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 | 3,893 | 20.15 |
| Oil (WTI) | 99.51 | 1.95 |
| 10 year government bond yield | 2.99% | |
| 30 year fixed rate mortgage | 5.78% |
Stocks are higher this morning as earnings season begins. Bonds and MBS are flat.
The upcoming week will be dominated by housing data, with housing starts, existing home sales, and the NAHB Housing Market Index. There will be no Fed-speak as we are in the quiet period ahead of the FOMC meeting next week.
The yield curve remains inverted, with 2s / 10s trading at -17 basis points. 2s / 30s is negative as well. The Chinese real estate market is going critical as well, which should provide support of US bonds.
Investors are paring back their hawkish bets on next week’s meeting. The current handicapping is a 33% chance for 100 basis points and 66% chance for 75.
Bank of America reported better-than-expected earnings this morning. Mortgage volumes were down 29% on a YOY basis, and we are seeing a big increase in HELOC activity. The stock is up 7% pre-open.
Filed under: Economy |
All Things in Moderation 
The contrast in coverage of this shooting vs the others will be informative:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/17/indiana-mall-shooting-greenwood-park/
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More grist:
https://wesleyyang.substack.com/p/yes-things-are-really-as-bad-as-youve
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I love how they insulate themselves from criticism…. You are either in the cult or MAGA
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Hah! I was just about to paste that here and you’d already done it.
The thing that stuck out at me (being in education myself) is this:
This is where I have to stop and make one thing very clear: I’m a leftist. Like, a big one. I hate capitalism, I support abortion on demand, and I unironically use phrases like “systems of oppression” and “the dominant culture.”
Fair enough. He’s a leftist. But if he was truly super-leftist as he describes I don’t think he’d have as much a problem with what he’s describing as he says.
Then there is this:
Like I said before, I’m a leftist myself; I have a real and abiding commitment to racial justice in education,. Do I like having to make the same points as pundits who want me kicked out of the classroom too? Of course not. But it’s precisely because I think racism and poverty are so rampant in this nation, and our obligation to respond so overwhelming, that I can’t keep pretending these ridiculous DEI schemes aren’t hurting the children we owe so much to.
Which kind of suggest that folks on the right don’t want racial equality in education, which they do. That’s what the objection is. It’s not 1960 anymore, no matter how much leftists (including the author) wishes it was. Right wingers want reading, writing and arithmetic taught. They don’t hate capitalism but they also care less if you, as a teacher, hate capitalism than if you can teach math, physics, language, and so on accurately–and actually teach those subjects. To all students, not just white male children.
I’m afraid the author doesn’t get it: “a colleague said that might actually be a good thing, because most of our students are white and their test scores dropping slightly would help shrink the racial achievement gap in our state”–is the point. It’s not a mistake. He may hate capitalism but progressivism in the present moment has left him behind. They think his concern over actually helping children rather than virtue signaling is “laundering white anxiety”. They aren’t the ones who are confused in this scenario.
Same with this: “I mean I sat in a room where a senior teacher literally spoke the words Trying to register more students of color for AP classes is inherently racist and Putting greater value on AP classes at all is an expression of white supremacy”. Yes, that’s the point now. It hasn’t been coming out of the fever-dreams of ultra-Right MAGA types. Of course they don’t like it but there’s no need to manufacturer it.
It seems like he feels saying he hates capitalism and wants abortion-on-demand gives him more street-cred with the people who want to completely tear down the western canon and replaced it with hedonism and nihilism. I don’t think it will. Yes, folks who consider themselves very much on the left will also have to be the ones to put an end to this for the most part–but the first step is to stop worrying about seeming like right-wing cranks and sounding like they aren’t True Believers in socialism. Worried about social credit amongst extreme progressives is how we’ve let it get to this point in the first place.
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And to be clear, they need to get over the idea that right wingers don’t want minorities to get a good education. Again, not the 1960s. That’s not a thing at this point.
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“Which kind of suggest that folks on the right don’t want racial equality in education, which they do. That’s what the objection is.”
The argument is over the meaning of “equality”.
