Brent Nyitray
Fairlington Blade
Let the mutherfuker burn!
jnc4p
Kevin S. Willis
Michigoose
lmsinca
markinaustin
Arcanaut
novahockey
quarterback
ScottC
yellojktVital Statistics:
Stocks are lower this morning on global weakness and weaker bonds. Bonds got hammered yesterday after a lousy bond auction of 5-year notes, which sent the 10 year yield back above 4.5% to end at 4.55%. Bonds and MBS are weaker again today.
Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari isn’t ready to start thinking about rate cuts yet, and warned about the possibility of another rate hike in an interview with CNBC yesterday. “Many more months of positive inflation data, I think, to give me confidence that it’s appropriate to dial back….I’m not seeing the need to hurry and do rate cuts. I think we should take our time and get it right.” On the subject of rate hikes, he said: “I don’t think we should rule anything out at this point”
Home prices rose 6.6% in the first quarter of 2024 compared to the first quarter of 2023. “U.S. house prices continued to grow at a steady pace in the first quarter,” said Dr. Anju Vajja, Deputy Director for FHFA’s Division of Research and Statistics. “Over the last six consecutive quarters, the low inventory of homes for sale continued to contribute to house price appreciation despite mortgage rates that hovered around 7 percent.”
Home price appreciation is accelerating again:
Home prices hit a new all-time high, according to the Case-Shiller Home Price Index. “This month’s report boasts another all-time high,” says Brian D. Luke, Head of Commodities, Real & Digital Assets at S&P Dow Jones Indices. “We’ve witnessed records repeatedly break in both stock and housing markets over the past year. Our National Index has reached new highs in six of the last 12 months. During that time, we’ve seen record stock market performance, with the S&P 500 hitting fresh all-time highs for 35 trading days in the past year.
“Regionally, the Northeast remains the top performer with an 8.3% annual gain, showcasing robust growth compared to other metro markets. Conversely, cities like Tampa, Phoenix, and Dallas, which saw top-tier performance in 2020 and 2021, are now growing at a slower pace. COVID was a boom for Sunbelt markets, but the bigger gains the last couple of years have been the northern metro cities,” Luke reported. “On a seasonal adjusted basis, national home prices have reached their ninth all-time high within the past year, with all 20 metropolitan markets posting positive annual gains for the fourth consecutive month, indicating widespread and sustained growth in the housing sector.”
It does seem to be a tale of two markets, where the Sunbelt struggles with a lot of new construction, while the two markets that have lagged the post 2012 real estate recovery – the Midwest and the Northeast – are gathering steam. Of course San Diego continues to perform well regardless, because it is, well, San Diego.
Consumer confidence improved in May, according to the Conference Board. “Confidence improved in May after three consecutive months of decline,” said Dana M. Peterson, Chief Economist at The Conference Board. “Consumers’ assessment of current business conditions was slightly less positive than last month. However, the strong labor market continued to bolster consumers’ overall assessment of the present situation. Views of current labor market conditions improved in May, as fewer respondents said jobs were ‘hard to get,’ which outweighed a slight decline in the number who said jobs were ‘plentiful.’ Looking ahead, fewer consumers expected deterioration in future business conditions, job availability, and income, resulting in an increase in the Expectation Index. Nonetheless, the overall confidence gauge remained within the relatively narrow range it has been hovering in for more than two years.”
The present situation index remains well above the expectations index. Fewer people thought jobs were hard to get and expectations improved slightly. That said, the expectations index remains firmly mired in recessionary territory, with inflation expectations increasing from 5.3% to 5.4%.
Note that inflationary expectations are a key input to Fed decision-making since there are all sorts of ancillary behavioral effects that go along with it. Based on inflationary expectations, real interest rates are more or less zero, which could explain why the economy (and inflation) has remained resilient even in the face of 525 basis points of tightening.
Finally, home purchase plans remain the lowest since the bottom of the housing bust in 2012.
Filed under: Economy |
All Things in Moderation 
This matches my recent personal experience with friends. People who don’t vote regularly are still pissed about inflation:
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Impressive Regulatory Capture.
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This should be standard practice going forward:
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Alito’s letter is a scream.
My wife is fond of flying flags. I am not.
https://redstate.com/bonchie/2024/05/29/samuel-alito-responds-to-flag-controversy-tells-his-critics-what-they-can-do-with-their-demands-n2174808
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Good for him. There is no need whatsoever to bend to bad-faith people
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The only way the letter would have been better is if he said his wife would be happy to speak about this subject to the highest bidder a la the Seattle Dodge asshole.
