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 | 4,338 | -5.2 |
| Oil (WTI) | 93.75 | 2.63 |
| 10 year government bond yield | 1.94% | |
| 30 year fixed rate mortgage | 4.12% |
Stocks are flattish this morning despite the escalation of hostilities in Ukraine. Bonds and MBS are up.
Russia has inserted troops into the breakaway Ukraine regions, and Germany has suspended approval for the Nord 2 gas pipeline. Overnight Asian stocks were down a couple of percent, but the European markets are more sanguine about the situation. Bonds remain well bid, with the 10 year trading at 1.94%.
Commodity markets have been well-bid on this situation, with North Sea Brent oil contracts pushing close to $100 a barrel. Natural gas prices in Europe are soaring as well.
Home prices rose 17.5% YOY, according to the FHFA House Price Index. The Mountain region remains the top performer with prices rising 23% YOY.
Existing Home Sales rose 6.7% in January, according to the National Association of Realtors. The median home price rose 15.4% YOY to reach $350,300. This increase was driven at least partially by low inventory, which fell to 860,000 units, or about 1.6 month’s worth of inventory. These stats are both record lows.
“Buyers were likely anticipating further rate increases and locking-in at the low rates, and investors added to overall demand with all-cash offers,” said Lawrence Yun, NAR’s chief economist. “Consequently, housing prices continue to move solidly higher.”
The inventory of starter homes (or homes below $500k) is “disappearing” while higher priced homes are seeing increased supply. This is depressing the first time homebuyer percent, which fell to 27%. Pre-2008, that number was typically closer to 40%. Investor purchases rose to 27% as well. We are starting to see some kvetching from liberal politicians about big money managers (i.e. Blackrock, American Homes 4 Rent) crowding out the first time homebuyer.
Filed under: Economy |
All Things in Moderation 
Always has been.
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Glen Greenwald was saying that Paypal has teamed up with the ADL to determine which groups are “hate groups” which should not be permitted to transact.
Here is what he thinks is going on. The ADL has strayed far from its original purpose and now just exists to characterize anything that goes against the mainstream d narrative as anti-semitic and therefore hate speech.
It is in the business of pre-deligitimizing any sort of opposition to the Party.
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Makes sense.
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https://despair.com/products/consulting
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These folks sound so rational, and smarter than everybody else. Let’s listen to them!
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It’s hard to put into words how big and hard my schadenboner is with this post.
https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2022/2/22/2081645/-Supreme-Court-to-decide-whether-one-federal-judge-can-sabotage-Biden-s-immigration-agenda
Imagine being pound by a previous Admins policy? Or the whole country held hostage by one Federal judge.
At what point do they thank the Trump admin for opening their fucking eyes?
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I don’t understand. A Federal Judge ruled that a Biden Admin policy is unconstitutional? What is different this time compared to the myriad of ways this has happened in the past?
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Because, reasons!
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I got this quote from Ace of Spades, it’s of Allahpundit from Hotair.com
Putin may also have feared that attacking Ukraine prematurely would have driven NATO closer together and that even a NATO skeptic like Trump would have been swept up in the demand for American leadership in a crisis.
So maybe he calculated that his best play to weaken NATO was to lie low, giving the alliance no cause to mobilize, and trusting that Trump would follow his instincts and undermine it by questioning its rationale, demanding more defense spending by member nations, and generally signaling his ambivalence about the U.S. remaining part of the group. Putin gave him four years to do that, but once Biden won the election that project went out the window. There’d be no near-term dissolution of NATO to make the conquest of Ukraine easier, which meant the time for lying low was over. Presumably Putin became further convinced that the hour was near after Biden’s withdrawal fiasco in Afghanistan, an episode that logically would have led Russia to question whether the new guy in charge of the U.S. knows what he’s doing. Put it all together and Putin may have decided that 2022 was his last window to grab Ukraine: He’s getting older, NATO has been weakened by the Trump years, and Biden might be too inept to hold a western coalition (especially one that includes Germany) together.
It makes me laugh.
http://acecomments.mu.nu/?post=397945
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Outstanding delusion. I get not liking Trump but come on. One has to assume he’s getting paid on the side to craft desperate rationales for why Biden failures are Trump’s fault.
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What gets me is it’s Allahpundit. I know he’s a Never Trumper but I thought he was, you know, rational. It feels like he believes this, that it’s not just performative for him.
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You may be right but I have a hard time believing he can be promoting this narrative in good faith. He seems too smart to be advancing this argument in guys faith. But maybe he is. But forget Trump … the argument is so profoundly flawed without even factoring in the Trump part. The idea Putin is responding to Biden’s strength and also that there’s just nothing Biden can do in the present because the previous president suggest other member countries should invest in NATO …
And again I get not liking Trump but not seeing similar or inverse-but-still-very-bad problems with Biden is either delusional or corrupt.
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CRT is critical race theory .. everything through the lens of race.
for these guys, it’s Critical Rage on Trump. everything through the lens of trump
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” A Federal Judge ruled that a Biden Admin policy is unconstitutional?”
No, he ruled that the Biden administration didn’t follow the Administrative Procedures Act when it unilaterally decided to end the Remain in Mexico policy.
https://www.heritage.org/immigration/commentary/federal-judge-reinstates-remain-mexico-ruling-biden-broke-law-terminating
This is the same thing that happened to Trump when he tried to end Obama’s DACA program and didn’t follow the right process:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/supreme-court-rules-against-trump-administration-attempt-to-end-daca-a-win-for-undocumented-immigrants-brought-to-us-as-children/2020/06/18/4f0b6c74-b163-11ea-8758-bfd1d045525a_story.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/the-real-reason-president-trump-is-constantly-losing-in-court/2019/03/19/f5ffb056-33a8-11e9-af5b-b51b7ff322e9_story.html
What goes around comes around.
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I put up a KosKidz link up yesterday about this, the reactions are hilarious.
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Thoughts and prayers to our KosKidz friends right now.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/2/23/2081929/-Prosecutors-Resign-from-NY-DA-Case-Against-Trump
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Well, that and the whole gerbil up the butt thing.
https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2022/02/23/nolte-hollywood-blacklists-richard-gere-over-china-criticism/
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There seems to be a number of commentors who explain the resignations of the NY DA’s case as something Putin arranged.
Which makes sense, it’s not like Putin has anything else to do right now.
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“According to a joint report with Human Rights First, between February 2019 and February 2021, there were at least 1,544 publicly reported cases of murder, rape, torture, kidnapping, and other violent assaults against asylum-seekers and migrants forced to return to Mexico under this program,” Prism’s Alexandra Martinez wrote in December. Hundreds of these cases have targeted children.
If this is how they roll in Mexico, then why, exactly, to we want to have open borders with Mexico? I feel like they are actually undercutting their argument.
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