I’m friends with a DEI instructor who left the field due to the same things described above. She’s one of the true believers who was actually trying to help improve things. (we smoke cigars and drink bourbon together, go figure).
She told me unironically that everything got crazy once the activists started taking over the actual instruction due to the consulting fees.
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The left believes racism animates every position of non-progressives
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The most projecting of hundreds of “pure projection” positions held on the left.
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Trying to actually improve things is the conservative position in education. That’s the point. There is no right wing effort to remove slavery from the history books or keep blacks and Hispanics out of STEM. It’s the opposite.
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From Yang:
It is a dilemma widely shared across a range of liberal institutions in which conscientious actors see destructive practices being entrenched and immunized against critique by the same dynamics which they find powerless to resist because the specter of right-wing reaction makes any self-criticism impossible.
Their powerlessness to resist is not because of the specter of “right-wing reaction”. It is because of 1) the specter of left-wing reaction (ie being labelled a right-wing nut by the left), something that they can’t abide because 2) they themselves have not yet accepted that the right is not in fact the caricature of left-wing fever dreams.
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they themselves have not yet accepted that the right is not in fact the caricature of left-wing fever dreams.
The left is incapable of recognizing that. It is a religious argument and these people are unreachable. All you can do is avoid them like the plague.
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There is an interesting schism amongst those “of the left” who see what the radical progressives are doing—and how destructive it is—with clear eyes. You’ve got guys who insist capitalism is evil and abortions should be legal up to the point of birth but also that the things the progressive are doing are destructive and insane. But communism came still work guys.
Then there are the folks who were true blue lefties who find the latest bouts of censorship and child-grooming to be a bridge too far, to the point they’ve flipped to being anti-woke if not actually conservative.
Only this latter group comes to
Understand that the far right caricature is information-free bullshit.
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“and these people are unreachable.”
Some are reachable. See Sasha Stone.
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But Sasha stone wasn’t reached—she was shocked into understanding by the extremism of her own side.
It’s why every time they do something newly crazy I say they’ve just lost another .01%.
Which I think is reflected in surveys of Hispanics and the working class and is beginning to show up in surveys of African American voters. They are alienating voters, .01% at a time.
Mr. “I’m a leftist and I hate capitalism but the progressives have gone crazy” is just one totalitarian proclamation from the progressive expert class away from questioning some seriously fundamental assumptions.
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There was a quip recently that “the left purges while the right converts”.
The right shouldn’t lose that advantage by viewing people as “unreachable”.
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BTW…isn’t that just perfect? Someone who self-admittedly “hates capitalism” is now molding young American minds through the education system. This is why the left is winning.
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The way to handle the left is that you either argue the ideal of communism versus the ideal of capitalism or you argue the reality of communism versus the reality of capitalism.
You don’t have to argue that capitalism is perfect, you only have to argue it is better than the alternatives.
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It was easier when East Germany existed as a counter example. North Korea is too foreign culturally to have the same impact as half of Europe being held prisoner behind the iron curtain.
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“You don’t have to argue that capitalism is perfect, you only have to argue it is better than the alternatives. ”
I don’t think that cuts it anymore. The younger generations (Millennials & Gen Z) are comparing themselves to the boomers and concluding capitalism is nothing but a scam.
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I blame the educational system
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Succeeding generations lose any sense of the infrastructure of their lives. They don’t comprehend what makes all the luxuries of their lives possible or that, indeed, they are luxuries at all. It’s just all there, like the air.
So like someone who doesn’t understand a car needs maintenance to run they’ll just keep blithely driving it without ever adding oil until the engine siezes up. Once it does they’ll blame systemic racism because it’s all they know how to do.
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The left is winning the internet. It isn’t winning the real world. If anything, Corporate America will suffer the death of 1000 entrepreneurs as their HR DEI dipshits call the shots.
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This should be interesting:
https://www.politico.com/newsletters/weekly-shift/2022/07/18/biden-steps-into-rail-labor-dispute-00046285
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It has been a long time since workers had the upper hand in labor negotiations
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