Brent Nyitray
Fairlington Blade
Let the mutherfuker burn!
jnc4p
Kevin S. Willis
Michigoose
lmsinca
markinaustin
Arcanaut
novahockey
quarterback
ScottC
yellojktVital Statistics:
Stocks are rebounding after yesterday’s allergic reaction to the hotter-than-expected CPI report. Bonds and MBS are flat.
The Consumer Price Index rose 0.3 MOM in January and 3.1% on a year-over-year basis. Shelter accounted for two thirds of the increase. The core rate of inflation rose 0.4% MOM and 3.9% on a YOY basis. The core rate has been steadily rising on a month-over-month basis since the summer:
The stock and bond markets tanked on the news, with the S&P 500 falling 1.37% and the yield on the 10 year rising to 4.32%. The Fed Funds futures didn’t change that dramatically for March, however the December futures are now pricing in 4 cuts this year, with 3 cuts as the next likeliest scenario.
Guild Mortgage is acquiring Academy to become the 8th largest non-bank mortgage lender in the US. “Guild and Academy share a commitment to the purchase mortgage market and believe in local sales and fulfillment that builds on our customers for life strategy. Our aligned core values attract employees dedicated to serving their communities and delivering on the promise of homeownership,” said Guild Chief Executive Terry Schmidt. “This transaction represents two like-minded organizations joining forces to continue to grow stronger together. Each acquisition we’ve completed has brought new talent to Guild, making us a better company. We’re excited to extend a warm welcome to our new Academy teammates and build on their talent with the support of Guild behind them.”
Mortgage applications fell 2.3% last week as purchases fell 3% and refis fell 2%. “Application activity was weaker last week, as mortgage rates moved higher across the board. The 30-year fixed mortgage rate was up to 6.87 percent – the highest rate since early December 2023,” said Joel Kan, MBA’s Vice President and Deputy Chief Economist. “Purchase applications remained subdued as elevated rates continue to add to affordability challenges along with still-low existing housing inventory. Refinance applications declined and remained depressed, with rates still higher than a year ago.”
This graph gives a vivid illustration of how much the US has under-built housing since the real estate bubble. The average age of the median home is 40 years, up from 31 during the bubble years. Over a third of the US housing stock was built before 1969, and 60% were built before 1980.
Given the paltry inventory of for-sale homes, renovation loans should be a potential opportunity.
Filed under: Economy |
All Things in Moderation 
I’m shocked to learn they’re detaining anyone.
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2024/02/14/immigration-customs-enforcement-budget-deficit-republicans/
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Second part in the Public/Matt Taibbi collaboration:
https://public.substack.com/p/us-government-is-hiding-documents
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Watching the Fani Willis hearing and Willis’s paramour, Nathan Wade claims he only has one receipt from Fani Willis and all other payments to him to compensate for things he bought re travel were in cash. Fani Willis paid for half of their travel in cash.
Seriously.
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From the Popehat reader comments on Blue Sky:
“If this is true, Willis should be able to be able to provide bank statements to that effect, i.e. that she withdrew cash.”
See also:
https://bsky.app/profile/connorlynch.bsky.social/post/3klhuodrwkp2m
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Presuming the judge thinks Wade’s sworn testimony is insifficient. Also, there is sworn testimony that Willis/Wade sworn assertion of a relationship started before he began work for her.
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Fani Willis demanded to testify and is now doing so. She is VERY angry, not really thinking it’s smart to be this mad and then volunteer to testify.
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I think she know’s she gone from this trial and is now trying to salvage her election in November by playing the victim.
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She is a horrible witness. Doing everything a defense lawyer would tell you not to do…answering expansively to yes/no questions, going into all kinds of irrelevant details seemingly to distract from the issue at hand. And she’s a prosecutor…you’d think she would know how to testify effectively.
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That’s why I think her testifying is more about her re-election than about salvaging her Trump case.
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It’s possible that she is just stupid.
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Does her emoting move the ball forward for the defendents, insofar as does it establish a reason for the judge to remove her from the case. To me, the issue is ultimately that Wade is lying on getting paid back by Willis with only cash. I think that’s why Willis felt the need to “sound outraged”, to sell the idea she only pays cash. I also think that it becomes obvious that here and Wade were having a relationship prior to 2022 when she finally admitted, after ton’s of qualifying her answers, that she did meet Wade at her residence in 2020. She feigns outrage of being accused of “living” with Wade in 2020 but then admits he has been to her house. It’s deflection and distraction.
Also, her outrage is also unbalancing Merchant.
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Hilarious…her own lawyer just objected to a question as “specualtion”, and then she objected to her own lawyers objection.
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In addition to reelection, I think she’s also playing to the MSNBC crowd. I suspect she was planning on a book deal and a tour on the progressive speaking circuit if she was the prosecutor who finally “got Trump” on an election related issue.
Popehat’s take is that prosecutors are so used to not being challenged that as a group they really are this arrogant and entitled.
I’d be interested in Mark’s take. I’m sure he dealt with a few state prosecutors during the course of his career in Texas.
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Prosecutors historically were nearly bullet proof and made their political bones on high profile cases [Tom Dewey and Murder Incorporated anyone?].
Not as easy now – see how Hur felt constrained to first tell why he recommended no prosecution of Biden and then even cited examples from Biden’s testimony. Politics apparently forced him to go public with a report that is not required nor traditionally given for a no prosecution decision, and to add detail on top of that, apparently with Garland’s approval. It’s a new world out there.
Believe it or not, the WSJ has a story that probably dwarfs domestic politics in its importance.
—
Wyoming Hits the Rare-Earth Mother Lode
If managed wisely, the discovery at Halleck Creek will make the U.S. the world’s indispensable mineral supplier.
