Vital Statistics:
Last | Change | |
S&P futures | 4,007 | 41.25 |
Oil (WTI) | 84.98 | -0.88 |
10 year government bond yield | 3.78% | |
30 year fixed rate mortgage | 6.70% |
Stocks are higher this morning on optimism about talks between the US and China. Bonds and MBS are up.
More good news on inflation: The producer price index rose 0.2% in October, which was well below Street expectations and flat compared to September. On a year-over-year basis, prices are up 8%, which was lower than expectations. If you strip out food and energy, the index rose 0.2% month-over-month and 5.4% YOY.
The PPI is a wholesale price index, which is a step removed from what consumers see. Regardless, this is good news for the economy overall and indicates the Fed is gaining traction on the inflation front.
Housing will continue to be a contributor to headline inflation, at least for a while. “As the housing market cools, this category will also ease but we may have to wait until next year before it meaningfully dampens headline inflation,” said Jeffrey Roach, chief economist for LPL Financial.
Interesting tidbit on housing – Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway initiated a position in building products manufacturer Louisiana Pacific. Historically housing has led the economy out of a recession, although it has been sluggish after the Great Recession.
Separately, the Home Despot reported better-than-expected sales, although the number of transactions declined.
Lael Brainard said yesterday that it would soon be appropriate to slow the pace of rate hikes. “I think it will probably be appropriate soon to move to a slower pace of increases, but I think what’s really important to emphasize is… we have additional work to do,” Brainard said in an interview with Bloomberg in Washington. It’s really going to be an exercise on watching the data carefully and trying to assess how much restraint there is and how much additional restraint is going to be necessary, and sustained for how long, and those are the kinds of judgments that lie ahead for us,” she said.
This statement comports with the December Fed Funds futures, which are showing a 85% chance of a 50 basis point hike next month. After that, it looks like we might get another 25 basis points in early 2023 and then the Fed will stand pat for a while.
Filed under: Economy |
Interesting focus group.
Scott, note the lack of voting based on abortion, so I may have been wrong.
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I think abortion’s influence peaked with early voting and mail in ballots in September. Biggest impact Election Day would be in places with abortion bans or even “born alive” bills on the ballot. My thought is there wasn’t a ballot initiative, after September it didn’t make much of a difference. Before though, probably.
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This is going to be an interesting case next month:
Moore v Harper
In what was basically a gerrymandering case, back in February the North Carolina Supreme Court ruled that the NC legislature’s re-districting map violated the NC state constitution, and subsequently imposed its own redistricting map on the state for the 2022 election. At the time, the state legislature argued that the NC Supremes were violating the US Constitution in imposing its own redistricting map (at least with regard to federal elections), since the US Constitution specifically grants state legislatures the authority to manage the time, place and manner of elections, and therefore requested that SCOTUS issue a stay of the SCONC ruling. SCOTUS refused to issue the stay, so the mid-terms took place under the SCONC imposed districts, but SCOTUS did agree to hear the case, which will be argued on Dec 7.
If the Court rules in favor of the state legislature (as it plainly should), that will mean that the 2022 congressional election in NC, which was a 7-7 split between the D’s and R’s, will have been administered under unconstitutional conditions.
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Fuck!!
https://citizenfreepress.com/breaking/watch-live-dod-holds-emergency-press-conference/
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CNN is covering it too:
https://www.cnn.com/europe/live-news/russia-ukraine-war-news-11-15-22/index.html
Edit: This sounds like a mistake, not an intentional escalation.
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Sure, why not!
https://citizenfreepress.com/breaking/watch-live-dod-holds-emergency-press-conference/
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Hmmmmm.
Maybe The Big Short should be re-evaluated.
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In what sense?
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The author of The Big Short followed this dude around for 6 months and didn’t pick-up on this scam. Maybe his judgement re The Big Short isn’t so reliable?
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Why are you assuming he didn’t pick up on it?
He may have just been saving it for the book/movie.
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It will be hard to tell now as he may be doing a re-write with this news. It just seems kinda shitty to know of a huge scam involving billions of dollars and not say anything for a book exclusive.
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Eh, I’m on dude’s side in this one. He just kept thinking “the book is going to be fucking epic”. Now he’s probably disappointed because he was thinking a future book and now he’s going to have to cover it in the current book.
If I were him and caught on to it, or though something smelled really rotten and doomed, I would have been loading up the current books with questions that could be spun as insights, so after it all does crash, my asking dude “so does let it sometimes feel like it’s all going to crash” is going to seem prescient!
