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 | 3,990 | 0.75 |
| Oil (WTI) | 77.28 | -0.28 |
| 10 year government bond yield | 3.97% | |
| 30 year fixed rate mortgage | 6.78% |
Stocks are flat as we await further Jerome Powell testimony. Bonds and MBS are flat.
Jerome Powell testified in front of the Senate yesterday and braced the markets for a 50 basis point hike in March. In his prepared remarks, Jerome Powell raised the possibility for a faster pace of tightening:
Although inflation has been moderating in recent months, the process of getting inflation back down to 2 percent has a long way to go and is likely to be bumpy. As I mentioned, the latest economic data have come in stronger than expected, which suggests that the ultimate level of interest rates is likely to be higher than previously anticipated. If the totality of the data were to indicate that faster tightening is warranted, we would be prepared to increase the pace of rate hikes. Restoring price stability will likely require that we maintain a restrictive stance of monetary policy for some time.
This puts a lot of weight on the Consumer Price Index next Tuesday. The reaction in the bond market was muted on the long end (the 10 year didn’t do much) but we saw the 2 year yield increase by 22 basis points to 5.09%. The 2s – 10s spread hit a negative 103 basis points, which is the most inverted yield curve since just before the 81-82 recession, which was a doozy.
The Fed Funds futures now see a 50 basis point hike at the March meeting:
Deutsche Bank strategist Jim Reid talked said that if history is any guide, yield curve inversions like this signal a recession is imminent: “Bear in mind that on all the previous occasions that the 2s10s has been more than -100bps inverted since data is available from the early 1940s (1969, 1979, 1980 and 1981) a recession has either been underway, or has occurred within a maximum of 8 months,” Reid said. “To highlight the rarity of such an occurrence, there have only been 7-month end closes lower than -100bps in 80 years of available data. So we are in rarefied air.”
As I discussed in my Substack piece over the weekend, a recession in the context of a strong labor market is entirely possible, and has happened in the past.
Speaking of the labor market, the ADP Employment Report said that the private sector added 242,000 jobs in February. The bad news for the bond market is that annual pay increased 7.2%. “There is a tradeoff in the labor market right now,” said Nela Richardson, chief economist, ADP. “We’re seeing robust hiring, which is good for the economy and workers, but pay growth is still quite elevated. The modest slowdown in pay increases, on its own, is unlikely to drive down inflation rapidly in the near term.”
The 242,000 increase is higher than the Street’s 220,000 forecast for Friday’s jobs report. The 7.2% wage increase is way higher than the 4.7% annual increase in average hourly earnings.
Mortgage applications increased 9% last week as purchases and refis rose the same amount. “Mortgage rates continued to increase last week. The 30-year fixed rate rose to 6.79 percent – the highest level since November 2022 and 270 basis points higher than a year ago,” said Joel Kan, MBA’s Vice President and Deputy Chief Economist. “Even with higher rates, there was an uptick in applications last week, but this was in comparison to two weeks of declines to very low levels, including a holiday week. Comparing the application indices from a year ago, purchase applications were still down 42 percent, and refinance activity was down 76 percent. Many borrowers are waiting on the sidelines for rates to come back down.”
On the heels of the FTC’s announcement of a lawsuit to block the ICE / Black Knight merger, the companies revised the terms of the deal and announced they have reached an agreement to sell Empower to Constellation Software, a Canadian firm. Constellation is kind of a Berskhire Hathaway of IT solutions – a decentralized collection of disparate providers of mission-critical software. The company has a market cap of $35 billion, so it can be considered a real buyer.
The deal was re-cut to lower the number of ICE shares issued. The spread is still gargantuan at 24% gross (the new deal is worth roughly $75 a share and Black Knight is trading at $60.69) which indicates the deal still has an antitrust problem and the divestiture won’t satisfy the regulators. As part of the deal, ICE has agreed to litigate with the FTC to get the deal done.
Supposedly ICE’s asking price for Empower is something like $400 million. I think ICE paid $11 billion for Ellie Mae’s which is mainly Encompass so this gives you an idea of how far valuations of mortgage assets have fallen over the past couple years.