By
Michael Auslin
Feb. 14, 2024 6:41 pm ET
The discovery of 2.34 billion metric tons of rare-earth elements near Wheatland, Wyo., signals the beginning of a new era in the competition for the raw materials that power the global economy. If wisely exploited, this find—estimated to be the richest in the world—will give the U.S. an unparalleled economic and geopolitical edge against China and Russia for the foreseeable future.
The lode at Halleck Creek has the potential to make the U.S. the world’s largest processor of the minerals used to make computer chips, smartphones and aircraft engines. Rare earths are fundamental to advanced economic manufacturing. They are also critical in all military technologies, and thus have become central to national security.
Yet traditionally they also were “dirty” to mine. Production tended to leave water pollution, toxic sludge and radioactive elements in its wake. Environmental concerns led U.S. companies to curtail domestic extraction, and as a result China became the world’s largest refiner of rare earths, accounting for as much as 95% of global production and supply in 2023. Despite a recent increase in refining outside China, the U.S., along with other leading manufacturing countries, relies on Chinese rare-earth exports. And reliance has meant vulnerability, as Beijing has used its near monopoly to bolster its own industries and put pressure on competitors.
The Halleck Creek find is reportedly high in two of the most in-demand rare earths, neodymium and praseodymium oxides, both of which are also low in radioactive byproducts. Exploiting the Wyoming find, along with other mines in Arizona and Nevada, could help power a new generation of American manufacturing, ensure a supply of military-critical materials, and further reduce American reliance on trade with China.
Rare earths are only part of the story of the North American continent’s natural abundance. Despite Biden administration rhetoric against drilling, the U.S. remains the world’s largest oil producer, with 44.4 billion barrels of crude oil reserves, and it exports more petroleum than it imports. And before President Biden moved to limit shipments of liquefied natural gas, the U.S. in 2023 was the world’s largest exporter of LNG. Similarly, the U.S. coal industry is the fourth-largest in the world, producing nearly 600 million short tons in 2022, and is far cleaner and environmentally safe than top producers China and India. U.S. timber and water resources are all but unmatched globally. The capacity to provide for much, if not most, of the country’s domestic energy needs gives the U.S. an unparalleled economic and geopolitical advantage.
Not all is well with the American natural-resource picture, however. For centuries it was the richness of American soil above all that drove settlement. The U.S. is still the world’s fourth-largest agricultural producer, and the world’s largest exporter of corn and fifth largest exporter of rice. Yet since the 1980s, U.S. farmland has dramatically shrunk because of urban expansion, consolidation and environmental regulations. Fruits and vegetables that could be grown domestically now must be imported from Mexico, Canada and other countries.
America’s six million farmers—2% of the population—remain hard pressed, as some 13 million acres of farmland disappeared from 2014 through 2021. In California’s rich Central Valley, another million acres is expected to go fallow over the next two decades to comply with new groundwater regulations—even as the Golden State pumps trillions of gallons of storm water into the Pacific Ocean due to similarly antigrowth regulations.
Smart resource regulation is of course necessary, but we know more today than we ever have about how to protect the environment while powering a diverse economy. If the U.S. refuses to press its natural advantages, it will cede global leadership to China. As crises rear up in Ukraine and the Middle East, Washington will have to ramp up all kinds of production for national defense while ensuring the American standard of living. Halleck Creek may one day be as familiar to Americans as the Comstock Lode or the oil fields of Prudhoe Bay. Wise stewardship and bold exploitation of the unending bounty of America’s natural resources will help ensure another century of U.S. wealth and security.
Mr. Auslin is a historian at Stanford’s Hoover Institution.
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Mark:
Politics apparently forced him to go public with a report that is not required nor traditionally given for a no prosecution decision
I think you are wrong about that. Hur was a special counsel, not just a regular prosecutor, and as such he was required by the special counsel law to submit a report to the AG justifying his recommendations. See part C here:
https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/28/600.8
(You might recall that Special Counsel Robert Mueller also made a no prosecution decision with regard to Trump and the Russia Collusion hoax, and he submitted a report too.)
Garland was the one who made it public, not Hur. And yes, Garland probably made the decision that it was politically preferable to release the report than to not release it and be accused of (another) coverup. So that was political, but not on the part of Hur.
Hur’s act of politics was making the call not to recommend charges in the first place. The report makes it clear that Biden was indeed guilty, and Hur had to go to absurd lengths to find a reason not to charge him. See here and here.
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You are absolutely correct about Garland making that call, not Hur, who had to report only to Garland.
I have now read some of the actual report and I don’t think there was a winnable criminal case there. But the disclosure to the ghost writer was iffy, for sure.
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Mark:
I have now read some of the actual report and I don’t think there was a winnable criminal case there.
Why? They literally have him on tape talking about having found the “classified stuff” in the basement of his Virginia home. And the idea that his notebooks, which he knew contained classified information, didn’t need to be secured because they were “personal property” is absurd. It’s contrary to the very logic of the laws requiring such info to be secure. It’s the info, not the physical means of recording it, that generates the need for it to be secured.
If you think it isn’t winnable because of jury nullification out of sympathy for a pathetic old man, fine. But apart from that, I can’t understand how a halfway decent prosecutor couldn’t be confident about making a compelling case.
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As I mentioned before the obvious parallel would be with the David Petraeus case where classified information was also kept at his residence and disclosed to a ghost writer.
https://www.politico.com/story/2016/06/fbi-petraeus-shared-top-secret-info-with-reporters-224023
Petraeus however was pretty clearly competent to stand trial.
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Sweet Jesus, the Fani Willis hearing has gone off the rails!
https://abcnews.go.com/US/live-updates/trump-georgia-fulton-da-willis-hearing/court-adjourns-as-judge-signals-it-will-resume-late-next-week-or-week-after-107306731?id=107244534
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