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Let the mutherfuker burn!
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Kevin S. Willis
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yellojktVital Statistics:
| Last | Change | |
| S&P futures | 4,207 | 13.8 |
| Oil (WTI) | 66.64 | -0.37 |
| 10 year government bond yield | 1.60% | |
| 30 year fixed rate mortgage | 3.15% |
Stocks are higher this morning after dovish comments from Fed officials yesterday. Bonds and MBS are up small.
New Home sales fell 5.9% MOM, but are up 48% on a YOY basis according to Census. The seasonally-adjusted annual rate came in at 863,000. At the end of April, there were 316,000 houses for sale, which represents a 4.4 month supply at the current pace. The median home price rose just under 5% to 336,900. This number is a surprise given the rising price of lumber and the increases in existing home prices.
Loans in forbearance fell 3 basis points to 4.19% last week, according to the MBA. “The decline was smaller than the prior week due to a slower pace of forbearance exits,” said Mike Fratantoni, MBA Senior Vice President and Chief Economist. “Although the overall share is declining, there was another increase in forbearance re-entries. Currently, 5.3 percent of loans in forbearance are homeowners who had canceled forbearance but needed assistance again.”
House prices rose 12.6% in the first quarter on a year-over-year basis according to the FHFA House Price Index. “House price growth over the prior year clocked in at more than twice the rate of growth observed in the first quarter of 2020, just before the effects of the pandemic were felt in housing markets,” said Dr. Lynn Fisher, Deputy Director of FHFA’s Division of Research and Statistics. “In March, rates of appreciation continued to climb, exceeding 15 percent over the year in the Pacific, Mountain and New England census divisions.”
These growth rates are staggering, although I would be careful putting too much stock into them as lockdowns from a year ago are probably introducing some noise into the data.
The Case-Shiller Home Price Index reported that prices rose 13.2% in March. Phoenix home prices were up 20%, while San Diego was 19% and Seattle was 18%.
With such rapid price appreciation, buyers are competing with each other for property. Non-contingent bids (especially cash offers) are one way to do that. According to the NAR, cash bids are now 25% of purchases. The difficulty of getting FHA and VA loans means that these buyers are at a disadvantage.
Consumer confidence was essentially unchanged in May, according to the Conference Board. “After rebounding sharply in recent months, U.S. consumer confidence was essentially unchanged in May,” said Lynn Franco, Senior Director of Economic Indicators at The Conference Board. “Consumers’ assessment of present-day conditions improved, suggesting economic growth remains robust in Q2. However, consumers’ short-term optimism retreated, prompted by expectations of decelerating growth and softening labor market conditions in the months ahead. Consumers were also less upbeat this month about their income prospects—a reflection, perhaps, of both rising inflation expectations and a waning of further government support until expanded Child Tax Credit payments begin reaching parents in July. Overall, consumers remain optimistic, and confidence should remain resilient in the short term, as vaccination rates climb, COVID-19 cases decline further, and the economy fully reopens.”
Filed under: Economy, Morning Report |
All Things in Moderation 
Old Line: COVID originating in a lab is an unhinged, racist conspiracy theory that all the experts have disproved.
New Line: Yes we lied, but Trump.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/05/lab-leak-liberal-media-theory-china-wuhan-lab-cotton-trump.html
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Always assume bad faith. Always
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I thought early on that the lab hypothesis had support in the scientific community because of its history of carelessness and because of the Chinese Wall around it. I thought the outlier debate was about the speculation that it was weaponized, when it appeared to be pretty much the same as bat coronavirus. Whatever.
Interesting that the Biden Justice Department is defending the Trump Justice Department on not revealing the internal memo re: DJT and obstruction. Leads me to think DoJ turf issues out rank politics regardless of the regime.
@George:
Every hurricane season I wonder if the vault of deadly shit at the UTMB in Galveston is going to bust wide open. If I were in N’awlins I would have the same worry about the vault of disease germs at Tulane’s Tropical Disease Research Station. Those two vaults have survived lots of storms and have never been cited for negligence. Wuhan’s Lab was cited repeatedly, as I recall, and had turned over its management twice in two years.
