Vital Statistics:
| Last | Change | |
| S&P futures | 3,959 | 9.50 |
| Oil (WTI) | 88.43 | 1.16 |
| 10 year government bond yield | 3.43% | |
| 30 year fixed rate mortgage | 5.97% |
Stocks are higher this morning after yesterday’s bloodbath. Bonds and MBS are down small.
Inflation at the wholesale level fell 0.1% MOM and rose 8.7% YOY. The decline was driven primarily by a big decrease in energy prices. Ex-food and energy, the monthly index rose 0.2% MOM and 8.1% YOY. The report was more or less in line with Street expectations, so we aren’t seeing any sort of major reaction in the markets.
The encouraging thing is that the monthly core numbers (ex food, energy and trade services) is on a general downtrend over the past year. Will this have an effect on the Fed’s plans next week? Nope.
The Fed Funds futures now see a 70% chance of a 75 basis point hike and a 30% chance of a 100 basis point hike.
The effect on the yield curve is much more pronounced at the short end. The 2 year bond yield has picked up 23 basis points in yield over the past two days, while the 10 year is up about 8 basis points. The yield curve continues to invert, and the spread between the 2 year and the 10 year is now negative 36 basis points. The amount of tightening that has yet to hit the market is piling up. IMO, this is going to increase the chance for a hard landing.
Luckily since mortgage rates are more influenced by longer-term rates we aren’t seeing much of an impact on mortgages, at least not yet.
Mortgage applications fell 1.2% last week as purchases increased 0.2% and refis fell by 4%. Last week was short with the Labor Day holiday. “The 30-year fixed mortgage rate hit the six percent mark for the first time since 2008 – rising to 6.01 percent – which is essentially double what it was a year ago,” said Joel Kan, MBA Associate Vice President of Economic and Industry Forecasting. “Higher mortgage rates have pushed refinance activity down more than 80 percent from last year and have contributed to more homebuyers staying on the sidelines. Government loans, which tend to be favored by first-time buyers, bucked this trend and increased over the week, driven mainly by VA and USDA lending activity.”
Median incomes fell about 2.9% to $67,251 in 2020, according to the Census Bureau. I’m sure the pandemic wreaked havoc on the numbers, so I would put an asterisk next to this one.
Filed under: Economy |
All Things in Moderation 
“Unvaxxed”? Ew – gross!
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Still fascinated as to why James Taylor sang at Biden’s IRA show yesterday. Still wondering why John Kerry had James Taylor sing in France a couple of years ago when he was SoS.
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Well he sang a song about a good friend committing suicide so maybe there was a message.
The lyrics evoked feelings of saying goodbye forever to the robust economy of 2018 so … there’s that.
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didn’ they cart him out after a massacre in France? Kerry’s idea IIRC ..
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Yes, I’m still blown away by that. Who thought that would be a good idea?
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WTF?
https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-my-pillow-ceo-mike-lindell-claims-fbi-surrounded-his-car-seized-cell-phone
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The left is criminalizing opposition
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Sounds like they had a warrant. Same thing with the 30+ people tied to Bannon.
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jnc:
Sounds like they had a warrant.
I don’t doubt it, but the question is why? Is it a legitimate reason? I no longer give them the benefit of the doubt, and with regard to anyone associated with Trump, my default assumption is that it isn’t.
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i will assume the warrant is bullshit unless i hear of a valid reason.
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It’s easy enough to find:
The question I always try to ask myself here is what would be my reaction if it was someone tied to HRC who was accused of doing the same things.
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jnc:
The question I always try to ask myself here is what would be my reaction if it was someone tied to HRC who was accused of doing the same things.
Doing what things? Your excerpt doesn’t tell us that Lindell is accused of doing anything at all, but only of “having ties” to someone.
Besides which, the question you always try to ask yourself is informative only under the assumption that the accuser is a non-partisan, objective source. For example, if the NYT accused Barack Obama of a crime, I would react quite differently than if the NYT accused Donald Trump of a crime. But the difference in my reaction would have nothing to do with either Obama or Trump or my thoughts about them, and everything to do with what I know about the NYT.
