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| Last | Change | |
| S&P futures | 4,140 | -19.0 |
| Oil (WTI) | 77.79 | -0.93 |
| 10 year government bond yield | 3.43% | |
| 30 year fixed rate mortgage | 6.46% |
Stocks are lower this morning as tech earnings continue to come in. Bonds and MBS are up.
Consumer confidence fell in April, according to the Conference Board. “While consumers’ relatively favorable assessment of the current business environment improved somewhat in April, their expectations fell and remain below the level which often signals a recession looming in the short-term,” said Ataman Ozyildirim, Senior Director, Economics at The Conference Board. “Consumers became more pessimistic about the outlook for both business conditions and labor markets. Compared to last month, fewer households expect business conditions to improve and more expect worsening of conditions in the next six months. They also expect fewer jobs to be available over the short term. April’s decline in consumer confidence reflects particular deterioration in expectations for consumers under 55 years of age and for households earning $50,000 and over.”
New Home Sales rose 9.6% MOM in March but were down 3.4% compared to a year ago. The median new home price was $449,800 which was up about 3% compared to a year ago.
House prices rose 0.5% MOM and 4% on a YOY basis according to the FHFA House Price Index. “U.S. house prices increased slightly in February,” said Dr. Nataliya Polkovnichenko, Supervisory Economist, in FHFA’s Division of Research and Statistics. “This increase was, in part, due to a decline in mortgage rates by more than half a percentage point from the peak reached in early November as well as historically low housing inventory.”
The Case-Shiller Home Price Index reported a 0.2% MOM gain in February, and a 2.0% annual increase. “The results released today pre-date the disruptions in the commercial banking industry which began in early March. Although forecasts are mixed, so far the Federal Reserve seems focused on its inflation-reduction targets, which suggests that interest rates may remain elevated, at least in the near-term. Mortgage financing and the prospect of economic weakness are therefore likely to remain a headwind for housing prices for at least the next several months.”
First Republic Bank is down about 30% this morning after disclosing that $70 billion in deposits fled the bank during the first quarter. This was a 35% drop. The bank has suspended its dividend on its common and preferred stock and is taking steps to reduce expenses.
Agency mortgage REIT AGNC Investment reported first quarter earnings yesterday. MBS spreads widened a touch compared to the end of 2022, however they remain tighter than the end of Q3 2022, which represented the widest since the 2008 financial crisis. Tangible Book Value per share fell from $9.84 to $9.41.
AGNC so far has managed to maintain its monthly $0.12 dividend while just about every other mREIT has been forced to cut theirs. Even if the Fed doesn’t pause next month, mortgage rates still can have some downside from tightening MBS spreads. Lower fixed income volatility will help things a lot.
Filed under: Economy |
All Things in Moderation 
Interesting take on the Fox settlement with Dominion.
https://compactmag.com/article/dominion-s-blow-to-free-speech
Fox ran into some bad luck. Critics of “misinformation” often see the prerogatives of a free press as so many sly tricks. Such critics used to be associated with the political right. In Vietnam, they were often the military brass. No longer. Judge Eric Davis of the Delaware Superior Court turned out to be one of them. In a summary-judgment opinion issued on March 31, he denied Fox the right to defend its reporting on the grounds of “newsworthiness.” It has been said that it is hard to prevail in defamation cases, because it is almost impossible to show that a news organization has been truly reckless. But if there is no privilege for “newsworthiness,” then these cases aren’t hard to win at all. Fox is a news organization. If its news isn’t newsworthy, then almost anything it’s doing is reckless by definition.
Nor could Fox take refuge in the idea that its anchors were free to express opinions. Davis insisted on a bipolar distinction between facts and opinions, such that a question asked by Fox host Maria Bartiromo…becomes a “statement of fact,” because Bartiromo used the formulation “I know.” The question thus loses its protection as journalism and is liable to be read as defamation. Bartiromo was certainly among the more credulous Fox reporters, but this is absurdly literal-minded, as if Judge Davis were playing a game of Simon Says.
On any matter of serious political controversy, the difference between a fact and an opinion is precisely what is hardest to determine. Is it a fact or an opinion that CO2 contributes to global warming? If you assert it as a scientist, it is a fact. If you assert it as a non-scientist, it is an opinion about the credibility of scientists. From the outside, that looks like the main reason Fox settled. Burrowing underneath the law, the judge laid down a set of courtroom rules that made Fox culpable by definition.
