Brent Nyitray
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Let the mutherfuker burn!
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Kevin S. Willis
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| Last | Change | |
| S&P futures | 3069 | -13.1 |
| Oil (WTI) | 37.64 | -0.19 |
| 10 year government bond yield | 0.66% | |
| 30 year fixed rate mortgage | 3.16% |
Stocks are lower this morning on fears of a COVID-19 resurgence. Bonds and MBS are flat.
Personal Incomes fell 4.2% in May, as government stimulus checks were offset by wage declines from furloughed workers. Consumer spending rose 8.2% MOM, led by a big uptick in paper products.
Forbearances ticked up last week according to Black Knight’s forbearance report. There were 4.68 million homeowners in forbearance, or 8.8%, an uptick of 79,000 or 0.1%.
The migration out of urban areas is real. A record 27% of homebuyers are looking to relocate from places like San Francisco and Seattle to less dense and cheaper locations. “While there has been a huge increase in the number of people looking online at homes in small towns, the long-term impact of the pandemic on people actually moving from one part of the country to another remains to be seen,” said Redfin economist Taylor Marr. “People are starting to take the plunge and move away from big, expensive cities, though most of them were probably already considering a lifestyle change. The pandemic and the work-from-home opportunities that come with it is accelerating migration patterns that were already in place toward relatively affordable parts of the country. But for many people, the lure of large homes in wide open spaces will be a passing dream fueled by coronavirus-induced isolation. ”
Filed under: Economy, Morning Report |
All Things in Moderation 
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Hopefully these struggle sessions will stay in the woke blue checkmark twitter community
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This is a fascinating discussion. Actual Africans have very low opinions of American blacks, generally:
I found this interesting:
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Polling suggests most black and hispanic Ds like most white Ds do not consider race a qualification for VP.
Loud “leaders” are not the tips of icebergs, just floaters.
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And yet…
https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/20/politics/black-woman-biden-running-mate/index.html
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Gavin Newsom wants Californians to die.
https://www.politico.com/states/california/story/2020/06/26/newsom-charges-ahead-as-california-virus-cases-reach-new-record-1294706
(Am I doings this right?)
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So basically it’s a dude who likes chicks.
http://acecomments.mu.nu/?post=388927
Guess I’m a lezzie as well.
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I was an honorary lezzie as a single young heterosexual male lawyer.
Haircurling footnote for a lawyer in a recent 7th Circuit case:
The lawyer who represented McNair was Marcia Linsky, who as a Magistrate Judge in Allen County had denied McNair’s motion in 2007. Whether Indiana’s rules of legal ethics permit a lawyer to represent someone seeking to contest a decision that the lawyer made while on the bench is a question we need not consider.
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Interesting article:
View at Medium.com
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I read that exact article last night! It was interesting though a little bubbled I think. To big city focused and doesn’t entertain the most likely possibility of state nullification of some Federal authority.
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This is a good article, and I think that ultimately outcomes would be a lot less clean than game theory might predict, the ultimate mess would not necessarily be replete with outcomes that most of the BLM and Antifa activists (so many of them being oppression tourists rather than people with actual considered grievances requiring redress) would consider desirable.
The outcome of the election in November will be telling, and not just (or even significantly) the presidency. If the same governors and mayors up for a vote get voted back in, the progressives make heavy inroads in the congress and the senate and state legislatures . . . then that will be very informative as to what we can expect going forward.
But while elections can potentially be stolen and polls fudged or skewed with bias, I’ll be very interested in seeing in how the money flows. White Fragility is a #1 best seller–although in the present era, “why” is always an important question: is it because it is actually being read, or bought in large quantities by corporations to hand out in the form of virtue signaling, or are there other distorting factors). But how will all of our new Woke Corporate Overlords fair in the next few quarters. It’s one thing for Chick-fil-A to go woke outside of its store–but when sports goes full-woke, with films go full woke, when streaming companies go full woke (I’m already hearing from a lot of people cancelling all their streaming services over the recent censorship) . . . that begins to turn the product woke. And how many people will keep on buying?
I’d like to see a game theory take on woke marketing (and particular woke-productizing).
That being said there have already been numerous independent media sites that have gone woke and are in the process of going broke. Or already have. There have been a number of recent films that were woke-marketed (Birds of Prey, A Wrinkle In Time, Terminator: Dark Fate) that were huge flops. I think the media-Twitterati feedback loop has given these folks the wrong idea of how much the general public wants to put up with.
