Brent Nyitray
Fairlington Blade
Let the mutherfuker burn!
jnc4p
Kevin S. Willis
Michigoose
lmsinca
markinaustin
Memetrics
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quarterback
ScottC
yellojktVital Statistics:
| Last | Change | |
| S&P futures | 4,643 | 57.2 |
| Oil (WTI) | 71.22 | 1.78 |
| 10 year government bond yield | 1.46% | |
| 30 year fixed rate mortgage | 3.31% |
Stocks are higher this morning as Omicron fears subside. Bonds and MBS are down.
Home Prices rose 20% in November, according to the Clear Capital Home Data Index. The Western region rose 24%, while the Midwest increased 16%. Note that the Clear Capital Index is one month ahead of CoreLogic / Case-Shiller and 2 months ahead of FHFA.
Home prices rose 18% in October, according to CoreLogic. Prices are expected to rise only 2.5% next year, however. New household formation, investor purchases and pandemic-related factors driving demand for the limited supply of available for-sale homes continues to propel the upward spiral of U.S. home prices. However, we expect home price growth to moderate over the near term as many buyers take a break for the holidays.”
Overall, the consensus seems to be that as mortgage rates rise next year, home price appreciation should slow. The MBA forecasts that rates will rise to 4%, and if you think that buyers focus on the monthly payment versus the price, then increased rates should dampen price growth. Ultimately what will lower prices will be increased supply, and so far housing starts remain around long-term averages.
Apartment vacancy rates hit a high of 97.5%, and asking rents are rising at almost 14%. “The demand from renters is really strong, especially for the luxury product. As the economy has recovered we’ve done a better job in high- paying employment than we have in the lower paying jobs,” said Greg Willett, chief economist at RealPage.
It looks like Chinese real estate developer will default on its dollar debt after missing a payment yesterday. I suspect that foreign investors will be in the first-loss category, however the losses will spiral past that. So far, experts seem to be sanguine about this, as they assume that the Chinese government will be able to contain it. I am skeptical. Residential real estate bubbles throw off all sorts of shrapnel when they explode, and often hit innocent bystanders. Remember 2008? What got everyone’s attention was the collapse of the money market funds and the commercial paper market. Retailers were unable to fund inventory for the holiday shopping season. That is a long way from CDO squareds.
Filed under: Economy, Morning Report |
All Things in Moderation 
Pearl Harbor Day seems muted this year, especially since it’s the 80th anniversary.
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January 6 is the new December 7
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And 9/11 and everything else. I may be wrong but I’m really thinking they are WAY overestimating the mileage they can get out of Jan 6th, even with those who have no historical context to compare it to.
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I don’t think there is any mileage out of 1/6, even among the tbeir own base. Sure it’s story after story On lefty blogs but it just feels more like dogma really. There doesn’t seem to be that many that are really animated about it.
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That and Russiagate turned out to be BS. People (rightly) suspect the same media bias with 1/6.
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I was dubious about Russiagate from the start, but an early indicator that people didn’t know what they were talking about showed up for me when they talked about “Russian Hacking”, getting pretty much every IT detail wrong. Then they did stuff like called buying a tiny Facebook buy hacking, and also argued it was for influencing the election when it was obvious to anybody even tangentially aware of how money on the Internet works that they were clickbait buys–especially given following the links in the ads went to clickfarms. An obvious thing (and Russian and Ukraine and most of the world is full of clickfarms or at least wannabe clickfarms). Yet it never came up in any MSM reporting. When things like Russian “attacks” on the DNC or a local DNC branch or the Dept. of Homeland Security were discussed they described IP and portscans–something that is universal, happens all the time, is not hacking, and is done more (in like a ratio of 100:1 or close) by China. And anyone in IT security or even tangentially aware of it would likely know that.
It’s not just bias I see now–it’s incompetence. I think you see that when Brian Williams not only lies, but gets caught. When Chris Cuomo lies so sloppily that he “gets caught”–that is, it’s so obvious and so sloppy that very sympathetic people that would have likely let him keep going if he had just masturbated in a public zoom meeting. I think a lot of them bought into Russiagate because they are incompetent or, at the bare minimum, bad at their job.
Jan. 6th bellyaching has a lot of things that stick out to me. A: none of the pictures being painted narratively match what was visible. B: if you know anything about the event that isn’t widely known, and listen to the press report on it, you know they are lying or simply wrong about crucial details. I was listening to NPR and apropos of nothing they had a pundit complaining about how Alex Jones had encouraged the crowd to do what they did when he was at the protest, on a table, with a bullhorn, screaming at people not to do it (basically asserting it was a setup). There are many problems with Alex Jones but he was doing more to try and stop the riot than the Capitol Police did. But that’s not the narrative the media goes with . . .
And when I listen to the press (and politicians, and pundits) about Jan. 6th it sounds to me like they are biased, sure (as Tucker Carlson does when he talks about it) but it also sounds to me like they are only vaguely aware of events, only have talking points, have watched video of it only from Tweets on Twitter, haven’t done any research or investigation and (again) have no awareness of recent (more peaceful) “taking over the Capitol” by left-leaning protestors and past, much more violent, attacks directly on the Capitol . . . by the Weather Underground which basically looks like Antifa so I wouldn’t expect them to mention it, but in context of “worst in history” you’d think they’d mention the actual history.
TL;DR: I think, leaving bias out of it, there is an vibe of incompetence and general ignorance that comes off most of the press reporting on these and many other issues. If I put myself in a position of not having a dog in the fight at all, it still sounds like they barely know what they are talking about. They sound more like highschool kids involved in gossip. There’s a bigger problem there than political bias, and I think a non-trivial amount of folks out there would concur.
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IMO, it is not incompetence, it is ham-handedness..