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In reply to me, by turf issues I specifically mean the DoJ guarding its internal advisory memos as confidential.
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I never doubted indictments or convictions.
https://redstate.com/bonchie/2021/05/25/grand-jury-convened-in-donald-trump-criminal-investigation-as-the-partisan-hacks-have-their-day-n386392
Uh oh, trouble brewing.
https://ca.news.yahoo.com/potential-trump-indictment-york-florida-125317593.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9kdWNrZHVja2dvLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAABmTvgUclm_gIM1Anu-yzR48-QIvS15A-5rp5adNsovtY0YT-LWOSO5iJF9yCyuIGxfW9Y6pogFaBi-CWSGlmoj6V6_AGrVSUrogiKum6wqgR5vZD8xEWdFXYDQSJX98JdRiPXIqNrdlyRsPBRP7WH_PhDil14tdO7GjUW_zJElx
Oops, bullet dodged?
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/may/19/donald-trump-new-jersey-golf-club-summer
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Gotta agree with Mollie on this one.
It has a real “Baby, why you make me hit you?” vibe to it.
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Mark:
I thought the outlier debate was about the speculation that it was weaponized, when it appeared to be pretty much the same as bat coronavirus.
I haven’t read many serious claims that it was weaponised (ie released deliberately) but there seems to be some reasonable suspicion that it was in fact manipulated to make it infectious (or more infectious) to humans than naturally occurring bat corona. That is what Rand Paul has been talking about when he questioned Faucci about gain-of-function research. From what I have read, it seems almost a certainty that the Wuhan lab was indeed engaged in gain-of-function research regarding the corona virus.
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I do tend to think that once China realized the scale to which the pandemic was going to effect their economy the purposefully allowed travel out of China (while restricting internal movement) to spread the pandemic and slow everybody else’s economy.
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I laughed.
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Mark – this is a pretty good timeline of the evolution of the lab media narrative.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/05/25/timeline-how-wuhan-lab-leak-theory-suddenly-became-credible/
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I like the headline. “How it suddenly became credible”. It’s always been credible, just not what the media wanted the narrative to be.
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Also, this: “Second, early efforts to spotlight a lab leak often got mixed up with speculation that the virus was deliberately created as a bioweapon. That made it easier for many scientists to dismiss the lab scenario as tin-hat nonsense.”
No, not really. That was a tactic used but speculation about bioweapons were only relevant to speculations about bioweapons. Why should that discredit the idea that it came from the lab? That’s not rational. That’s like saying. “People were speculating that COVID made people sick. They were also speculating it gave people super powers. Therefore, it was was easy to dismiss the crazy idea that it made you sick.”
That’s not how actual logic works.
The Trump administration’s messaging was often accompanied by anti-Chinese rhetoric that made it easier for skeptics to ignore its claims.
Again, this is like saying: we value feelings over facts. So we will ignore something true or dispute it if we have feelz about the person who said it, or how they said it, even if there are plenty of people saying THE EXACT SAME THING with a higher pedigree and none of the baggage.
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I’d like them to give a definitive definition of anti-Chinese rhetoric.
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“Wuhan Flu”.
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I don’t understand how it’s anti-Chinese rhetoric to say “Wuhan Flu” but “Indian variant” or “Spanish Flu” is not Anti-Indian or Anti-Spanish?
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Republicans should agree to this on the condition that all taxpayers with an income below $1 million become illegal.
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Trump didn’t say them? Also Spain and India don’t spread around the cash like China?
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I think about this Gorokhova quote a lot:
“ We know they’re lying, they know they’re lying, they know that we know they’re lying, we also know that they know that we know they’re lying, but they STILL LIE.”
The question is why?
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feeeeelz not reeeeelz
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Lol
https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2021/05/25/biden-officials-shut-down-state-department-investigation-into-wuhan-lab-leak-theory-n386447
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Lol!
https://babylonbee.com/news/aoc-says-she-was-killed-in-the-capitol-riots-and-is-a-ghost
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