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Yep. Everyone knows the critics’ positions would be reversed if it was a liberal Justice under fire. Then it would be all about First Amendment rights, etc.
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Saint RBG was notoriously political
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Fuck it, it’s only money.
https://archive.is/HTgLa
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To the best of my knowledge the defense budget isn’t actually shrinking ala Clinton after the end of the Cold War. Where is all the current money going?
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For those who haven’t seen it, the new South Park special on Ozempic is hilarious:
“Ozempic is for rich people, body positivity is for poor”
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt32375562/
See also:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/tv/2024/05/26/lizzo-south-park-end-of-obesity-ozempic-reaction/73862473007/
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My day has been made.
https://nypost.com/2024/05/30/us-news/british-couple-showered-with-vulgar-abuse-outside-trump-trial/
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And this:
“The New MAGA
Some Black and Hispanic voters say they used to support Donald Trump quietly. Not anymore.
By Aymann Ismail
May 30, 2024″
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/05/donald-trump-news-2024-joe-biden-bronx-rally.html
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Hot damn, Trump convicted on all charges! This is awesome!
Let the games begin!
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How many reporters are outside Alito’s house right now, eyes glued to the flagpole?
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NBD. Why not just send some nukes as well. YOLO!
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/world/3023118/biden-greenlights-ukraine-american-weapons-hit-targets-russia/
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Got to love the NYT framing here:
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Won’t anybody think of the attackers?
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That’s justice challenged individual to you.
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Forgot about this:
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The jumping up of the apparent misdemeanor has been the bothersome issue. That was not an issue directly for jury adjudication but I think we will hear about it on appeal.
Joe, didn’t the HRC Campaign pay for the Steele dossier?
If so, that is a distinction with a difference.
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Yep. Taibbi’s point is that she mischaracterized the expense to conceal it, which is the basis for the charges against Trump
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I see that point, but if Trump’s corp hid it the argument can be made that it is a concealed campaign contrib but that argument cannot be made if the campaign itself mischaracterized it.
What is so weird to me is that Trump could have taken a personal draw and just paid it out to her and there would have been no illegality of any kind by him, but if she were lying she would have been guilty of extortion. Right?
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Probably. All of this stuff was internal accounting records that just came out due to the Mueller investigation apparently.
They ended up paying more in taxes than they would have if they had characterized it correctly.
The bigger issue is that in order for this to be a felony, they have to link it to another crime. A crime which has not been specified, charged or which Trump has been convicted of.
The jury was basically told that they could assume Trump had committed this other crime without specifying exactly what it was.
My own guess is that the other crime was “Orange Man Bad”.
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Agreed. The “other crime” is the problem. These are some excerpts from the instruction to the jury.
—-
Under our law, although the People must prove an intent
to commit another crime or to aid or conceal the commission
thereof, they need not prove that the other crime was in fact
committed, aided, or concealed.
If the payment would have been made even in the absence
of the candidacy, the payment should not be treated as a
contribution
The People’s third theory of “unlawful means” which I will
define for you now is a Violation of Tax Laws.
Under New York State and New York City law, it is unlawful
to knowingly supply or submit materially false or fraudulent
information in connection with any tax return.
Likewise, under federal law, it is unlawful for a person to
willfully make any tax return, statement, or other document that
is fraudulent or false as to any material matter, or that the person
does not believe to be true and correct as to every material
matter.
Under these federal, state, and local laws, such conduct is
unlawful even if it does not result in underpayment of taxes.
—————–
It was a defensible felony case, at the least. NY tax law seemed a stronger hook for the prosecution than campaign contribution violations. If the defense had stipulated that the payment was made to keep the woman from telling her account and used the practice of burying these matters as routine they would have kept the woman off the stand and raised reasonable doubt that it had anything at all to do with his candidacy, per the instruction to the jury.
By attacking everything as a bunch of lies the defense blew its best strategy for winning, and since they were good lawyers by reputation I have to join those guessing that Trump himself dictated strategy to his own detriment.
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The other crime was denying hillary her coronation
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“NY tax law seemed a stronger hook for the prosecution than campaign contribution violations.”
Except for the fact that the Trump Organization paid more in taxes due to the way that they accounted for the transaction than they would have otherwise.
Hard to sell the idea that they violated tax law by overpaying to the government.
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The fact that the taxes were overpaid after the fact doesn’t technically change the defined crime – EXCEPT THAT NO ONE [but Trump] WOULD EVER BE CHARGED FOR THE DEFINED CRIME who later paid or overpaid the correct taxes.
