Brent Nyitray
Fairlington Blade
Let the mutherfuker burn!
jnc4p
Kevin S. Willis
Michigoose
lmsinca
markinaustin
Arcanaut
novahockey
quarterback
ScottC
yellojktVital Statistics:
Stocks are lower as we await another day of testimony from Jerome Powell. Bonds and MBS are down after the Bank of England hiked rates by 50 basis points.
Jerome Powell testified in front of the House yesterday, and will speak to the Senate today. His overarching message is that the fight against inflation is not done, and there will be more rate hikes this year. They will remain data-dependent and are aware that the effects of past rate hikes are not fully reflected in the economy yet. Democrats worried about a recession while Republicans worried about bank regulation overreach.
Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic thinks the Fed should stand pat:
“My baseline is that we should stay at this level for the rest of the year” to assess the impacts of the Federal Reserve’s rate-hiking cycle on the real economy, Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic told Yahoo Finance in an interview Wednesday.
“I actually think that we are still at the very early stages of our monetary policy tightening, starting to influence the economy in a significant way. I just feel like we have a little bit of time to just let that play out and see exactly how much the economy is responding to our policy,” he said.
Existing Home Sales were basically flat in May, rising only 0.2%. On a year-over-year basis, sales were down 20%. The median home price fell 3.1%, while inventory remains tight. “Mortgage rates heavily influence the direction of home sales,” said NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun. “Relatively steady rates have led to several consecutive months of consistent home sales.”
Homebuilder KB Home reported earnings last night. Revenues rose 3% while gross margins fell from 25.3% to 21.1%. Average selling prices were flat. The decrease in margins in the context of flat average selling prices means that KB had cost pressures and used all sorts of concessions to move the merchandise.
Rising mortgage rates have been a major headache for the builders because many buyers can no longer afford the homes they ordered at current rates. Instead of cutting prices, builders are finding other ways (below market mortgage rates, free upgrades etc.) to give more value to the buyer without impacting the comps. The cancellation rate rose on a year-over-year basis however it did decline from Q1.
Overall, the company does see things improving for the sector overall: “The improvement in demand we started to see in February was sustained throughout our second quarter, as we achieved monthly sequential increases in our net orders, resulting in an overall absorption pace of 5.2 net orders per month, per community. Operationally, our divisions are executing well, driving reductions in both build times and direct construction costs as well as opening new communities. We believe our orders, starts and production are well-balanced and, with the sequential increase in our backlog at quarter-end, we are well-positioned to achieve our revenue target for 2023.”
Filed under: Economy |
All Things in Moderation 
The latest in the left’s 30+ years attempt to destroy the greatest Supreme Court Justice of the last century for daring to be a black man who thinks for himself.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/clarence-thomas-ginni-thomas-marriage-love-story.html
LikeLike
The left is trying to invent a case against Alito too.
LikeLike
LMS, Does this seem remotely rational to you?
Really? Thomas and Ginni brought the “American experiment” to the brink? Meaning, essentially, together they both–by themselves–have almost completely destroyed American democracy? And federalism?
If anything, I would argue the reality is closer to the opposite. Just not so hyperbolically. I think he has argued on the side of preserving the American experiment, as begun by our founding fathers, consistently. I don’t think he has single-handedly preserved it (or any of his wife’s activism), nor almost destroyed it.
Eh, I love Thomas. He’s my favorite, the one I agree with more than any of the others, and there’s really not a lefty on board that I like since RBG died. Of those on the court, Kagan is probably the best. BUT SHE’S NO THOMAS!
LikeLike
It’s heartening that there are people so naive as to believe that one or two people have the power to “end” something. I mean, for fucks sake, name something that is as large as pervasive as our government that one single person could destroy?
LikeLike
Look, if Donald Trump couldn’t do it and–so far–Joe Biden can’t do it. I mean, Fauci came close, but through the long lens of history I think even COVID and the lockdowns and the aimless, blind, willfully stupid hyper-inflationary spending . . . will all be a blip.
Things will get worse and better in different ways, but I’m expecting 100 years from now we will probably still have something that looks like Democracy, something that looks like federalism, and something that looks like America, even if lots of parts and pieces turn out in ways we would not prefer.
But still . . . WTF were Thomas and his wife doing to bring “America to the brink”? If anything, the author should be complaining they kept trying to perpetuate and preserve the racist and white supremacist “American Experiment” of our white, patriarchal founding “fathers”. The complaint makes no fracking sense.
