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What If Fannie And Freddie Are Once More Circling The Financial Drain?

A weekend topic starting with DS News. “The share of online REO auction properties with competing bidders rose in the wake of the pandemic-induced economic crisis — similar to the trend in the retail market — but buyer competition at online auction has been much less volatile than the retail market over time. The share of multiple offers in the retail market, as measured by Redfin, dropped to a 10-year low of 9 percent in December 2019. That same month, 75 percent of REOs sold on the Auction.com platform had multiple, competing bidders.”

“More capricious demand in the retail market results in longer days on market for distressed properties, according to an Auction.com analysis of more than 15,000 distressed property dispositions in Q4 2019 using proprietary foreclosure auction data, public record data and MLS data.”

“The analysis shows that REO homes sold on the MLS took an average of 275 days to sell from the completed foreclosure auction while homes that sold via online REO auction on the Auction.com platform took an average 131 days to sell after the foreclosure auction – 144 days faster than the retail market. Of course, homes that sold to third-party buyers at the foreclosure auction were not held by the mortgage servicer at all, meaning zero REO holding costs and zero REO holding risks.”

From Mortgage News Daily. “Looking at delinquencies by bucket shows a slight decline, 33 bps among loans 30-days or more past due to a 2.34 percent rate, reflecting fewer loans becoming delinquent. Loans 60 to 90 days past due, however, grew 138 basis points to 2.15 percent, the highest since MBA began collecting data in 1979. Serious delinquencies, loans more than 90 days past due soared 279 basis points to 3.72 percent, the highest since the third quarter of 2010, at the height of the housing crisis.”

“‘The second quarter results also mark the highest overall delinquency rate in nine years, and a survey-high delinquency rate for FHA loans,’ said Marina Walsh, MBA’s Vice President of Industry Analysis. ‘There was also a movement of loans to later stages of delinquency, with the 60-day delinquency rate reaching a new survey-high, and the 90+-day delinquency rate climbing to its highest level since the third quarter of 2010.'”

“MBA’s report notes that mortgage delinquencies track closely with the availability of jobs and the largest quarterly increases in delinquency rates were New Jersey (628 bps), Nevada (600 bps), New York (575 bps), Florida (569 bps), and Hawaii (525 bps). These states all have economies that are reliant on leisure and hospitality jobs that were especially hard-hit by the COVID-19 pandemic.”

“Increases in delinquencies were apparent across all loan types. VA loans receives the smallest impact, an increase of 340 bps to a rate of 8.05 percent but this was still the highest rate since 2009. The rate for conventional loans increased 352 bps from Q1 to 6.68 percent, the highest rate since the third quarter of 2012 and FHA delinquencies surged by 596 bps to 15.65 percent – the highest rate since the survey began in 1979. All three loan products were also significantly higher than a year earlier; conventional loans were up 307 bps, VA loans 381 bps, and FHA loans were up 643 bps.”

“Longer term delinquency rates also increased for all mortgage types on both a quarterly and an annual basis. The seriously delinquent rate increased 219 bps for conventional loans, 467 bps for FHA loans, and 218 for VA loans from the previous quarter. Compared to a year ago, the increases were 184 bps for conventional loans, 453 and 217 bps for FHA and VA loans, respectively.”

From National Mortgage News. “The backlog of zombie foreclosures that built up in the wake of the Great Recession continued to have ripple effects into 2020, according to an Auction.com analysis of public record data. Among 487 U.S. ZIP codes with at least 10 zombie foreclosures and a zombie foreclosure rate of at least 10% (nearly twice the national average at the peak in the first quarter of 2014), median home prices in this year’s first quarter were just 7.8% higher on average than median home prices 14 years earlier, in the first quarter of 2007.”