I think we are in agreement. My [very little] point was that the jury did not have the later tax treatment before it and would have quite permissibly inferred that the invoices and checks disguised non-deductible payments as ordinary and necessary business expenses.
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Mark:
My [very little] point was that the jury did not have the later tax treatment before it and would have quite permissibly inferred that the invoices and checks disguised non-deductible payments as ordinary and necessary business expenses.
The main problem with the tax fraud theory, beyond the fact that it wasn’t presented until after the trial was essentially over and therefore was never litigated, is that the actual crime used to transform the charges into felonies was conspiracy to influence an election by unlawful means, with the tax fraud being the “unlawful means”. But the tax fraud, if indeed it could really be called that, didn’t occur until after the election had already happened, so it is quite literally impossible for it to have had any impact on the election. The thing that influenced the election was the NDA itself, not the tax implications of how it was recorded in the books, and NDA’s are not “unlawful” at all. Also, of course, in order for it to have been a legally recognized “conspiracy”, there would have had to have been a conscious agreement between Cohen and Trump that they were deliberately and criminally increasing Cohen’s tax bill in order to effect an election that had already happened. No evidence of such an agreement was ever presented, primarily because it is absurd to think that it ever existed.
It is a joke. The whole trial hinged on the existence of these “unlawful means”, and to this day we have literally no idea what those “unlawful means” were that Trump was convicted of engaging in. The trial was a sham and an affront to the rule of law. Both the prosecutor and the judge should be disbarred, if not charged with crimes themselves.
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This has been an interesting evolution:
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Gawd, Trump was such a norms destroyer.
https://www.politico.eu/article/donald-trump-not-interested-pursuing-case-against-hillary-clinton-lock-her-up/
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Does she really believe this?
https://x.com/henmazzig/status/1796898706525983166?s=46&t=vSGsUlnc4rLxcUf7zfUiHg
If so, what is she basing it on?
is there any history of any ME/Arab society effectively engaging in democracy?
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Seems ripe for a Community Note.
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Talk about shit turning to fuck.
https://x.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1797358429998129633/mediaViewer?currentTweet=1797358429998129633¤tTweetUser=CitizenFreePres
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That’s hilarious.
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FYI Brent:
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This is very interesting. Thanks or the link.
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This is excellent.
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Yes, it was a very good article. I had been contemplating writing about TDS myself for Reason in Exile, but this pretty much captures what I had been thinking, and I can’t really add anything to it.
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FYI, If you want to start growing your audience, leave pithy comments on other people’s pieces.
My “Trump 2024: At Least He Was Competent To Stand Trial.” comment on one of Taibbi’s pieces is up to 184 likes.
https://www.racket.news/p/ding-dong-the-witch-still-leads-the/comment/57815220?utm_source=activity_item
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I have a “Explaining the Trump Phenomenon to my Progressive Friends” post still sitting in my draft folder.
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I still think she makes a mistake many on the left make:
It isn’t Trump versus Biden
It is Trump versus the left (or the Swamp) or whatever you want to call it. If the democrats replace Biden with Harris, Whitmer or Hochul, I don’t think it changes much.
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Her backstory is impressive:
https://hollymathnerd.substack.com/p/what-being-the-beneficiary-of-dei
https://hollymathnerd.substack.com/p/the-hero-i-didnt-recognize
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The left’s plan
https://x.com/JCNSeverino/status/1797688421693202661
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That’s more Jennifer Rubin’s wish casting.
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I will put nothing past these people
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True, but I think Rubin speaks for a group of 1, herself.
She’s one of those “none so zealous as the converted” types since she used to be a neoconservative. She has to constantly prove herself by being further to the left than the people she’s now with.
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Another FTC lawsuit:
“FTC preparing lawsuit over alcohol pricing
The FTC is targeting Southern Glazer’s Wine and Spirits, the largest U.S. alcohol distributor, with a Depression-era price discrimination law not used by the agency in more than 20 years.
In recent weeks, FTC staff investigating Southern Glazer’s Wine and Spirits have recommended a lawsuit under the Robinson-Patman Act.
By Josh Sisco
06/03/2024 06:00 PM EDT”
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/06/03/ftc-lawsuit-southern-glazer-wine-spirits-00161323
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Major changes at The Washington Post:
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/06/03/rupert-murdoch-washington-post-00161279
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Is she playing to the audience or truly believes it?
https://x.com/theblaze/status/1797801683642360138?s=46&t=vSGsUlnc4rLxcUf7zfUiHg
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