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I think it was the E-mail discovery where they have the same people saying things like “Sidney Powell is clearly lying” in internal E-mails and then treating her credibly on the shows.
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jnc:
I think it was the E-mail discovery where they have the same people saying things like “Sidney Powell is clearly lying” in internal E-mails and then treating her credibly on the shows.
Perhaps…although if it was really just that you would have thought they would have settled before those became public instead of waiting for the eve of the trial.
Plus, I would hardly characterize this as “treating her credibly”.
On Sunday night, “Tucker Carlson Tonight” texted [Sydney Powell] after watching one of her segments. What Powell was describing would amount to the single greatest crime in American history. Millions of votes stolen in a day, democracy destroyed, the end of our centuries-old system of self-government. Not a small thing.
Now, to be perfectly clear, we did not dismiss any of it. We don’t dismiss anything anymore, particularly when it’s related to technology. We’ve talked to too many Silicon Valley whistleblowers and we’ve seen too much after four years on the air. We literally do UFO segments, not because we’re crazy or even been interested in the subject, but because there is evidence that UFOs are real and everyone lies about it.
There’s evidence that a lot of things that responsible people dismiss out of hand as ridiculous are in fact real. The louder the Yale political science department and the staff of The Atlantic magazine scream “conspiracy theory,” the more interested we tend to be. That’s usually a sign you’re over the target. A lot of people with impressive-sounding credentials in this country are frauds. They have no idea what they’re doing. They’re children posing as authorities. And when they’re caught, they lie and then they blame you for it. We see that every day. It’s the central theme of our show and will continue to be.
So that’s a long way of saying we took Sidney Powell seriously with no intention of fighting with her. We’ve always respected her work, we simply wanted to see the details. How could you not want to see them? So we invited Sydney Powell on the show. We would have given her the whole hour. We would have given her the entire week, actually, and listened quietly the whole time at rapt attention. But she never sent us any evidence, despite a lot of polite requests. When we kept pressing, she got angry and told us to stop contacting her. When we checked with others around the Trump campaign, people in positions of authority, they also told us Powell had never given them any evidence to prove anything she claimed today at the press conference.
Powell did say that electronic voting is dangerous, and she’s right, but she never demonstrated that a single actual vote was moved illegitimately by software from one candidate to another. Not one.
Why are we telling you this? We’re telling you this because it’s true, and in the end, that’s all that matters. The truth is our only hope and our best defense. It’s how we’re different from them: We care what’s true and we know you care, too. Maybe Sidney Powell will come forward soon with details on exactly how this happened and precisely who did it. We are certainly hopeful that she will. What happened with the vote counting this month and at the polling places in Detroit and the polling places in Philadelphia and so much else actually matters. It matters no matter who you voted for.
Whether or not you think this election is already over, until we know the answers to those questions conclusively and we can agree on them, this country will not be united.
Interestingly, Bret Stephens didn’t mention this broadcast. Stephens (along with his employer more generally) is no more credible than he thinks Carlson is.
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I remember Carlson on that. Ironically, it may have factored into his dismissal.
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Yet Tucker was highly critical of her in interviewing her. I think it’s that he wants to discuss J6 and the R establishment has told Murdoch that if he does then R’s will stop going on Fox News.
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So basically a leftist judge stacked the deck for Dominion?
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More like Maria Bartiromo should have said this:
“Sidney, I want to ask you about these algorithms and the Dominion software . . . Sidney, we talked about the Dominion software. You claim that there were voting irregularities. Tell me about that.”
instead of
“Sidney, I want to ask you about these algorithms and the Dominion software . . . Sidney, we talked about the Dominion software. I know that there were voting irregularities. Tell me about that.”
And she definitely shouldn’t have said it if there’s an E-mail chain where she states the opposite. That clears the “actual malice” standard. I personally think the Palin case cleared it as well.
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jnc:
And she definitely shouldn’t have said it if there’s an E-mail chain where she states the opposite. That clears the “actual malice” standard.