From NBC DFW. “Anywhere from about 225,000 to 500,000 homeowners across the country could face possible foreclosure throughout the rest of 2021 because of delinquent loan payments. But here’s what interesting right now. Dallas real estate attorney Rachel Khirallah says she’s not seeing really any foreclosures at the moment. She says that’s partly because the president has put a moratorium on federal foreclosures, those are any foreclosures that were backed by Freddie Mac or Freddie Mae, also the various forms of financial assistance through unemployment has kept homeowners afloat.”

“The prediction is that will dramatically change come 2021, and many of those financial benefits will end. According to an analysis by ATTOM Data Solutions, the number of cases somewhere in the foreclosure process would shoot up more than 100-percent, from the current level of about 145,000 to roughly 336,000, and that’s just in the second quarter of 2021.”

“‘For Texas for example, I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw anywhere from a 100-percent increase in where the foreclosures where this year, versus where they are next year, in other words, I would not be surprised if we saw between 100 and 200,000 foreclosures in Texas within the next year,’ said Khirallah. ‘Then across the country in states such as Florida and California where the home prices are generally higher, it’s not going to be unusual to see a 300-percent increase.'”

From ABC Action News in Florida. “Since the beginning of the pandemic, United Way Suncoast has raised more than $3 million to help people. But, as this public health crisis drags on, they need 3 to 4 times that amount to keep making an impact. ‘We were entering into this pandemic with 43 percent of households in our region that were barely able to make ends meet, living on what we call a survival budget,’ said Emery Ivery, the Tampa Bay Area Chief Impact Officer for United Way Suncoast. ‘So many families are what we call housing burdened, and that means they are spending a significant amount of their monthly income on housing.'”

“Ivery said they are closely monitoring the housing crisis and the eviction crisis. Once the moratorium on evictions ends, Ivery worries how they’ll keep families in their homes. ‘Normally, they would exceed somewhere in the neighborhood of 600 to 800 eviction notices filed per month. We are anticipating that number is going to go up to 2,000 per month once the moratorium is lifted,’ Ivery said.”

The Miami Herald in Florida. “The Malaysian firm that rocked Miami with the purchase of the former Miami Herald building is in financial distress, a development that could spark fresh questions about one of downtown’s prime building sites. On Wednesday, Genting Hong Kong Limited, the cruise-operating unit of The Genting Group, which bought the Miami Herald site in 2011, told the Hong Kong stock exchange that it would temporarily suspend payments to its financial creditors, citing the impact of the COVID-19 epidemic. The suspensions encompass $3.4 billion in payments.”

“When Genting paid $236 million cash for the 14-acre former Herald property in 2011, the transaction clocked in at about $17 million per acre, one of the highest land sales in Miami-Dade County history. The region was reeling from the effects of 2008’s Great Recession, and many business boosters initially welcomed the purchase. The project has since stalled.”

From Bloomberg. “A nearly $1.5 billion CMBS for a new high-rise tower, One Manhattan West, part of the Hudson Yards development in New York, priced its AAA slice above par, and the entire capital structure was oversubscribed. Another small single-asset transaction securitized a brand new Silicon Valley office hub that’s leased 100% to Google — a company that, ironically, recently announced its intention to allow employees to work remotely until July 2021. The bonds sold well despite the building standing empty.”

“And yet another so-called conduit, or multi-loan, deal that priced on Thursday was nearly 40% comprised of office properties, including 1633 Broadway, a 48-story building in midtown Manhattan that was the fourth largest loan in the transaction. That building remains mostly empty as employees continue to work from home, and at least two tenants have seen their rents either reduced or temporarily deferred, according to the latest servicer report.”

“‘The elevated number of marketplace-lending loans in forbearance has masked potentially negative performance for a significant portion of securitized pools,’ Fitch analysts wrote in a note this week, in reference to MPL ABS deals. Most payment deferral programs offer hardship deferral programs of two to three months, and they may expire soon. ‘The total amount of borrowers, based on principal balance, that have elected to enter a deferral program has reached double digits for many issuers. In the absence of additional government assistance or extension of payment deferral plans, deterioration in trust performance is expected over the next several weeks and months.'”

