the prospect. Most aren’t talking about it, and apathy is common among those who are paying attention.
Over the past month, the socialist magazine Jacobin hasn’t run a single article about impeachment, or even about Mr. Trump. Progressive social media is focused on whether Elizabeth Warren is far enough to the left to be trustworthy.
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“All of it makes sound bites.”
Yup. See Ken Starr and the Clinton-impeachment. I think it also keeps the impeachers from having to do any real work (or take any stand on any potentially divisive piece of legislation) and keeps the impeachee tied up with impeachment (thus, Trump may not seem to be getting much done in the year leading up to the election, and appear embattled and under suspicion, which might potentially help the Dems–I certainly don’t see “Trump needs to go because of this quid pro quo” as something seriously believed by the Dems.
“Phony Trump Foundation charity!”
While I’m 100% sure this is accurate, I can’t imagine the Clinton’s want too much time spent investigating phony, potentially money-laundering foundations.
” I am not sure it was obvious to Rs in ’98, of course.”
More apparent to the senate than the house, apparently.
Just amazing to me the amount of goodwill the Republicans decided to squander, coming off the Contract With America, on the pointless impeachment of Bill Clinton. In many ways, the Democrats are in a worse position, as the GOP congress could delude itself into thinking the Republican senate would oust Clinton, but the Democrats have no credible excuse for entertaining that kind of fantasy.
In other ways, probably better. I think Trump is controversial enough among independents (and right-leaning women, in particular) that the impeachment theater may not exact the same political price. Also, there’s a big generational difference betweehn ’98 and 2019. But I think it by no means a sure thing that the Democrats will get rewarded for this “nothing but impeachment” strategy.
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“Somebody who IS a D must tell the Boston-Hollywood strain of Ds that Impeachment takes substantial buy-in from both parties to work as a governing tool.”
That’s not the goal. It’s to help with the election, but it’s backfiring.
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I think it’s been too much. The constant saturation has hurt what could have been an “October Surprise” (or a 2019 Surprise). If they had been doing just normal grumbling and then lead with the Ukraine call, I think it might be working differently.
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Everyone knows this is what’s actually going on:
“Unfortunately, Democratic outrage against political corruption, pretextual investigations and the use of vested powers to help your party win elections sounds a little hollow. For three years, impeachment, for many Democrats, has been an effect searching for a cause. Ukraine may have fit the bill perfectly, but anything else would have done just as well.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/11/22/how-can-republicans-defend-trump-because-clintons/
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If I spend much time listening to Donald Trump talk, I get the kind of “elite” visceral disgust that he’s the president. He is inarticulate and seems to suffer from ADD. He uses words in a way that goes from “influence” to just kind of gross propaganda (that sometimes very much sounds like the “tell a lie big enough often enough” variety).
He would not be my first, second, third, or fourth choice for president. Yes, “he fights”, and, yes, “but judges” but . . . eh, I’d pick one of the squishes that ran last time. Or Tulsi Gabbard. Or frankly one of the lowest polling orginal Dem candidates who got booted for saying crazy stuff like “we can’t just promise Medicare for All, and we shouldn’t” and otherwise sounded more Bill Clinton/Obama-like in their triangulation.
As it is–if my vote might potentially make a difference, I’d vote for Trump over Elizabeth Warren or Mayor Pete or Andrew Yang or Kamala Harris or Tom Steyer. At this point, with Biden . . . I dunno, he’s only marginally more articulate than Trump. And it’s a thin margin. And I would like to think he’d be better domestically and FP wise than a Warren or Harris or Styer . . .
Which is all to say, it either speaks to the weakness of the parties or the fractiousness of the times that the current Dem field is the best they can produce to run against Trump. Trump is imminently beatable by a Bill Clinton or an Obama type.
Or Tom Hanks. If someone like Tom Hanks ran, he’d wipe the floor with Trump. It’d be a frickin’ landslide. Hanks could be talking like Warren and he’d still win in a landslide.
It’s just amazing to me that it looks so much like Trump is going to win in 2020 right now, at least to me. Just amazing.
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I think the party line that Plume Line and Vox are pushing that there was no effort at all by Ukraine to influence the election is going to backfire.
Trump’s theory on CrowdStrike and the DNC server is completely unsupported, but they basically coordinated with the DNC to reveal info about Manafort in the media and it worked.
Taibbi is exactly right here:
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For Scott.
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McWing:
For Scott.
Good news, although I’ll believe it when I see it. Keeping Roberts on side is not a given.
