Vital Statistics:

Stocks are lower as we finish up a turbulent week for markets. Bonds and MBS are up.
Active for-sale inventory rose 36% YOY, according to Realtor.com. The median listing price is down 0.7% YOY, while year-to-date listing prices are flat. Overall, we are getting to a more balanced home market.

The total value of US residential real estate rose to $49.6 trillion, according to research from Redfin. “The value of America’s housing market will likely cross the $50 trillion threshold in the next 12 months as there are not enough homes being listed to push prices down,” said Redfin Economics Research Lead Chen Zhao. “Mortgage rates have started falling, but many potential sellers and buyers are waiting to make a move, meaning we are likely to continue seeing a pattern where prices slowly tick up. That’s great news for the millions of American homeowners who see their equity rising, but first-time buyers are going to keep finding it tough to find an affordable home.”
Affordability continues to be terrible however, according to the Atlanta Fed:

Filed under: Economy |
Goddamn.
https://x.com/EndWokeness/status/1821934374675206485/mediaViewer?currentTweet=1821934374675206485¤tTweetUser=EndWokeness
LikeLike
No doubt the Harris administration will cooperate with the extraditions.
LikeLike
The Guardian is agitating to hold Musk responsible for the riots and to have him arrested.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/aug/12/elon-musk-x-twitter-uk-riot-tweets-arrest-warrant?utm_term=Autofeed&CMP=twt_gu&utm_medium&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1723468001
LikeLike
What will fascinating to read will be the DoJ emails where it is discussed seriously.
LikeLike
EU is threatening Musk over the Trump interview tonight
https://x.com/RadarHits/status/1823053512739098874/photo/1
LikeLike
I’m hoping the EU issues arrest warrants for both of them.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-13734913/Less-attractive-people-live-shorter-lives.html
LikeLike
Does anyone doubt this is coming soon?
LikeLike
Only if it comes with a redefinition of “riot” that makes it clear underprivileged people “protest”, not “riot”. And a riot is any gathering of three or more people who are right of center.
LikeLike
Trump needs to drop out now!
https://x.com/mikeallen/status/1822265401520058759?s=46&t=vSGsUlnc4rLxcUf7zfUiHg
Calling it now.
LikeLike
I’m now convinced the fake Kamala crowd AI photos were bait for Trump campaign and are performing as intended. It’s now my operating theory the faked AI Kamala rally crowds were released by the Lincoln Project, who are continuing to pimp the Trump-has-lost-it narrative.
https://x.com/stephenking/status/1822695469891342688?s=46
LikeLike
He could stop making it easy for them.
LikeLike
In all sincerity, aren’t the only people this is influencing those already Very Online? Further, what percentage of the Very Online are actually influenceable?
LikeLike
I think it is limited to Twitter (and really only people who spend a lot of time there).
The narrative creation in the polling is fascinating right now.
LikeLike
He certainly could but he probably won’t. To be clear I think Trump has not been doing himself any favors. I don’t particularly agree with Vance on a lot of things, but there is no doubt he’s much better at campaigning than Trump.
It’s unclear what Trump has been doing since Biden got shivved. Trying to actually win definitely isn’t it.
LikeLike
Good read. I thought it was going to go one way and it surprised me.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/09/new-york-socialism-labor-movements/679159/
LikeLike
Why had Pelosi gone from “Biden should be on Mount Rushmore” to essentially saying Biden is a tard and I forced him out. Is it just pure ego or is there some sort of bombshell coming out of the Biden Admin that’s she’s trying to pre-empt?
https://redstate.com/bobhoge/2024/08/11/pelosi-dons-tinfoil-hat-suggests-biden-didnt-write-june-letter-claiming-he-was-staying-in-race-n2178003
LikeLike
We’re about to start seeing more stories about how dumb Americans are.
https://x.com/cnbc/status/1822981938996515119?s=46&t=vSGsUlnc4rLxcUf7zfUiHg
LikeLike
If they listen to anything the press says or thinks they are anything but paid propagandist for the uniparty, then those Americans are dumb.
LikeLike
I will never die from cancer, in this life or the next 10.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-13735387/men-masturbate-prostate-cancer-risk-major-review.html
Nevertheless I will still die before my time.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-13734913/Less-attractive-people-live-shorter-lives.html
LikeLike
Literally shaking right now.
LikeLike
“misinformation” just means “doesn’t comport with the left’s talking points.”
LikeLike
I am amazed at what complete and utter incompetent purveyors of worthless hot garbage the media has become.
LikeLike
This fascinates me.
When has it ever happened before? Anywhere?
LikeLike
Soviet Union? I don’t think it happens here. One might argue the old days of the press covering up political philandering and compromising stories of a certain category, back in the day, is not dissimilar. All the journalists knew JFK was a pussy hound. It’s been my sense the journalists knew that FDR was crippled. So always a little covering for pols and particularly Democrats. But I don’t think it’s ever been quite like this, especially when it comes to smiling and making excuses when a politician refuses to do their job and shmooze with the press—-although Harris apparently provides lots of off-the-record conversations to the press to continue to make critical people feel special.
I dunno. There is such an incestual relationship between Democrats, the press, and Hollywood—and all three groups have successfully rooted out dissenters and alternative thinkers—that I’m not sure if there’s a direct comparison.
In any case, the press literally covering for Kamala if she murdered someone in cold blood would not surprise me at this point.
