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| Last | Change | |
| S&P futures | 4,010 | -10.50 |
| Oil (WTI) | 80.14 | 0.43 |
| 10 year government bond yield | 3.57% | |
| 30 year fixed rate mortgage | 6.19% |
Stocks are lower this morning after Goldman Sachs’s earnings disappoint. Bonds and MBS are down.
The week ahead won’t have much in the way of market-moving data, although we will get retail sales on Wednesday which will be a report on the holiday shopping season and will be a big input into Q4 GDP. We will also get housing starts and existing home sales. Earnings from the financials will be a lot of the main news flow. The World Economic Forum will meet in Davos as well.
The US will hit the debt ceiling this week as well, which promises some kabuki theater from Washington as people make dire predictions over what would happen if the US defaults on its debt. Of course it won’t default.
Business Activity contracted sharply in New York State, according to the Empire State Manufacturing Report. We are back at levels seen during the lockdowns and the depths of the Great Recession. This was the fifth worst reading in the index’s history.
On the positive side, the prices paid and prices received indices dropped sharply. Inventory levels are back to normal as well.
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The FTC is looking to ban or severely restrict non-compete agreements. This could have some major reverberations in the mortgage banking business. These got overused in the past several years – low level employees in fast food restaurants were subject to them – but it will be interesting to see how industry reacts. Perhaps some LO comp will be deferred?
The economic effects of this will probably be to lift wage inflation, at least a little.
I published another article in my Substack last weekend, and talked about one statistic that jumped out at me. I didn’t mention it here. Check it out and please consider subscribing.
I am accepting ads for this blog as well, if you would like a mention. In addition, if you enjoy the content and would like a white label solution for your company, I would be interested in having a conversation.
Filed under: Economy |
All Things in Moderation 
Folllow-up to the Popehat article from the other day, on the art history professor who’s contract was cancelled (technically not renewed) for showing a historical piece of art depicting Mohammed.
https://cla.umn.edu/art-history/news-events/news/art-history-faculty-statement-recent-events-hamline-university
The art history faculty of the school comes to her defense, sort of, but in what I suppose is the only way available to a group that is thoroughly brainwashed by the very ideological notions that were responsible for getting her ousted in the first place. Good examples are the embrace of intersectionality and the reality of “classroom harm and cultural offense”.
I suppose we should welcome any defense of academic freedom, but I suspect their defense has a lot more to do with their conviction that the expelled professor is actually a member of the woke tribe than with any genuine, principled affection for academic freedom.
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Lawsuit time:
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The Atlantic weighs in:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/01/hamline-university-minnesota-muhammad-academic-freedom/672742/
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It’s a good article, but…
These distinctions are intuitive even to small children. But the instinct to treat Muslims like toddlers, incapable of dealing with unwelcome developments, and therefore in need of protection at all times, is powerful in some quarters. The same patronizing attitude is rarely applied to Christians or Jews or atheists.
It strikes me as ironic that the author resorts to the very same world view – Muslims are a victim class! – that led the university to oust the professor in the first place. The problem here is not how Muslims are treated. It is how the professor was treated.
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Christian and Jews don’t behead you when offended.
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Taibbi’s latest…not about the Twitter Files.
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/tk-mashup-children-of-the-covid
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This should prove interesting:
“Billionaires in blue states face coordinated wealth-tax bills
Some measures are based on Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s proposals to make the super-rich pay more
By Julie Zauzmer Weil
January 17, 2023 at 9:00 a.m. EST
…
Sponsors told The Washington Post that they will introduce their bills on Thursday in California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, New York and Washington, and shared the text of their draft bills.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/01/17/wealth-taxes-state-level/
Presumably Florida will benefit from this.
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aren’t wealth taxes unconstitutional?
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I think only for the federal government, not state or local.
Property taxes are basically a wealth tax.
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This from the same group of people who pitched a fit when the SALT deductions were limited.
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I hope they do it!
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McWing:
I hope they do it!
I don’t. It will cause all the limousine liberals to immigrate to red states, and they’ll end up destroying those, too.
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my big instructure plan would be to bring down the american legion and wilson bridges. keep marylanders from feeling into VA. DC bridges too, of course.
but nobody listened.
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“In 2023, the tax rate in Maryland rises four hundred percent.
The once-great city of Baltimore becomes the one maximum-security prison for the entire country.
A fifty-foot containment wall is erected along the Potomac river. It completely surrounds the state of Maryland
All bridges and waterways are mined.
The United States Police Force, like an army, is encamped around the
state.
There are no guards inside the prison: only prisoners and the worlds
they have made.
The rules are simple. Once you go in, you don’t come out.”
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Yes! But only if Lee Van Cleef can be the warden.
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you guys really get me.
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Nova, get anything good for your clients attached to the omnibus this time around?
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i’m in trade association world.
but yes. managed to get a few things in there re: medicare Part B
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Next time can you get the reimbursement for physician administered drugs up from ASP+6% to something like ASP+10%?
Also, do away with the sequestration bullshit?
And crack down on 340b abuse?
I’ll stop now.
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Also, do away with the sequestration bullshit?
ASP+10
someone’s using too much of his own product.
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Like that would be harder than cracking down on 340b abuse.
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