Brent Nyitray
Fairlington Blade
Let the mutherfuker burn!
jnc4p
Kevin S. Willis
Michigoose
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markinaustin
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quarterback
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yellojktVital Statistics:
Stocks are higher after Super Tuesday gave unsurprising results. Bonds and MBS are up small.
Jerome Powell heads to the Hill today for his semiannual Humphrey-Hawkins testimony. Here are his prepared remarks. Punch line: Rate cuts are coming, but not imminent:
We believe that our policy rate is likely at its peak for this tightening cycle. If the economy evolves broadly as expected, it will likely be appropriate to begin dialing back policy restraint at some point this year. But the economic outlook is uncertain, and ongoing progress toward our 2 percent inflation objective is not assured. Reducing policy restraint too soon or too much could result in a reversal of progress we have seen in inflation and ultimately require even tighter policy to get inflation back to 2 percent. At the same time, reducing policy restraint too late or too little could unduly weaken economic activity and employment. In considering any adjustments to the target range for the policy rate, we will carefully assess the incoming data, the evolving outlook, and the balance of risks. The Committee does not expect that it will be appropriate to reduce the target range until it has gained greater confidence that inflation is moving sustainably toward 2 percent.
The questions from Congress will be interesting. I am sure that many in Congress are getting itchy for rate cuts, especially since consumers are rather down on the economy overall, which tends to lead to a bad election season for incumbents.
The private sector added 140k jobs in February, according to the ADP Employment Report. Wage gains for job changers accelerated from 7.2% to 7.6%. Overall wage inflation was 5.1%. “Job gains remain solid. Pay gains are trending lower but are still above inflation,” said Nela Richardson, chief economist, ADP. “In short, the labor market is dynamic, but doesn’t tip the scales in terms of a Fed rate decision this year.
Leisure / hospitality added 41,000 jobs in February, followed by construction. The Street was looking for 150,000 jobs, so this was a bit lower than expected. The Street is looking for 190,000 jobs in Friday’s jobs report.
Mortgage applications rose 9.7% last week as purchases rose 12% and refis rose 8%. “The latest data on inflation was not markedly better nor worse than expected, which was enough to bring mortgage rates down a bit, with the 30-year fixed mortgage rate declining slightly last week to 7.02 percent,” said Mike Fratantoni, MBA’s SVP and Chief Economist. “Mortgage applications were up considerably relative to the prior week, which included the President’s Day holiday. Of note, purchase volume – particularly for FHA loans – was up strongly, again showing how sensitive the first-time homebuyer segment is to relatively small changes in the direction of rates. Other sources of housing data are showing increases in new listings, which is a real positive for the spring buying season given the lack of for-sale inventory.”
Home prices rose 5.8% in January, according to CoreLogic. “U.S. annual home price growth strengthened to 5.8% in January 2024,” said Dr. Selma Hepp, chief economist for CoreLogic. “And while the acceleration continues to reflect the residual impact of strong appreciation in early 2023, the annual rate of growth is expected to taper off in coming months.”
“Home prices further increased in late 2023 despite high mortgage rates, which surged to the highest level since the beginning of the millennium,” Hepp continued. “But metro areas that have struggled with the impact of higher rates continue to see downward movement on home prices. Generally, pressures from higher mortgage rates tend to occur in markets where the higher cost of homeownership pushes against the affordability ceiling.”
Filed under: Economy |
All Things in Moderation 
Pro Hamas activists, you know what you have to do for the SOTU!
Let this be your guide.
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Ken Paxton getting some pretty serious revenge.
https://www.texastribune.org/2024/03/05/dade-phelan-david-covey-texas-house-speaker-primary/
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it take a heart of stone not to laugh at this.
https://x.com/houstonchron/status/1765022853718560882?s=46&t=vSGsUlnc4rLxcUf7zfUiHg
And she lost the primary to boot!
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NYT Op-Ed flat out states that the entire Democratic campaign strategy was to indict & convict Trump.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/06/opinion/trump-trials-supreme-court.html
This is of course exactly backwards:
“In 2000, the Supreme Court, with a Republican-appointed majority, decided a presidential election in the Republican candidate’s favor. There is something very wrong with our democracy if this happens twice in less than a quarter century.”
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Right off the bat is a complete misread of Donald Trump.
minimize attention to the details of the 91 felony charges against him.
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I’m flabbergasted that Dems actually think that there is anything about Trump that voters are not yet aware of.
undermine a key Democratic goal: to expand voters’ awareness of the dangers posed by a second Trump term
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It’s impossible not to snicker at the “insurrection” and “sequestering” descriptors.
” the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and his sequestering of classified government documents in his Mar-a-Lago home”. Imagine, a former POTUS keeping papers. Why, I bet Obama has classified documents he’s “sequestering”.
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Forget Obama, Biden was caught with classified documents.
Apparently it’s not sequestering if you keep them in your garage. Or if you are a Democrat.
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Literally every “journalists” wet dream.
” a media onslaught reminiscent of the Senate Watergate hearings, which stretched out over 51 days in 1973.”
How come they never use Ollie North’s Senate testimony as an example?
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“Early on, I called the federal election subversion case potentially the most important case in this nation’s history,” Richard L. Hasen, a law professor at U.C.L.A., wrote on his Election Law Blog. “And now it may not happen because of timing, timing that is completely in the Supreme Court’s control. This could well be game over.”
No way this douche actually believes this. Marbury v Madison would like a word.
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All this commentary does is help to persuade me that the charges were politically motivated in the first place. I suspect I’m not alone in that regard.