Filed under: Economy |
All Things in Moderation 
KosKidz having a very difficult time with Tucker Carlson right now. Spare a thought for their suffering.
https://www.dailykos.com/search?text=tucker+carlson&time_begin=03%2F01%2F2023&time_end=now&text_type=any&text_expand=contains&search_type=search_stories&time_type=time_published&submit=search
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all that projecting is hard work
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Gasp!
https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvjgvd/catholic-prayer-app-hallow-prayers
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Sometimes a statement so perfectly encapsulates what’s wrong with a certain viewpoint that attention must be paid:
https://jacobin.com/2023/03/the-blues-brothers-1970s-chicago-working-class-black-musicians
This is exactly backwards. Belushi and Aykroyd were the perfect people to bring the message of the blues out because they could reach a different and larger audience than the original blues musicians themselves. To the extent that America still has a chance as a society, it’s because the popular culture still belongs to everyone. Should that bow to claims of “appropriation” and become balkanized, then it’s all over.
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When your mind is so open your brain falls out.
Imagine the Blazing Saddles pitch meeting occurring today.
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jnc:
To the extent that America still has a chance as a society, it’s because the popular culture still belongs to everyone. Should that bow to claims of “appropriation” and become balkanized, then it’s all over.
Perhaps that is precisely the point…to destroy America as a coherent society. At some point you simply have to stop believing in the good will and good faith of people who repeatedly promote things that have precisely the opposite effect of what they claim to seek.
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“At some point you simply have to stop believing in the good will and good faith of people who repeatedly promote things that have precisely the opposite effect of what they claim to seek”
Do you, though? They can also just be wrong. Ignorant. Incompetent. And ineducable.
And also convinced that their definition of what an American coherent society looks like is honestly an objective good. So if it requires brute force and propaganda and the elimination of dissenters to achieve . . . well, omelettes and eggs.
That is, it really doesn’t matter if they have “good will” or “good faith” or good intentions. Whether they do or do not doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter of Mao had good intentions with his Cultural Revolution, he was still a mass-murdering piece of human garbage.
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KW:
Do you, though?
I think so, yes.
They can also just be wrong.
It isn’t a question of being “wrong”. It is a question of results. If a doctor says, for example, that his goal is to protect babies, and yet his prescriptions actually kills the baby with near 100% proficiency, it behooves rational observers to consider the possibility, indeed the probability, that his goal is the opposite of what he proclaims.
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Interesting Jacobin take on Equity vs Equality:
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Over the last decade or so, a confused idea that started in the nonprofit sector has gradually seeped into liberal discourse more generally.
No, it most definitely did not start in the nonprofit sector. It started in academia, amongst people (Marxists) who explicitly disavow and seek to destroy traditional western culture and enlightenment values.
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I still say the left struck out using class as a lever to establish their utopia and is now giving identity politics a go.
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Brent:
I still say the left struck out using class as a lever to establish their utopia and is now giving identity politics a go.
That is exactly correct. All of this identity nonsense is the direct product of academic marxists.
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The thing the left hasn’t grasped is that COVID changed everything. I can do my job from anywhere now, and there is nothing keeping me in the US.
The host has the ability to escape the parasites and that is going to screw everything up.
What is a nation of DEI types going to do with no producers?
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Brent:
What is a nation of DEI types going to do with no producers?
Become California.
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Become California.
Become Venezuela. All the money in the world, but nothing to buy
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Daniel Ellsberg has been diagnosed with cancer.
Good read from Seymour Hersh:
https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/my-fifty-years-with-dan-ellsberg
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These are some very brave women!
https://apnews.com/article/women-sue-texas-over-abortion-ban-632fad72e0f5b255a3a55274cd097fa9?utm_source=homepage&utm_medium=TopNews&utm_campaign=position_07
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lms:
These are some very brave women!
I thought you were opposed to killing children.
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Scott maybe you missed this from the link, or just didn’t bother to read it?
According to the Texas suit brought by the five women and two doctors, one woman, Amanda Zurawski, was forced to wait until she developed blood poisoning before being provided an abortion. The four others had to travel out of state to receive medical care for pregnancy-related complications after doctors recommended an abortion because of the deteriorating condition of the woman, the baby or a twin — care that could not be legally provided in Texas.
These are not stories of children they are stories of women in dire need of medical care. I wasn’t going to respond to your comment but decided that I needed to after losing sleep over this issue. You really owned me on that one! There’s a reason I rarely check in here which I’m sure the echo chamber appreciates!