You can get away with putting assertions like “boys sports = rape culture” in 13 Reasons Why on Netflix, but in big mainstream pieces? Revenue drivers? And then practicing censorship, voluntarily, to signal your fear of the loud-by-relatively-tiny mob? I think there is probably a tipping point for this stuff.
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A record 27% of homebuyers are looking to relocate from places like San Francisco
If they are hoping to stay in CA, reasonable pricing starts near Fresno.
On the Coast Range and to the west of it down to the water there are legit statewide regs based on fire/quake/mudslide issues that must require a civil engineer to sign off on, exacerbated greatly by NIMBY rules in the localities.
If you are going to have to move to Fresno you may as well move to metro Austin, Houston, DFW, or San Antonio. Shorter commute, no state income tax, tech jobs available when COVID 19 subsides. Probably as many Apple jobs in the Austin metro, two years from now, as in Cupertino, and pre-Covid I would often meet Apple employees at local watering holes who were shuttling on the nerd bird from SJ to Austin but who were supposed to return. Invariably they wanted transfers to Austin where they “would be rich”. My buddies were IBM crowd, who would try to discourage the Apples and even the Applettes from their relocation dreams, just because “Apple”.
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From Volokh:
On Monday, President Donald Trump extended a near-total ban that he had first announced in April on entry into the United States by immigrants seeking “green cards” for permanent residency. This policy is the most sweeping ban on immigration in American history. Even during earlier crises, such as the Great Depression, the two world wars, and the horrific flu pandemic of 1918–19, the U.S. did not categorically ban the entry of virtually all migrants seeking to settle here permanently. The newly expanded version of the policy also severely restricts temporary work visas.
The official justifications for these policies are the prevention of the spread of the coronavirus pandemic and the protection of American workers from wage competition. Neither rationale can justify such a sweeping restriction on immigration. Even more troubling, the order is a large-scale executive-branch power grab that sets a dangerous precedent. It makes a mockery of conservative jurists’ insistence that there are constitutional limits to the amount of authority Congress can delegate to the executive.
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Given the so called pandemic along with record high unemployment for those born here or entitled to stay and work here, why is this a bad move?
Or do you object to the perceived power grab?
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George: Bad move on economic grounds – key workers should still be permitted – if quarantined for a few weeks first.
I think Congress could delegate this power temporarily based on COVID-19 concerns but it should not do so by silence. Then it becomes a power grab, which is something any modern POTUS will try.
Kev: Several of BHO’s EOs were thrown out by the courts and I think more of Trump’s. I think that “too much delegation” only comes up in specific court cases as some individual or company is aggrieved. That is the only way it can come up in a courtroom: by case or controversy. My criticism is aimed at Congress, for letting it happen, for being supine or by acting like the three monkeys.
Paraphrasing TR he took every power anyone let him get away with. So I don’t blame either the courts or the POTUS much for the power grab, ultimately I blame Congress.
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Mark:
I don’t blame either the courts or the POTUS much for the power grab, ultimately I blame Congress.
I agree, but still as Kevin said, that horse left the barn years ago. Congress already has delegated so much of its power away to the executive that suggesting that this most recent makes a mockery of a belief in constitutional limits is like suggesting that it was the last gallon of water that the Titanic took on before it sank that made a mockery of the belief that it was unsinkable.
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My criticism is aimed at Congress, for letting it happen, for being supine or by acting like the three monkeys.
Also where my criticism is. If I were on the SCOTUS I would try not to legislate from the bench–but I can’t blame folks who think they know better for trying to do it. It’s hardwired into human nature. And if I were president, I’d grab as much power via EO as I could. If I were in the bureaucracy and had regulatory power, I can see why people abuse it. That’s why most of that power should be in congress and not in unelected bureaucracies, on the court, or in the hands of the executive. IMO.
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It makes a mockery of conservative jurists’ insistence that there are constitutional limits to the amount of authority Congress can delegate to the executive.
Conservative jurists lost that battle years ago.
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Neither rationale can justify such a sweeping restriction on immigration.
I’m not sure why a nation’s control of its borders or the awarding of rights to non-citizens needs a justification beyond the belief that we need to do it.
Certainly, it is the same rationale we *just* used for shutting down the economy and confining citizens to their houses and forbidding non-progressive public assembly and are now using for mandating mask-wearing. To suggest that that rationale can’t be used to limit immigration seems cognitively dissonant, to me.