There are email chains where she says she knows there were no voting irregularities? That would be a strange thing, given that there definitely were voting irregularities. And, indeed, the whole point in characterizing them as “irregularities” rather than something more nefarious like “illegalities” is to maintain the possibility of an innocent explanation. I’m not sure why saying that one “knows” there were “irregularities” constitutes “actual malice”.
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Jnc…any idea where I can read the text of these emails/texts that supposedly have Bartiromo and Carlson saying the opposite in private to things they said publicly on TV?
I have seen a couple of snippets from Carlson, albeit with no context or timeline, which at least on their face don’t seem to contradict anything he said on TV. But I haven’t seen anything from Bartiromo.
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There’s excerpts here:
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/04/all-the-texts-fox-news-didnt-want-you-to-read.html
I haven’t seen an full archive yet.
Maybe here:
Click to access full.pdf
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The one quote from Bartiromo that is listed doesn’t seem to be incriminating in the slightest. It doesn’t mention Dominion at all, and if anything it confirms that she did indeed believe there was “massive fraud”.
As an aside, it seems to me that calling Carslon Fox’s “Chief Disinformation Officer”, as Bret Stephens did, is far more defamatory than saying “I know there were voting irregularities.” Indeed, Stephens says that “Carlson…put things in emails and text messages that proved he knew he was peddling lies — and then went ahead and amplified them.” That word “then” is notable, because he goes on to quote from a text Carlson sent on Nov 18, 2020, stating that “Sydney Powell is lying.” But Stephens never actually provides any evidence that any “amplyfying” that Carlson may have done came after his conclusion that she was lying. Indeed, Stephens never reveals to his readers that the very next day, Nov 19, Carlson aired the monologue I linked to earlier in which he explicitly calls Powell out for not providing any evidence of her claims. Was he just ignorant of it, perhaps in reckless disregard of the truth, or was he deliberately lying to his readers in order to defame Carlson? Perhaps some discovery of internal NYT emails could make it clear!
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I may have confused/conflated her with Dobbs.
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Bent:
So basically a leftist judge stacked the deck for Dominion?
Hard to believe, right?
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We have a partisan system of justice. Chalk up another institution that you can’t trust any more.
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Keep in mind that Fox got caught withholding on discovery.
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2023-04-12/fox-news-voter-fraud-discovery-misconduct-dominion-giuliani-tape
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Related:
“The Fox/Dominion Settlement Highlights the Importance of Discovery in Proving ‘Actual Malice’
Critics argue that excessively strict pleading standards prevent plaintiffs with meritorious defamation claims from obtaining the evidence they need to support them.
Jacob Sullum | 4.20.2023 5:05 PM ”
https://reason.com/2023/04/20/the-fox-dominion-settlement-highlights-the-importance-of-discovery-in-proving-actual-malice/
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Also related. This seems to me to be the key issue:
See also:
“Lou Dobbs Is the Main Obstacle to Fox’s Defamation Defense
The Fox Business host stood out as a champion of the baroque conspiracy theory that implicated Dominion Voting Systems in election fraud.
Jacob Sullum | 2.22.2023 12:01 AM ”
https://reason.com/2023/02/22/lou-dobbs-is-the-main-obstacle-to-foxs-defamation-defense/
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Occam’s Razor. Democrat judge. Democrats hate Fox and will do anything they can to harm it.
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jnc:
This seems to me to be the key issue
I don’t particularly care about the legal issue from a Fox News Corp perspective, although I do think the Caldwell article I linked to on it was interesting.
What I care about is the claim, which is widely implied but was made explicitly in the Bret Stephens article you linked, that specific personalities within Fox were saying one thing in private and the exact opposite on their shows. I don’t see any evidence of that, and indeed I do see evidence that the charge, at least with regard to Tucker Carlson and Maria Bartiromo, is utterly false.
In all honesty, after reading the excerpts of Carlson’s emails/texts, I have more, not less, respect for him.
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Check out the Reason coverage. It’s pretty good and the main editor started out originally thinking Fox was being railroaded and then changed his mind based on what came out in discovery.
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jnc:
Check out the Reason coverage.
Based on that article, it appears to boil down simply to this….Fox executives allowed some show hosts, and in particular Lou Dobbs, to say things that they, and many others at FOX, didn’t think were true. But the wider narrative, that FOX hosts were saying things on TV that they were contradicting in private, just doesn’t hold up. Not even in the case of Dobbs.