According to the Texas suit brought by the five women and two doctors, one woman, Amanda Zurawski, was forced to wait until she developed blood poisoning before being provided an abortion. The four others had to travel out of state to receive medical care for pregnancy-related complications after doctors recommended an abortion because of the deteriorating condition of the woman, the baby or a twin — care that could not be legally provided in Texas.
One of the fetuses was a dying twin and the parents saved the surviving twin, another was a fetus with no skull and an underdeveloped brain. Zurawski was forced to wait until she was basically septic and at death’s door to receive the medical care she needed.
Turning medical care for women over to the states has not worked out so far IMO. I love children and mourn loss of life due to the #1 killer, gun violence.
I also trust women to make decisions for their own health care.
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lms:
I love children and mourn loss of life due to the #1 killer, gun violence.
You are highly confused. The #1 killer of children in the US is so-called “women’s health care”, and it isn’t even remotely close. In 2020 there were 45,422 total deaths caused by firearms across all age groups in the US. In that same year, according to Guttmacher, there were 960,130 deaths caused by “women controlling their bodies”.
Gun related deaths aren’t even the #2 killer of children, unless one defines adults ages 18 and 19 as “children”. If you exclude such adults from the category “children”, the #2 killer of children, after “reproductive freedom”, is car accidents.
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Scott, women controlling their bodies is not a political football. You’re conflating apples to oranges and putting women on notice. Is that what you really want? If so, you’re entitled to your opinion but a large percentage of women across the country will rise up against your ideology!
I’m kind of wondering when you became such a supporter of illiberal ideals? Or is it because turning the issue over to the states hasn’t exactly turned out the way you thought. Did you suddenly get religion???
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lms:
Scott, women controlling their bodies is not a political football.
I’m not sure I even know what that means. But women destroying the bodies of other human beings is definitely an issue for politics to address. (Your seeming inability to think about this issue in anything other than euphemistic, propagandistic catch phrases makes a rational, logical discussion impossible.)
You’re conflating apples to oranges and putting women on notice. Is that what you really want?
I genuinely have no idea what you are talking about.
I’m kind of wondering when you became such a supporter of illiberal ideals?
Again, I have no idea what you are talking about. Opposing the killing of innocent human beings is not an “illiberal” idea. And you have known my position on
abortion“women’s health care” for literally over 10 years now. What I am saying cannot possibly come as a surprise to you.Or is it because turning the issue over to the states hasn’t exactly turned out the way you thought. Did you suddenly get religion???
What in the world are you talking about?
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And BTW, I don’t believe you are a serious counterpart any longer after that comment………….I really wanted to say something much more derogatory but resisted.
I actually think you owe me an apology but I’m not holding my breath for that!
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lms:
I actually think you owe me an apology but I’m not holding my breath for that!
Wise move. Not sure why I should apologize for noticing a simple fact, ie that so-called “women’s health care”, or in more honest terms abortion, kills innocent human beings.
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Devastating for Louisville but maybe a new beginning???
Garland also announced Louisville has agreed “in principle” to forge a consent decree that will be enforced by a federal judge who will monitor the city’s progress in adopting reforms.
The department, for years, “has practiced an aggressive style of policing that it deploys selectively, especially against Black people, but also against vulnerable people throughout the city,” Garland said during a press conference at Metro Hall. “LMPD cites people for minor offenses, like wide turns and broken taillights, while serious crimes like sexual assault and homicide go unsolved.
“Some officers demonstrate disrespect for the people they are sworn to protect,” he said, adding the department found incidents of officers calling Black people “monkey, animal and boy.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/disrespect-people-merrick-garland-issues-174300455.html
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Louisville is gonna get introduced to the term FIDO.
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One would hope, sure, but probably not. It’s important to remember that a lot of selective policing is essentially demanded by activists in the name of protecting black and brown communities from crazed racist policemen. At some point, you would expect them to stop attempting to prevent violent crime in black-and-brown neighborhoods if they people they are trying to protect won’t step up and speak up for them when they do protect them, in one of the criminals trying to victimize them gets shot and/or killed, and happens to be a minority.
Also, the roots of racism and bigotry are in our real and cultural DNA, so it is always going to be whack-a-mole. Get rid of Bull Connor, you get the new racism of Beverly DiAngelo.
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