But it is stuff like this leads me to have such contempt for all of the Never Trumpers on the right, despite my own personal dislike of Trump, and despite the fact that I cringe every time he opens his mouth or sends a tweet. I don’t see how any serious conservative and defender of the Constitution can think that Trump, even at his very worst, is a bigger threat to the nation than HRC or virtually any Democrat who might get elected in 2020. Clinton’s and Obama’s appointments to the Court alone have done infinitely more damage to the constitutional order than Trump could ever hope to accomplish. It is certainly difficult for me to take calls for impeachment (or even just censure) too seriously when they come from people who accept or, worse, welcome the likes of RBG and the Wise Latina on the Court as perfectly benign, and would choose 20 or 30 more years of continued constitutional corruption imposed by SCOTUS over 4 or 8 years of whatever personal corruption Trump might bring to the table.
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Good news, although I’ll believe it when I see it. Keeping Roberts on side is not a given.
No, but more likely now than ever. Unless the democrats managed to pull millions of ballots out of a car trunk all over the country–or Bloomberg gets the nom and proves to be a much better candidate than I presently suspect–then the right will be getting another justice on the bench.
But it is stuff like this leads me to have such contempt for all of the Never Trumpers on the right,
I feel like there are two levels, at least, of NeverTrumpers. There are the Bill Kristols who are warming up to Elizabeth Warren (and I can only assume that is because Trump’s antipathy towards the administrative state and his more isolationist tendencies) and the Max Boots and Jen Rubins who have gone full hard left. Then there are the Jonah Goldbergs and John Podhoretzes and Rob Longs who–while never giving full-throated support to Trump–would probably either vote for him over Warren or cast a 3rd party protest vote. Either of which, frankly, I could get behind.
Although at present I’d vote for Trump over anybody the Democrats are coming up with, aside from Tulsi Gabbard (which probably explains why so many folks on the left hate Tulsi).
and despite the fact that I cringe every time he opens his mouth or sends a tweet.
I agree, although sometimes he can be funny in a way no American president ever has been. But yes, if you strip away all the tweets and rambling, incoherent speeches and personnel drama–his administration is significantly more anti-establishment than the norm, a little more “let’s clean house” than the norm, but more corrupt than Dubya or Obama or Clinton? More anti-constitutional than Obama or Dubya or Clinton (thinking more of HRC healthcare task force, there)? Not remotely.
When it comes to corruption, thus far Trump seems pretty tame. And it’s not that he isn’t definitionally corrupt and doesn’t do plenty of things an idealized leader would not do–it’s just many of his predecessors were worse, and potentially far worse. LBJ, FDR, Woodrow Wilson? I’d pick Trump over John Adams. I’ll give Lincoln a pass on the suspension of habeas corpus, tho.
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Ezra Klein attempts to get it:
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/11/26/20978613/donald-trump-christians-william-barr-impeachment
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“This form of Flight 93ism is more widespread on the right than liberals recognize, and it both authentically motivates some establishment Republicans to enthusiastically embrace Trump, and creates coalitional dynamics by which other Republicans feel they have no choice but to defend Trump against the left. Some protect Trump on the merits, others protect Trump as a form of anti-anti-Trumpism, and others protect Trump as a way of protecting their future careers. But all of them protect Trump as a way of protecting themselves, and a future they feel slipping away.”
good point.
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Their motivation, at heart, is that Trump enjoys over 90% approval among the Republican base and he broadened the R coalition. Their primary concern is re-election and they cannot afford to alienate the base.
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jnc:
Ezra Klein attempts to get it:
Yes, and it isn’t a bad attempt, especially for him. But I’m still not sure he quite gets it.
It isn’t just the case that Barr “sees a country changing into something he doesn’t recognize”, but rather that Barr thinks the left is deliberately and consciously destroying the country he would recognize. It isn’t just the case that religion has a “branding problem”, but rather that the left is using its cultural and political power to deliberately and consciously brand religion as a problem. Sohrab Ahmari isn’t arguing (as Klein characterizes it) that “the condition of conservative Christianity [is] too desperate to countenance the niceties of liberal democarcy”, but rather that the left has been too ruthlessly successful in its attempts to destroy Christianity to countenance the niceties advised by Christianity.
He does at one point seem to truly get it, but I couldn’t tell whether he was actually acknowledging a rarely admitted reality, or still just trying to identify the paranoid conservative perspective. That was when he said:
“Liberals can hypothesize all they want about why Republicans should prefer Mike Pence, but the reality is that if Republicans joined with Democrats to remove Trump from office, the left would annihilate Pence in the aftermath, and what Barr calls “the scorched earth, no-holds barred war of “Resistance” would grab hold of the full powers of the federal government and turn them against the right.”
That is exactly correct.
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As i have said before, the way the left controls culture and universities is a model for how they would rule absent any constraints.
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Lol
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