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The issue with the Democrats is that if you are not actively refuting whatever they demand to be refuted, you are actively endorsing and promoting it. Therefore, if a Fox News person is interviewing someone and they say, for example, “i think there was election fraud in the 2020 election” and the Fox News person does not immediately say “that is false, there was no election fraud in the 2020 election” they are in fact agreeing with the assertion and endorsing it. It’s as simple as that.
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Yup. Of course, Fox—like the GOP—was not willing for the right to not do real-time “fact checking” in order to immediately refute any thubg that the left doesn’t agree with, so they got the bill they deserved and maybe they will get another.
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That’s not even blogging true.
If that was all they did, then they wouldn’t have settled and in fact would have won at trial.
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jnc:
That’s not even blogging true.
Seems to me that it where it is especially true. But even looking at your NYT link to Bret Stephens, that is pretty much exactly what he was doing to Carslon, was it not?
If that was all they did, then they wouldn’t have settled and in fact would have won at trial.
It is possible for two things to both be true: 1) Some FOX hosts embraced and promoted X, and 2) Democrats and others on the left conflated not dismissing claims of X out of hand with promoting claims of X. And I think in this case they both are true.
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Is it your position that a New York jury would ever find for Fox News, under any circumstances?
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“What I care about is the claim, which is widely implied but was made explicitly in the Bret Stephens article you linked, that specific personalities within Fox were saying one thing in private and the exact opposite on their shows. I don’t see any evidence of that, and indeed I do see evidence that the charge, at least with regard to Tucker Carlson and Maria Bartiromo, is utterly false.”
Scott, I think this piece has the closest thing to direct evidence of that for Dobbs & Bartiromo:
https://reason.com/2023/02/17/rupert-murdoch-called-trumps-stolen-election-fantasy-really-crazy-stuff-fox-news-promoted-it-anyway/
It also looks like part of the Dominion case was based on contrasting what the producers said in E-mails vs what the actual on-air commentators said.
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jnc:
It also looks like part of the Dominion case was based on contrasting what the producers said in E-mails vs what the actual on-air commentators said.
Which is another way of saying “Contrasting what one person said privately with what a different person said publicly”. It seems definitely true that some FOX executives and on-air hosts disagreed privately with what other on-air hosts were saying publicly. But that is different from what is being portrayed in the media outside of FOX, most notably by your Bret Stephens link.
And if allowing those hosts to say things that the executives knew were false amounts to defamation, so be it. But, again, so far I have not seen any evidence of what is being implied or stated explicitly in various reports, ie that specific FOX hosts were being hypocritical or dishonest in their on-air comments relative to their private comments. Not even Dobbs or Bartiromo.
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Did you read the whole piece? The quotes are in the bottom two paragraphs.
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jnc:
Did you read the whole piece? The quotes are in the bottom two paragraphs.
Yep.
What was your opinion of the Palin vs NYT defamation trial?
If I was on the jury, I probably would have voted in favor of Palin.
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And if allowing those hosts to say things that the executives knew were false amounts to defamation, so be it.
What was your opinion of the Palin vs NYT defamation trial?
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Wasn’t that due to a repeat of the accusation after the NYT had elsewhere acknowledged it wasn’t the case? That said the NYT should just assert everything in their paper is opinion and not an assertion of fact, and they’d be all good.
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“It is possible for two things to both be true: 1) Some FOX hosts embraced and promoted X, and 2) Democrats and others on the left conflated not dismissing claims of X out of hand with promoting claims of X. And I think in this case they both are true.”
Fair enough, but I don’t think that the judge is using the standard that McWing is ascribing to Democrats.
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RIP Harry Belafonte.
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Interesting read:
This caught my attention:
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While not entirely wrong, I am dubious of the motivation of Fauci and perhaps the story. One of the arguments for mRNA vaccines is that they have a much shorter ramp up time than traditional vaccines, so are a better idea for viral infections. So the story here is “the vaccine is great, only they should have come up with a new vaccine earlier and well, mRNA is the only way THAT could work.”