Even more troubling, the order is a large-scale executive-branch power grab that sets a dangerous precedent.
As compared to DACA? Or any number of previous executive orders?
It makes a mockery of conservative jurists’ insistence that there are constitutional limits to the amount of authority Congress can delegate to the executive.
Congress already delegates almost all of what I think an originalist interpretation would consider their authority, and more so to the bureaucratic state and the courts than to the executive. I think that ship has ultimately sailed. And that the court has apparently ruled that one executive order can’t overturn another? WTF do you do with *that*?
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Taibbi goes full Taibbi on a worthy target:
“On “White Fragility”
A few thoughts on America’s smash-hit #1 guide to egghead racialism
Matt Taibbi”
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/on-white-fragility
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Where are there no more Taibbis out there? I don’t understand this broad cultural embrace (especially on the part of media companies, social media platforms and streamers) of Orwellian history erasure and newspeak. A lot of the current practices of Antifa and BLM can be rightly found in Rules for Radicals but they can as easily be found throughout Orwell’s 1984, which when I read in high school I read it mostly as a cautionary tale well-internalized by the broader culture. Boy, that was a mistake.
Taibbi’s points about Jackie Robinson (and the present dismissal of MLK, especially by the new white racialists, and his “content of their character” bit) are exactly right. I’d be hard-pressed to find anything in Taibbi’s piece I’d disagree with.
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KW:
I’d be hard-pressed to find anything in Taibbi’s piece I’d disagree with.
Same here….and you know I usually try pretty hard to do so!
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Here you go. Just to stay in character:
“For corporate America the calculation is simple. What’s easier, giving up business models based on war, slave labor, and regulatory arbitrage, or benching Aunt Jemima? There’s a deal to be made here, greased by the fact that the “antiracism” prophets promoted in books like White Fragility share corporate Americas instinctive hostility to privacy, individual rights, freedom of speech, etc. “
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jnc:
Here you go. Just to stay in character:
Fair enough. I guess I was so caught up in agreement I glossed over that!
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In all fairness there is some truth to that, although obviously there are plenty of large corporations whose business doesn’t intersect any of those things, and no business I’m aware of whose business model is based on them–except, of course, large defense contractors do have a business model based on war. I’m okay with it.
Although there’s always a larger discussion to be had, especially about corporate “slave” labor–which, while not entirely inaccurate, often is the wedge that starts lifting the truly impoverished classes of the 3rd world upwards, and is generally opposed by people who offer no alternative as to how to do that.
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And no Taibbi piece would be complete without a throwaway reference to carried interest:
“Clad in kente cloth scarves, the Democrats who crushed him will burn up CSPAN with homilies on privilege even as they reassure donors they’ll stay away from Medicare for All or the carried interest tax break.”
Just so you know he hasn’t totally sold out to The Man.
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He’s really interested in that. I just can’t care about carried interest. Doesn’t seem like it’s in the same category as Medicare for All to me.
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DiAngelo writes like a person who was put in timeout as a child for speaking clearly.
That is pure gold
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Because speaking in clear language exposes the weakness and hypocrisies and outright racism of her ideas.
As far as I can tell, it seems her book is an exercise in projection. She indicts all white people as being guilty of her own personal pathological narcissism.
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Also, Taibbi’s dead-on about this being in part of creating a new class of highly-paid Systemic Whiteness consultants.
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My personal favorite:
“DiAngelo isn’t the first person to make a buck pushing tricked-up pseudo-intellectual horseshit as corporate wisdom, but she might be the first to do it selling Hitlerian race theory.”
I wish the woke left had just stuck with the safety pins and those white ally boxes that were being sold by the hucksters.
https://www.thecut.com/2017/03/safety-pin-box-startup-teaches-white-people-about-racism.html
I do think this was peak Vox wokeness though – supportive write up on the meaningless performative gesture followed by a write up on the backlash three days later.
“A small way to show solidarity after Donald Trump’s presidential win, inspired by Brexit
It starts with a safety pin.
By Alex Abad-Santos
Updated Nov 14, 2016, 7:31am EST”
followed by
“The backlash over safety pins and allies, explained
The latest fight in the battle of wokeness: safety pins.
By Alex Abad-Santos
Nov 17, 2016, 10:00am EST”
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A less “Taibbi” version of the same thesis with more detail and history:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/08/19/the-fight-to-redefine-racism
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