LikeLike
The “success” comes from the illusion of competence, not actual competence.
Now that the illusion is exposed, what will happen?
LikeLike
Very little. Not sure there will be a serious audit of reform even if Trump wins .
LikeLike
Intersting take on politics as a function of risk tolerance.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/13/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-nate-silver.html
See also:
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/nate-silver-on-how-to-predict-baseball-games-and-elections.html
LikeLike
Read it, but it wasn’t as cool as the exhortation to masturbate every day. Priorities.
LikeLike
Who is this published for? No one in DC actually believes that anybody wants to cut spending.
https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2024/08/12/congress/preview-of-the-spending-fight-00173600
So who is this geared for? My theory is that lefty’s think elected Republicans want to cut spending so it’s written as a ghost story for Progressives. Pure entertainment.
LikeLike
Hoping our troops don’t kill us is not really a plan.
LikeLike
If anybody knows what it takes to win the State of Texas it’s Beto.
Take it too the bank.
LikeLike
Of course this comes out now.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/13/us/politics/hunter-biden-ukrainian-company.html
LikeLike
I guess it can be partially, in dribbles here and there, told.
LikeLike
Now it’s in the interest of the Democrats to discredit Biden. Shows they were being responsible in getting rid of him.
LikeLike
Do you think they need to justify covering for him? Or is the pitch that they were unaware of the corruption going on? And why won’t Biden unload on them if this is the pitch?
I’m confused about what their doing but am looking through lenses of “obviously this has been going on for decades”.
LikeLike
This is great:
LikeLike
No way will this cause prices to become even more unaffordable!
They’ve finally cracked the code!
LikeLike
Oh my god. Even the lefties on Wall Street have to be saying: oh shit.
LikeLike
Price controls on food is the dumbest economic idea since tariffs on everything. Could we have two worse economic ideas in one election cycle? Hopefully neither idea will ever see the light of day.
On another note, Tulsi Gabbard, who did mess Harris quite a bit in a 2020 debate IIRC, is helping DJT prep for debate.
LikeLike
Don’t have a lot of faith in DJT right now. So I hope Tulsi can help but so far DJT has been underwhelming. I feel like Vance had been excellent and for all his problems I actually think Tim Walz is a much better candidate than Harris can be (although I don’t doubt he’d love price controls on everything).
But yeah the pandering from the Harris camp has been terrifying. If it works I can only assume it gets worse going forward.
Nobody seems to care about actual policy any more, least of all the candidates. Sigh.
LikeLike
KW:
Nobody seems to care about actual policy any more
Same was true in 2020. Not caring about policy is pretty much the MO of the Never Trump universe.
LikeLike
I find it’s fairly universal among politicians, at least visible ones and even then … nothing that’s come out of the Biden admin has impressed me in regards to being thoughtful policy (irrespective of whether I agree with it or not). Paul Ryan was interested in policy at least. As a tool for positive governance. Might not have agreed with him but it was not about “owning the Trumpers” or “policy” meant to virtue signal and nothing else.
Of course given my favorite policies would be ones that pruned the government bureaucracy I’m never likely to be satisfied on the policy front. 😀
LikeLike
KW:
I find it’s fairly univeral among politicians
I disagree with that. I think most politicians, especially high profile politicians, actually care quite a bit about policy. Obama, to take just one example, didn’t spend so much political capital enacting Obamacare as a lark. He cared about it. If congressmen didn’t care about policy, it would be much more difficult to predict how they would vote on various pieces of legislation based on what’s in it.
To me it is largely just Never Trumpers and so-called swing voters who obviously don’t really care about policy. Never Trumpers are self-admittedly singularly focused on the man, to the point of endorsing politicians that explicitly reject policies about which the NT’s have previously claimed to very much care. And it is difficult to see how someone who cared about policy could jump from Obama in one election to Trump in the next and then back to Biden in the next, given the obvious and known differences in policy approaches between them all. So it must be something other than policy driving their votes.
LikeLike
Maybe. I feel like Obama would have signed (and taken credit for) broadly divergent and even completely opposing healthcare policies so long as he could have claimed that he had “solved healthcare” and claimed a great policy accomplishment. But I don’t believe he cared very much at all about what was in it, so long as it was passable, and palatable enough to the liberal elite that it would not be opposed by his cultural class. But the Never Trumpers do take not giving a shit about policy to a whole new level, I will agree on that. I don’t think they care about advancing any kind of policy at all that isn’t directly related to (a) preventing the election of Trump or anyone like him and/or (b) punishing Trump.
From the people who bemoan how awful it is when politics becomes about a cult of personality.
LikeLike
How do you feel about responsive tariffs? Meaning we levy reciprocal tariffs on countries that tax our products or otherwise restrict our products coming in. Or we levy tariffs for reasons of not conforming to our human rights expectations, for example.
I feel like tariffs should be part of the toolbox of international trade. Thus not inherently terrible all the time every time. But the goal should be to minimize them on both sides.
LikeLike
Agreed.
LikeLike