Not to be cynical but there’s a non-trivial whiff of marketing to this. IMO
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Prescient Tweet at the beginning of this interview with Carlson.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2023/03/16/tucker_carlson_not_being_more_skeptical_about_the_iraq_war_is_my_greatest_regret.html
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“Retired NSA director won lucrative consulting deals with Saudis, Japan
By Craig Whitlock and Nate Jones
April 25, 2023 at 1:34 p.m. EDT”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2023/04/25/retired-nsa-director-won-lucrative-consulting-deals-with-saudis-japan/
Meanwhile they are prosecuting the crazy black socialists as unregistered lobbyists.
https://nypost.com/2023/04/21/socialists-charged-with-aiding-russia-after-fbi-raids/
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jnc:
Meanwhile they are prosecuting the crazy black socialists as unregistered lobbyists.
Carslon did a segment on this, defending the black socialists.
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Lol!
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/04/25/pentagon-officials-cheer-tucker-carlson-ouster-00093819
Begone, doubter!
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“If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.”
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Won’t anyone think of the poor, betrodden military generals?
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Lots of Americans abandoned in Sudan are thinking about them right now, I bet.
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Or, you know: it’s 2023. Chortling at The View and at the pentagon (or congress, I guess, if you’re AOC) shows just a remarkable out-of-touchness. Tucker has his brand. I expect both Rumble/Locals is trying to get him as well as The Daily Wire. Glen Beck publicly solicited him for The Blaze, immediately, the moment the news broke. Tucker has options. He’s not going to go away. Why do these people think the current situation is anything but an opportunity for Tucker in the modern era?
They still live in a world where there are a handful of major papers and 3 networks.
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I love that the military brass doesn’t understand what a “free press” means, but that’s historically typical. Also, the part where they say “they only spend 2% of their time on diversity training” . . . maybe true, but they should spend 0% of their time on diversity. The military should not be an ESG or whatever institution.
That said, I don’t think any of these people have much foresight. Not saying he will, but Tucker could easily grow his audience and make more money. I’d subscribe to Daily Wire or Rumble if Tucker goes to either place, while I only watched clips of Tucker on YouTube previously, because I don’t watch Fox.
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I think it goes to the type of officer that obama promoted during his reign.
he wanted woke apparatchiks which is why the military is so good at trans virtue signaling but our ships keep running into each other.
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The military definitely seems pretty woke and incompetent now. Hope we don’t have a war!
If we did I’d say nobody should sign up unless our military leadership is entirely router.
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I end up more surprised everyday just how far away ideologically I am from these people. I look at Democrat politicians and see a party and people that do not lie to their voters but proudly announce and advocate for their positions. I have to admire that they respect their constituents enough to do so.
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Well, the lie less. And I guess we don’t need to count the wink-wink lies, like Obama on gay marriage, where it’s just understood by their base that they are lying but it’s just to fool the normies.
Which I get. When certain right wingers are 100% honest about their personal opinions it can be pretty cringey. I get you want to prosecute women who have an abortion but as a politician you shouldn’t be saying that out loud …
But politicians suck generally and the Uniparty is garbage and every time we get a politician bucking the Uniparty, more often than not the bring a ton of baggage. Ugh to all of it.
What do you think about Trump attacking DeSantis from the left? I think it’s a terrible strategy but I’m guessing maybe it’s 4D chess?
I just don’t see him doing anything at this point but alienating independents and Republicans who voted for him while holding their nose.
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What do you think about Trump attacking DeSantis from the left? I think it’s a terrible strategy but I’m guessing maybe it’s 4D chess?
I honestly don’t care. Desantis’s problem is and will be name recognition and the Republican base’s desire to ram Trump down the Uniparty’s throat. Trump won’t do any lasting damage to him regardless.
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McWing:
I look at Democrat politicians and see a party and people that do not lie to their voters but proudly announce and advocate for their positions.
Sure they do. “If you like your policy, you can keep your policy.” “We follow the science!”
They also lie by euphemism, pretty much incessantly. “Marriage equality.” “Women’s health care.” “Gender-affirming care.”
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They are not lying to their own party members, doesn’t mean they’re not lying to you and I. Or, more likely, the lo info middle.
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KW:
That said, I don’t think any of these people have much foresight.
I don’t think most people have much foresight. If they did, they wouldn’t have elected a Democrat to the presidency in 2020.
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