Morning Report: Fed week

Posted on December 14, 2020 by Brent Nyitray

Vital Statistics:

 

  Last Change
S&P futures 3680 26.3
Oil (WTI) 46.97 0.44
10 year government bond yield   0.93%
30 year fixed rate mortgage   2.78%

Stocks are higher this morning on no real news. Bonds and MBS are down.

 

The Fed will meet this week on Tuesday and Wednesday. No changes in interest rates are expected, however we will get a new round of economic projections and future rate forecasts. The big question will concern whether the Fed intends to increase MBS purchases. Several Fed speeches have alluded to the possibility, which has probably explained much of the disconnect between Treasuries and mortgage rates. The 10 year keeps inching upwards, while mortgage rates keep hitting record lows. I still think the US 10 year cannot continue to ignore what is happening to sovereign yields overseas and the path of least resistance will continue to be down.

 

Aside from the Fed meeting, we will get some housing data this week with the NAHB Housing Market index and housing starts. We will also get retail sales and industrial production this week as well.

 

Congress is still trying to hammer out some sort of stimulus bill. The big sticking point is aid to state and local governments.

 

Retention rates dropped to 18% last quarter, according to data from Black Knight.

Filed under: Economy, Morning Report |

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18 Responses

  1. jnc4p, on December 14, 2020 at 3:50 pm said:

    Titles for me, but not for thee:

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  2. Brent Nyitray, on December 14, 2020 at 3:52 pm said:

    I thought this was funny

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    • Kevin S. Willis, on December 14, 2020 at 5:27 pm said:

      This is what media fact checks are, exactly. They are often disagreeing opinions, treating a disagreeing opinion or prediction as “wrong” because someone else says so. It didn’t take the “news” any time at all to turn fact-checking into “fact-checking”.

      Some fact checks hilight something true, restate it and ADD something to it that makes it false because of WHAT THEY ADDED and then say “while it’s true what was said is actually correct, what we mind-read the person also thinks is false, so we rate this mostly false”.

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  3. jnc4p, on December 14, 2020 at 3:59 pm said:

    The press is really stretching out the drama with the actual electoral college voting.

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    • Kevin S. Willis, on December 14, 2020 at 5:46 pm said:

      Trying to avoid covering things like this:

      Although The Hill is, at least Krystal Ball. But Krystal and Saagar Enjeti.

      There was a video from last week deconstructing Biden saying he’s not going to do anything but undo Trump’s executive orders, complaining about that. This one is drawing unfavorable comparisons of Biden to Trump.

      Most of the press wants to stay away from that for now, I think. Until, I assume, it’s time for Kamala to take over.

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  4. jnc4p, on December 14, 2020 at 5:51 pm said:

    And Barr is out.

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    • ScottC, on December 15, 2020 at 12:49 am said:

      Mark:

      An excellent read:

      So if I understand him correctly, he is saying that if the GOP continues electing people like Trump, it is in danger of not getting judicial appointments of the sort that Trump actually gave us. Not sure that makes any sense.

      I also don’t think that NeverTrumpers like French have much credibility as defenders of conservative judicial philosophy. If French had his way, SCOTUS would already be controlled by a supermajority of leftist judges.

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      • markinaustin, on December 15, 2020 at 8:02 am said:

        You don’t understand him correctly.

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        • Kevin S. Willis, on December 15, 2020 at 9:49 am said:

          He seems to be saying that eventually we will get a significant number of conservative judicial appointments who will ignore the law in favor of the populist will of politicians, and thus would have a bunch of judges who would just rubber stamp far-right arguments, or ignore precedent and textualism in favor of benefitting conservative politicians.

          This seems highly unlikely and a markedly ahistorical extrapolation.

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        • ScottC, on December 15, 2020 at 10:21 am said:

          Mark:

          You don’t understand him correctly.

          What am I missing?

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    • Kevin S. Willis, on December 15, 2020 at 9:47 am said:

      To put this plainly, not one justice was willing to overturn the presidential election.

      A reasonable assumpton on French’s part but still an assumption–or at least getting ahead of himself. It seemed the question was whether SCOTUS should hear the case at all, so it really never got to the question of “overturning the election”.

      At the same time, the conservative legal movement—especially its members of the judicial branch—crushed Trump’s fever dream of an improbable second term.

      While this clearly excites French as being a repudiation of Trump, that seems to be thinking too large or too specific to his own particular obsessions. I would expect the judges were looking at both standing and setting precedent. I am not a lawyer, but I know if I were on the SCOTUS I would also have been very leery of setting the precedent that one side of the country sues the other every time there’s an election result they don’t like.

      It could be that the judges are just looking at (a) the law and (b) previous precedent and (c) the setting of future precedent and making their decision thusly, not teaching Trump a lesson.

      Also this kind of stuff seems to kind of ignore that this is why the system exists. The president should be able to file or attempt to file these cases, the states should be able to file these cases, all parties who have tried to argue for a “legally dubious” position, it seems to me, were both entitled to and it’s actually probably good they did, and then the courts and the judges did their job.

      I kind of get this vibe from a lot of pundits and the media that all this is awful–either the existence of the cases at all is terrible and should never be allowed, or it’s awful that the judges “decided wrong” and they were terrible choices and maybe should be impeached.

      IMO, everybody in these situations is within their rights and following their duties as they see them and it’s all good.

      In some cases I think they are wrong (I don’t think the 1964 Civil Rights Act bans employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or “gender choice”, and consider that finding “legislating from the bench” and don’t understand why a Democratic congress wouldn’t just write a law to that effect . . . but it is what it is.

      Why are conservative attorneys and jurists rejecting Trump even as so very many GOP politicians are embracing his extraordinary, dangerous, undemocratic and legally frivolous campaign to overturn the election?

      And this is why I hate pundits. Can’t be satisfied with a positive outcome, has to take a legitimate redress of grievances and make it “undemocratic” (how is challenging election results undemocratic? Was it undemocratic when Stacy Abrams did it? Al Gore? Al Franken? Yada yada) and dangerous . . . as apparently suspecting shenanigans or having a different opinion from David French is “dangerous”.

      It seems to be there is a reasonably legitimate disagreement as to the legitimacy of the election, Trump and others are challenging the results because of this disagreement through largely proper and available channels, and are being rebuffed by the courts through similarly legitimate means.

      That said, I don’t see any actual argument or evidence in the article that conservative judicial appointments will suddenly become rubber stamps for conservative populists, any more than liberal judges will necessarily become rubber stamps for Democratic politicians.

      And I certainly don’t see any good historical evidence for it. “Conservative” appointments almost always either stay fixed, like a Clarence Thomas, or start drifting left or were always a little left-of-center, like Roberts or Gorsuch. Or are just outright liberals in fact.

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