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FYI Brent:
“Saule Omarova, Biden’s pick for top bank regulator, withdraws nomination”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/12/07/saule-omarova-bidens-pick-top-bank-regulator-withdraws-nomination/
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Richard Cordray, come on down!
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Awww. It was our chance to go full Soviet Union!
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She’s not a communist. More on the lines of Elizabeth Warren.
(cue jokes about Warren being a communist here).
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she wanted to have the state allocate credit, which is close enough.
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Oh, I didn’t support her, but I thought Republican Senator John Kennedy was over the top.
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I don’t mind it al all. If the D party is going to pussyfoot around with the Marxist left, it needs to be pointed out.
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Elizabeth Warren never got the Lenin Personal Academic Scholarship.
To be clear, this is what I was referring to:
Omarova studied at Oral’s School No. 21 before moving to Moscow in 1984, where she was the first student to graduate from the school with a “gold medal”, an academic distinction which was awarded to a tiny fraction of students in the Soviet Union. Omarova graduated from Moscow State University in 1989 on the Lenin Personal Academic Scholarship.
Also this:
Omarova is noted for her support for a “National Investment Authority” (NIA), a proposal she has likened to New Deal-era programs. The proposal was first developed in 2015 in conjunction with Robert C. Hockett, a fellow Professor of Law at Cornell Law School. Omarova has stated that the NIA would be responsible for “devising, financing, and executing a long-term national strategy of economic development and reconstruction.” In 2020, Omarova wrote a report for think tank Data for Progress, where she stated the “Green New Deal (GND) movement has successfully propelled [a] programmatic vision of an environmentally clean, just, and equitable future.”
Close enough to Soviet for government work.
As I understood it, she also wanted to get rid of independent banks and have all banking essentially done with the Fed. So I’m okay with the Soviet comparison in this case.
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Fucking prudes.
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They really don’t have any clue about the electorate. At best, the electorate is either going to want child drag shows to be illegal/forbidden–given they sound entirely like adults grooming young boys–or they do not give a shit and it doesn’t move the needle of someone pissed about inflation or supply chain issues (or a general sense of administrative cluelessness) a micrometer. Even if they are totally cool with child drag shows.
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Look at California. The march is on to carve out some forms of pedophilia as ok.
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Not just in California.
https://www.axios.com/old-dominion-professor-leave-research-pedophilia-8735db2e-3d00-4dab-b4df-69daf19b8d42.html
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“The idea that I’m somehow condoning child sexual abuse is absolutely outrageous. I really think it’s a coordinated effort about attacking the LGBTQ community,” said Walker, who is transgender.
That’s fine, but then he’s too stupid for anyone to be bankrolling him or being taught by him if he is (as it would appear) going with the term “minor-attracted person” instead of pedophile. Using new terms for things we already have a term for is automatically (and with good reason) seen as trying to launder the language, to put a positive spin on something that seems like a negative.
So he may be arguing that the stigma around pedophilia makes it impossible for people who are attracted to kids sexually and don’t want to be to get help–but de-stigmatize something doesn’t make people want to seek help, it just “adjusts” the culture so the culture no longer sees bad behaviors as bad. Ultimately, whatever his actual goal is, the practical goal will be to condone child sexual abuse and if he isn’t smart enough to see that then I wouldn’t want him teaching at my university either.
Stigmas exist for a reason. They serve a purpose.
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I really think it’s a coordinated effort about attacking the LGBTQ community
Also this, actually.
Trying to lump in pedophilia with homosexuality and transgenderism (something the right used to do) is now generally seen as attempting to leverage the hard-won rights (civil or just special) of the homosexual community (and ongoing creation of special rights for the transgender community) as a way to say pedophilia is just like homosexuality and you’re okay with gay marriage and just like the Greeks would have sex with young boys back in ancient times, it’s really quite normal, don’t you know. Children should have the right to have sex with people 4 times their age!
I think a non-trivial amount of arguing that pre-pubescent children have the “right” to choose their gender, and change their name, and get started on puberty-blockers, and start taking hormone therapy is connected to eventually giving them the “right” to have sexual relationships with much older adults.
There’s a lot of trying to deconstruct the world where adults protect children, which I don’t believe can end well.
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Republican kabuki games on the debt ceiling in the Senate.
They aren’t fooling anyone.
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the bill — prevent medicare cuts – i was working somehow became the vehicle for debt ceiling.
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Did they strip out what you’re lobbying for? If not then it’s win/win!
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it’s the best of both worlds, from my professional perspective.
“delay cuts” for 6 monts, which means we come back and do it again. but that’s also a threat i can use with my members to contribute to the PAC, etc.
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Yep. Apparently it’s “must pass”. Congrats on that.
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All I know is they aren’t exactly appealing to the base, and they are risking the senate careers of a lot of Republicans for whom rolling over for the dems every time the debt ceiling needs to be raised–according to Democrats–is political suicide.
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The real problem is McConnell drawing “red lines” and then caving on them.
If they were going to do it with a simple majority vote, then do that by simply not filibustering. Don’t make some complicated rule as part of a separate piece of legislation.
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/12/07/house-senate-gops-debt-deal-523912
This is like the “vote to disapprove” of the debt ceiling that McConnell did back in 2011.
https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2011/07/12/137798961/mcconnell-proposes-congress-indirectly-give-obama-debt-ceiling-power
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/2chambers/post/house-votes-to-formally-disapprove-of-debt-ceiling-hike/2011/09/14/gIQAHFebSK_blog.html
https://www.politico.com/story/2012/01/senate-allows-increase-in-debt-ceiling-072027
If you want to have a fight, then have it. But don’t pick a fight then back down. That just looks weak.
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This was a great summation:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/12/mcconnell-republicans-debt-ceiling-cave/620934/
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