LikeLike
The mistake everyone makes here is assuming the left acts in good faith. They don’t.
LikeLike
Honestly, I don’t think that idea is meaningful to most of the actors on the left. Or doesn’t mean to them what it would mean to us.
I don’t think, to the left, the idea of “acting in good faith” is relevant. There is either moving us closer to utopia, or evilly resisting that noble aim. Those are the two ways of acting.
LikeLike
KW:
I don’t think, to the left, the idea of “acting in good faith” is relevant. There is either moving us closer to utopia, or evilly resisting that noble aim. Those are the two ways of acting.
I think for a large portion of the activist left, that is exactly right. As I have said before, it is largely an ends-justifies-the-means mentality. But I also think that acting in bad faith is often just the result of elevating emotion over reason, rather than an act of being consciously disingenuous. Which could be one reason why it seems to inflict the left so much.
LikeLike
“Thomas and Ginni brought the “American experiment” to the brink?
Cue: “The Power of Love” by Huey Lewis & The News
LikeLike
LikeLike
In relation to the clip of BTTF I posted . . . who are those people in Marty’s band? These guys are his friends, right? They have to be pretty good friends to be in his band. Certainly they all had a stake in getting picked for the prom or dance or talent show or whatever. You never ever see or hear about them again and they have no interaction with Marty at any point. It’s like they were robots or something, not actual people with some sort of relationship to Marty.
Nit-pick. BTTF script is one of the greatest scripts ever written, and it runs like a well-oiled, seamlessly-engineered clock.
LikeLike
LOL, you guys are unbelievable! Not surprised to see you swallow the ethics scandals as a non issues but calling Thomas the “greatest Supreme Court Justice of the last century” is a bridge too far!
I seem to remember when you all thought Bill Barr was the best AG ever and now that he’s turned on Trump I can’t help but wonder how you’ll spin that. I guess ethics doesn’t matter anymore?
LikeLike
The left doesn’t GAF about ethics on their side, so I am not going to GAF about whatever latest thing they are worked up about.
LikeLike
“The left doesn’t GAF about ethics on their side”
This is true. How you can tell they don’t GAF about ethics is that no one on their side every does anything wrong, ethically, ever. While pretty much everybody on the other side does everything wrong, ethically. All the time.
Which means they don’t even know what ethics are or how they work.
LikeLike
Interesting LMS, thanks for that perspective. Who do you think has been the best SCOTUS jurist and AG in your lifetime?
For me it’s Thomas, hands down. As for AG, they’re all defenders of the DoJ and law
fetishists, so my perspective is jaded. I see an exceedingly narrow focus for Federal law enforcement.
Would love to hear your thoughts and we all wish you’d share more of them.
LikeLike
lms:
Not surprised to see you swallow the ethics scandals as a non issues…
What ethics scandals are you talking about?
…but calling Thomas the “greatest Supreme Court Justice of the last century” is a bridge too far!
Why? What metric do you use to rate justices?
I seem to remember when you all thought Bill Barr was the best AG ever.
You might want to get your memory checked out. No one here ever said such a thing. Indeed, jnc even trashed Barr for intervening in the Roger Stone sentence recommendation. And all I said was that I respect Barr and that I thought he was the most standup guy in the Trump administration. Still do.
LikeLike
I believe Barr is generally honest, and his position that no evidence of election fraud sufficient to change the results was found was pretty much dispositive for me in 2020.
LikeLike
I get where Barr was coming from, but I think Barr was too dismissive (probably because he considered out of his wheelhouse) how fucked up so much of the 2020 election was. That said, I think he’s a legit dude and if he says he sees nothing prosecutable then I’m sure he didn’t.
That said, I cannot believe as many people still support Trump as actually do. He’s just been awful since 2020, for the most part, most recently most especially. And he won me over as president, as I didn’t vote for him in 2016, but did in 2020. But jeeze.
LikeLike
I also liked Barr, and still do, and have no problem with his position on the 2020 election.
That said, I will also rate Thomas as the greatest Supreme Court Justice of the last century. And in all fairness, all my “Greatest Supreme Court Justices” are going to be “conservative”–i.e., originalists.
Which doesn’t mean I don’t like RBG a lot, only she’s far from my favorite jurist.
LikeLike
“I guess ethics doesn’t matter anymore?”
Hasn’t for some time now.
More fundamentally, there’s no institution that’s trusted on both sides to honestly report on, let alone adjudicate ethical issues. If there was even a consensus on what counted in the first place.
Another casualty of narrative driven journalism.
LikeLike