The days of me assuming that the FBI or the DOJ is a non-partisan, objective investigator are all over.
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In general I’d think it’s suspicious and probably a bad idea whether Trump or Hillary. Suspicious because of the incentives to be partisan in such situations, and the long history of clearly partisan motivations behind such things. Thinking it’s probably a bad idea because of the precedent of using such things as partisan tools will just lead to more such pursuits with even less substance in the future.
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This is about making anyone who is even considering backing Trump in 2024 to think again.
It is a brushback pitch.
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Or any Republican nominee for that matter. It’s not going to stop.
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I wonder how much tax bracket creep we’ll see from inflation this year.
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supposedly the brackets are indexed
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I had forgotten that. Living in the past.
“These stealth tax increases helped drive passage of the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 (ERTA), which included inflation indexing for tax brackets starting in 1985.”
https://taxfoundation.org/taxes-inflation/
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Drop by drop the DoJ is acknowledging that Trump declassified the documents in question but they still need to keep them because, reasons.
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I just wonder how they do not know what documents he has? Presumably it went to him before he declassified it, right? Then isn’t there some sort of log book about who checked out a document?
The answer is obviously yes so all this is bullshit.
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He probably violated the Presidential Records Act, but it remains to be determined if the more sensational charges around the Espionage Act hold water.
As always with Trump, they can’t stick to what’s provable. They always have to throw in some extra stuff.
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jnc:
As always with Trump, they can’t stick to what’s provable.
That’s because the Presidential Records Act is not a criminal statue, and so does not serve their purposes of accusing Trump of committing a crime.
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I want to know why the Intelligence Community would have a “compelling need” to understand “why and how” the docs were declassified. The IC works for the president, not vice-versa.
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Not any more. The IC works for the democrats.
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They’re pretending they didn’t know they were already declassified.
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This should be good right before the election:
“Passenger trains, grain shipments to be stopped, as railway strike looms
Labor Secretary Marty Walsh convenes negotiators in Washington to resolve impasse that could devastate nation’s transportation capacity
By Jeff Stein and Lauren Kaori Gurley
Updated September 14, 2022 at 3:46 p.m. EDT”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2022/09/14/congress-freight-rail-strike/
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Anyone want to bet these two clowns win an award for this surely god-awful TV show, despite the reviews?
https://www.dailywire.com/news/tv-review-says-hillary-clinton-series-lacks-depth-personality-and-more
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goes without saying. hollywood is nothing more than a propaganda arm for the Party.
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Sharing the wealth continues:
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Lotta outrage from the KosKidz.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/9/15/2122988/-Ron-DeSantis-copycats-Greg-Abbott-with-an-incredibly-inhumane-and-depraved-political-stunt
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“Having 48 migrants with absolutely no resources landing with absolutely no warning is a challenge”
You don’t say.
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I’ve realized that lefties assume there’s some sort of huge Federal effort to take care of these illegals rather than occasionally flying them to various red states in the middle of the night.
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48 migrants. A challenge.
These people live in such a bubble.
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“It’s not a viable immigration strategy. ”
It’s not mean to be. It’s also not the job of the governors of various states to set immigration policy.
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I love inhumane and depraved. “Hey want to get flown to a nice place where everybody is rich? They love you guys. They say it all the time!”
I mean I get it’s political showboating but moving illegal immigrants to areas where there are sanctuary cities seems like solid policy. Distribute the burden, and ship them to places that have already declared themselves sanctuary cities. Certainly less depraved then shipping them to the middle of the country, hundreds of miles from the nearest sanctuary city,
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Make Virtue Signaling Cost Something
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One of the comments was “surely this breaks some number of laws.” Reflecting the belief that things I don’t like must be illegal.
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Hard to top this:
Says a lot about what they think about Martha’s Vineyard though.
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Lol!
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Twitter has really lowered my opinion of humanity generally.
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They also feel things they like should be legal. A great basis for the rule of law!
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