From Socket Site in California. “Purchased as a 975-square-foot Noe Valley home with plans to nearly quadruple its size for $1.929 million in August of 2015, the now 3,750-square-foot home at 438 29th Street returned to the market as a ‘completely remodeled, redesigned & reinvented residence’ with a $4,388,888 price tag in November of last year. Re-listed for $3.95 million in March, the list price for the home has just been further reduced to $3.85 million and re-listed anew with an official ‘1’ day on the market.”

“But keep in mind that the developer has been in default on a $3.52 million project loan since January with around $4.8 million in principal, fees and missed payments now past due.”

From Spectrum News 1 on California. “The pace of new hotel openings in California is going down. After the state saw a record number of hotel openings and construction, the coronavirus-catalyzed economic downturn has slowed new hotel openings and developments in Orange County and throughout California through the first half of this year, according to a new report by Irvine-based Atlas Hospitality Group. ‘We are forecasting that the vast majority of hotel projects in planning will simply not get built,’ the report states. ‘Developers are already looking at other uses, namely residential. For those developers that still want to move forward with new hotel development, they are going to find it virtually impossible to find lenders willing to provide construction financing.'”

“As of July 30, there were 23 hotels with commercial mortgage-backed securities debt in Los Angeles and Orange Counties that were delinquent on their loan payments, said Atlas Hospitality President Alan Reay. He expects that number to grow as the coronavirus continues. ‘As most of the conventional lenders and SBA have agreed to defer loan payments, we are still not seeing a lot of foreclosures on hotels,’ Reay said. ‘We are seeing a lot of delinquencies on hotel loan payments on the CMBS side and foreclosures/bankruptcies on hotels under construction, in particular the Coachella Valley.'”

The Orange County Register in California. “Chutzpah! Shock! Disbelief! Last week came announcements from mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that an ‘adverse market fee’ of one-half point will be added to all refinance transactions effective Sept. 1. The fee is aimed at lenders but will be passed down to borrowers. For example, on a $500,000 loan, the fee adds $2,500. Or, converting this fee into the mortgage rate instead of the one-half point cost would raise your rate by roughly 0.125%.”

“About 70% of the estimated $2.8 trillion in mortgage loan funding this year have been refinance transactions, according to Inside Mortgage Finance. Mortgage lenders, the housing industry, consumer advocacy groups and many others are mad as hell about this. Some believe this is a money grab to recapitalize Fannie and Freddie in order for them to be more expeditiously be released from government conservatorship.”

“What if that money grab skepticism is wrong? Even though Fannie and Freddie reported combined net profits of $4.3 billion in the second quarter, what if they are once more circling the financial drain? Just a short decade ago we experienced a lightning-fast mortgage market collapse as a preamble to the Great Recession. Bear in mind, Fannie and Freddie own around half of the $11 trillion mortgage market. This week the Mortgage Bankers Association reported an 8.22% mortgage payment delinquency rate from its lender survey. The survey includes all borrowers not making their full contracted payment and includes forbearance borrowers.”

“VA delinquencies are running over 8%. The FHA delinquency rate is nearly 16%, according to MBA. Closer to home, CoreLogic reports Los Angeles County and Orange County mortgage delinquencies (30 days or more past due) at 7.3% as of May 2020 compared with 2.2% in May 2019. Riverside and San Bernardino counties showed an 8.4% delinquency rate for May 2020 compared with 3.3% in May 2019. California’s delinquency rate was 6.7% in May 2020 compared with 2.2% in the previous May.”

“Clearly, the mortgage industry has some issues with this move. ‘When we had record low delinquency rates, G-fees (guarantee fees that cover life-of-loan projected credit losses from borrower defaults) never went down,’ said Guy Cecala, CEO and publisher of Inside Mortgage Finance. ‘No question this puts them in better financial shape to deal with (loan) losses and take them out of conservatorship.'”

