Vital Statistics:
| Last | Change | |
| S&P futures | 4,139 | -32.25 |
| Oil (WTI) | 117.05 | 0.64 |
| 10 year government bond yield | 2.97% | |
| 30 year fixed rate mortgage | 5.42% |
Stocks are lower this morning as investors fret about a slowing economy. Bonds and MBS are down.
The economy added 390,000 jobs in May, which was above Street expectations and the 129,000 increase ADP reported yesterday. The unemployment rate was steady at 3.6%. Average hourly earnings rose 5.2% on YOY basis. The usual suspects (leisure / hospitality and health care) increased employment, while retail fell. Retailers have been warning about consumer spending, so the number seems to fit.
Payrolls are close to pre-pandemic levels, but aren’t quite there yet.
The services economy expanded at a slower rate in May, according to the ISM Services Index. This is the lowest reading in the past year. “According to the Services PMI®, 14 industries reported growth. The composite index indicated growth for the 24th consecutive month after a two-month contraction in April and May 2020. Growth continues — albeit slower — for the services sector, which has expanded for all but two of the last 148 months. The sector’s slowdown was due to a decline in business activity and slowing supplier deliveries. The Employment Index (50.2 percent) returned to expansion territory, and the Backlog of Orders Index grew, though at a slower rate. COVID-19 continues to disrupt the services sector, as well as the war in Ukraine. Labor is still a big issue, and prices continue to increase.”
Home Prices accelerated in May, according to the Clear Capital Home Data Index. Overall prices rose 8.9% quarter-over-quarter and almost 22% YOY. The Sun Belt and Florida are the big winners, with prices in Phoenix rising 38% and Tampa rising 40%. Interestingly, the Northeast had the fastest quarterly rise. The Northeast and Midwest have lagged the rest of the market since the 2008 bust, so maybe there are some signs of life there.
Filed under: Economy |
All Things in Moderation 
The usual pattern of “This issue is fake and isn’t really happening” to “Yes we are doing this and it’s a good thing” repeats itself:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/06/03/schools-gender-identity-transgender-lessons/
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I find it so funny that the left is absolutely zen about 13 year olds getting abortions and 7 year olds taking puberty blockers, but cannot fathom a 18 year old buying a gun or a beer.
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But they will also make sure that same 18 year old uses heroin or feeds their fentanyl addiction safely!
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i always found the pro-pot / anti-cigarette stance somewhat strange
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It is tough to reconcile that one, for sure.
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Now they’re pro heroin and fentanyl too. But cigarettes remain bad. Hand out crack pipes and advocate “safe” heroin use but still “don’t smoke it’s bad for you and everybody around you”.
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Corked by Sullivan:
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The left is arguing that the experts know more about transgenderism than parents, so they need to butt out about this.
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The left seems to argue that “the experts” know more about everything and everybody should just let them run things. Look how great they are doing!
Now that progressivism is evolving into a kind of religious order, the “expert class” have declared themselves the priests and popes and expect their wisdom and diktats to be accepted and obeyed on faith. Anyone who doesn’t “trust the experts” lacks faith and is thus a sinner.
Being an expert priest doesn’t require them to prove anything or make their case: they just have to expand, speak their divine revelation as the spirit moves them, and the peons should listen and quite awe and then do as their told.
And this works for the people officially in the church, raised from lefty preschool through Ivy League progressive graduate school. For the rest of the people, blaming The Devil every time your expertise fails in the real world is not as convincing. And eventually more people push back, asking why should we trust you now?
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Speaking of Sullivan, is it just me or as the left collectively decided that gay men who enjoy being men are now bad? That unless you are a woman breaking free of the wrong sex society assigned you at birth you, they ain’t got time for you.
It seems another traditional Democrat constituency that is moving rightwards at the edges are gay men who are perfectly happy being men, and noting that men and women are in fact biologically different.
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Sure seems the new belief is that gay equals pre-transition tranny.
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I think that since the D party has become the Official Party Of Women, gay dudes are going to get pushed to the R party.
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Hopefully this all slows down once every white, lefty suburban woman has a tranny of their own.
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Good reads:
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World ends tomorrow. Black trans women most affected.
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The actual threads are interesting reads. The comments compare Heard to the woman who accused Emmet Till which led to his lynching.
I don’t think the narratives that the media are putting forth are holding up anymore with the people they are trying to target and claim to be speaking for.
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jnc:
I don’t think the narratives that the media are putting forth are holding up anymore with the people they are trying to target and claim to be speaking for.
I hope you are right.
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It’s a matter of degrees. Polling indicates that the press is less trusted than ever—-but some people still trust it. The Democrats towering incompetence is becoming apparent even to some loyal Democrats. And there is a lot of eating their own going on.
There is a tipping point. They don’t have the resources or infrastructure to support the wholesale subjugation of the population—-but that limiting factor seems to make less difference to them than ever. Used to be they had to be sneaky. Now they have so much cultural power they seem to feel they can telegraph everything, reveal themselves openly, and lie brazenly (and poorly) and it doesn’t matter because they are the collective popes of the new one true faith.
I think they are wrong about that.
We shall see I suppose.
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I think there have been skeptics and it’s just more of them are speaking out. The left has spent so much time in their bubble since even before Trump’s election they have lost all perspective on how things look to anyone outside their clique.
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Although of course one woman said that Domestic Violence is much worse for black women—suggesting that black men are much more violent, I guess, than white, Hispanic and Asian men. Which sound kind of like a racist stereotype.
The left is pure projection.
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Navarro arrested by FBI for contempt of congress.
https://www.dailywire.com/news/trying-to-intimidate-me-peter-navarro-rips-january-6-committee-doj-after-indictment
Remember when Eric Holder was held in contempt of congress and the FBI put him in cuffs? Oh wait…they didn’t, did they.
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Do the R’s have the spine to match the D’s? I’m guessing no.
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I suspect a lot of “kick me” republicans are gonna get primaried.
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