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In all sincerity, I didn’t think anybody thought the timing was anything but political.
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McWing:
In all sincerity, I didn’t think anybody thought the timing was anything but political.
I genuinely don’t understand how anyone paying any attention could possibly have thought differently.
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Sadly, the rest of this magnificent piece is behind the paywall.
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You were the one who showed me this site:
https://archive.ph/naP0m
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I couldn’t remember, thanks!
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George, if you use Firefox, it has a convenient button you can put on the tool bar. Click it when you are on a pay walled web page and it immediately goes to the archived version of that page.
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Thanks! I’ll do that.
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Back at it.
I’m going to sound like a broken record here, there is zero evidence for this. I’d argue the opposite, the more that’s known the more popular Trump gets.
First, a surprisingly large segment of the electorate either has no idea or slight knowledge of the charges against Trump. Increased knowledge of these charges can only work to Biden’s advantage.
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Along similar lines:
From 20 to 25 percent of those surveyed said they did not know, and another 20 to 25 percent said they were “not sure,” what the charges against Trump were — in other words, nearly half of those surveyed had little or no comprehension of the array of allegations against Trump.
Why does this guy think that the people who are so out of touch they don’t know that Trump has been charged with anything are suddenly gong to become uber aware when he gets convicted? Any conviction will be hyped up in the very same way by the very same outlets that have been hyping up the charges, and to which the 20-25% will still not be paying any attention.
As for the 20-25% of people who are “not sure” of the charges against Trump, I don’t see why that is meaningful. In fact, I would imagine those numbers are too low. Those are just the people who are willing to admit that they don’t know. I’d bet the vast majority of people who claimed to know all about the charges couldn’t name a single one of the “91 charges” that have been brought. “Interfering with an election” or “trying to overturn the election” are not crimes with which anyone can actually be charged, even as the media continually portray that as his crime. It’s other favorite go-to is “insurrection”, which is a crime, but not one that Trump has been charged with.
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I’m pretty informed and I don’t know all the charges. I’ll point again to the E Jean Carrol verdict having no impact, in fact, less than no impact as his polling improved after the conviction (I know, I know, it was a civil trial). If Sexual Assault and Guilty and $83,000,000 cannot move the needle than some obscure conviction for retaining classified documents or Obstruction of Congress is not going to do it either. The reason why is that most, if not everybody knows this is political and as such the results are baked in. Those on the left know it’s political and are happy with it. Those on the right know it’s political and are disgusted with it. Those low-info / centrist voters know it’s political and it’s not changing their minds.
Biden and the Democrats have made things so shitty that it has removed a large amount of toxicity from Trump.
What should Trump do if he manages to win and survives to take office? Does he sick the DoJ on Democrats? If not, why not?
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Because the 20% – 25% of these people know the charges are bullshit and aren’t going to waste their time learning about it.
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The pile on works in Trump’s favor. One trial by Smith may have moved the needle, especially if it had been done in a more timely manner and had actually charged insurrection just to settle the issue.
The multiple indictments by every Democratic prosecutor who has MSNBC aspirations and needs to fund raise has made people numb to it.
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This is just insane,
Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster, argued in an email that in the drive to mobilize low-turnout voters, it is not so important whether Trump goes on trial but whether he is convicted: “It’s not trials but convictions that matter. If Trump is convicted of a criminal felony by a jury, of plotting to overturn or steal the election, that will matter.” Lake added that “A Trump conviction would increase voting among low-turnout Democratic men, and it would come second to abortion in mobilizing low turnout Democratic women.”
You’d have to have been in a cave not to hear about Trump and Rape and E Jean Carroll and Trump convicted. His popularity keeps increasing. There is zero evidence beyond polling that confirms Lake’s opinion. Hell, the polling used to say that Trump being indicted would cause his support to crater.
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Complete and total failure and capitulation by the House Republicans:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/03/06/house-vote-government-shutdown-bill/
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Is it a coincidence that the day after Victoria Nuland step down Zelensky comes within an RCH of death?
https://x.com/heroiam_slava/status/1765385566403563611?s=46&t=vSGsUlnc4rLxcUf7zfUiHg
I always thought Eisenhower was being dramatic in is MIC speech.
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Kind of hard to make the case that crime is down when you have to call out the National Guard to patrol the subway.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/06/nyregion/subway-national-guard-police.html
I don’t ever remember that having to be done in the 1970’s & 1980’s (absent a specific riot incident rather than on an ongoing basis).
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Curious how Tom Cotton feels. Heb mentioned it in his much maligned NYT OpEd.
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Why us? I don’t care that Biden needs to shore up Michigan and Minnesota.
https://x.com/barakravid/status/1765784774918955482?s=46&t=vSGsUlnc4rLxcUf7zfUiHg
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Someone needs to remind him about what happened with Reagan and the Marine barracks in Lebanon.
If the US has a physical presence in Gaza, it’s just a magnet for a terrorist attack.
I’d also like to see someone challenge the administration why their current interventions abroad are more important than Afghanistan which they left after 20 years and promptly collapsed to the Taliban.
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Hell, what about a rescue mission to El Paso or Nogales?
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That was a Pali rescue mission as well. The smart play is to force all Pali’s into Jordan, name it Palestine and be done with it.
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Nothing gets by the legal experts quoted in the NYT:
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Even though Alabama changed the law in two weeks, the Washington Post is still trying to milk the narrative with feature stories with full magazine style photography:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/interactive/2024/ivf-couples-alabama-ruling/?itid=hp-top-table-main_p002_f005
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