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Also, without access to the books, I’m not sure how the fraud could have been detected by just following him around. And without concrete proof, I wouldn’t go to the cops on anything.
There’s also the fact that it’s hard to distinguish crypto’s regular business model from a pyramid scam.
This guy is just the latest version of Madoff. And with Madoff, the SEC had warnings for years and didn’t act on them.
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So, the guy who’s followed him around for 6 months and is/was framing a book about him in terms of Star Wars with some Chinese dude shouldn’t have his past work questioned if he completely missed a multi-BILLION dollar scam involving Congress, the Biden admin and Ukraine monies the United States supplies?
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He’s living by the moral code that membership in his class requires. He’s doing everything right.
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He was the second biggest donor to the left behind George Soros.. I always thought the ESG racket would crash and burn with a fraud case.
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I think Taibbi’s latest is pretty good…
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-burning-of-witches-will-continue
…but he’s wrong about this:
Donald Trump makes it difficult-to-impossible to speak out when politicians and journalists break rules to oppose him. But Elon Musk, national security threat? That really is a witch hunt.
I would argue that not only is it possible to speak out when pols and journalists break the rules to oppose Trump, it is imperative that you do. Speaking out in defense of those you hate is precisely what makes a principled stand a principled stand. Otherwise you are just saying that witch-hunts are objectionable, except when they aren’t.
The ACLU and Nazis in Skokie is instructive on this point.
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And the ACLU learned a very expensive lesson from it as well, do you think they’d do something like that today?
I don’t.
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McWing:
do you think they’d do something like that today?
Definitely not.
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They explicitly said that they wouldn’t after the blow back from Charlottesville in 2017.
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The ACLU wouldn’t defend a pro-life rally at this point.
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I get where he’s coming from. He is in a milieu where I’m sure he’s already lost many friends and collegiate relationships, but many of the people still around him super-hate Trump and would see any defense as an endorsement, and it’s emotionally hard to feel like it’s worth “defending” Trump … although Taibbi has, by default, with his coverage of Russiagate. And Trump often comes across as a rule-breaker and a hostile actor, so I can also see why people might thing whatever is going on with him is karma.
But yeah the whole thing was great.
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I agree on the piece being good. I think Taibbi’s observation about Trump is similar to what Andrew Sullivan noted a while back, namely that Trump acts guilty, even when he’s not and that makes it harder to convince people he’s getting a raw deal.
See storing (formerly?) classified documents at Mar-A-Largo.
Had Hillary Clinton done that, we would all have been up and arms about it around here.
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All President’s take classified and unclassified records with them and they do so for the same reason, ego. Otherwise why take them? The National Archives have them, so their already saved for posterity. Trump’s targeted because he’s Trump, simple as that.
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Both can be true.
As with OJ Simpson, “they framed a guilty man”.
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Oh, I agree. But in your opinion, what are the reason(s) the FBI didn’t report this to the Capital Hill security people and/or the White House?
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jnc:
Had Hillary Clinton done that, we would all have been up and arms about it around here.
One of the reasons I wasn’t up in arms about it regarding Trump was because Hillary had already done it and was treated completely differently by the government, the media, and the Dems. Forget about non-partisan, objective standards. Based on standards already applied to his enemies it is even easier to defend Trump.
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I dunno. I thought the email stuff was irresponsible and the public airing of it to be cynical, but the whole thing seemed much ado about little. The Deep State should have been able to correct the problem with limited public gossip. I see the Trump raid and Hillary’s server as very similar. And ultimately too much ado about issues of less than national import.
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Serious question, is any part of this incorrect? If not, what conclusions, if any, can be drawn from the information?
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Is there a link missing here?
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Shit! Yes, it’s missing. I got it from Twitter and now am not sure I can find it again. If I do I’ll repost it. Sorry.
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A Fetterman acolyte.
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I love the fact that the choice will come down to these two.
It’s a complete mystery why neither will be Senate Majority Leader this year.
It’s a real stumper!
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Why doesn’t anyone better want to get the leadership?
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Sure, why not?
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That sounds just fine. Why not, we’ve got all the money in the world and we probably have to pay extra for our rainbow colored bullets and all the spoilage and loss due to the strength that recruiting “neurodivergent” people gives our diverse military.
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Some sweet trolling.
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Not all heroes wear capes.
https://offthepress.com/chain-smoking-grandpa-runs-marathon-in-3-5-hours-while-smoking/
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