“Based on projected COVID-related losses, the Federal Housing Finance Agency gave Fan and Fred the OK to charge this adverse market fee, according to FHFA spokesman Raphael Williams. The FHFA did not provide estimated projected losses. Williams also did not explain why this one-half point charge was made without notice. (FHFA could have made this effective October 1). Historically, F&F’s previous fee actions came with some advance notice to lenders.”

“Lenders are required per consumer protection laws to honor the already locked refinance transactions even though many of them may not get delivered to F or F until Sept. 1 or later. To my knowledge, many lenders immediately added the adverse market fee for new refinance loans locked as of last Aug. 13. If your refinance loan was locked prior to that date but has not funded, keep your eyes peeled for the possibility of the slow stroll to funding in which your rate lock expires before your loan funds.”

“Some lenders may try to stick you with the additional one-half point fee. To be fair, if you caused delays of your refinancing by dragging your feet and delaying paperwork, that’s on you. You may have leverage if any funny business starts to happen. Laguna Niguel attorney W. Michael Hensley reminded me of the class-action lawsuit that Wells Fargo Bank contended with back in 2017 for charging rate-lock extension fees to borrowers that were allegedly caused by the bank. Eating this fee is not fair for the lenders. But that’s a separate matter from them trying to pass it on to you on your already locked loan.”

“Two wrongs don’t make a right. If you think your lender is playing you, just present a copy of this column to your lender.”

Two reports from the Wall Street Journal. “Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s new fee has roiled the mortgage industry. It could be just a taste of what is to come as the two giants’ role in the housing market evolves. Potential investors will want to know how Fannie and Freddie can offload risk—or offset it with earnings, including fees. It’s harder for Fannie and Freddie to offload risk at the moment due to the slowing market for so-called credit-risk transfer securities. There was no issuance at all in the second quarter, according to data tracker Mark Fontanilla & Co.”

“Fannie and Freddie don’t have a lot of market incentive not to raise them: The pair are no longer locked in a battle for market share with private-label securitizers, as before the financial crisis. Today that market isn’t what it once was, and it’s still getting smaller: Bank of America estimates that the nonagency residential mortgage-backed security market will issue about $56 billion this year, down from $129 billion in 2019.”

“Mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are taking advantage of the mortgage-refinancing boom to shore up their capital as they seek to return to private ownership. Lenders said the surcharge would add the equivalent of 0.125 percentage point to the cost of a home loan—enough to dissuade or disqualify weaker borrowers who most need to refinance, but too little to damp the boom.”

“The fee ‘equates to only one-eighth percent in rate, not enough to slow down the mob,’ said Lou Barnes, a senior loan officer for Premier Mortgage Group in Boulder, Colo.”

“Lenders said the surprise announcement of the surcharge didn’t give them time to adjust fees on refinancings already in the pipeline. They will therefore have to pay the 0.5% fee on those loans rather than passing it on to borrowers. ‘For a lot of lenders, that’s more than they make on a loan,’ said Teresa L. Gregory, president of Traditions Mortgage at York Traditions Bank.”

“Meanwhile, interest rates have edged up, and the added surcharge has made refinancing less attractive for some homeowners. Jim and Ginny Bertoncino were hoping that refinancing at a lower rate and extending the term of their loan would save them hundreds of dollars a month. That would help offset the loss of income they suffered when they had to close their indoor minigolf course in Scottsdale, Ariz., because of the pandemic. Since reopening in late May, business is down by 60%.”

“‘We were already banking on, ‘Hey, we’re going to have some extra money to pay some bills,’ and now we might not,’ said Mr. Bertoncino.”

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This Post Has 108 Comments

  2. ‘further reduced to $3.85 million and re-listed anew with an official ‘1’ day on the market’

    Open market manipulation by the REIC – check!

    ‘But keep in mind that the developer has been in default on a $3.52 million project loan since January with around $4.8 million in principal, fees and missed payments now past due’

    Default? But UHS says hotcakes!

  3. ‘Chutzpah! Shock! Disbelief!’

    Who moved my cheese? And then:

    ‘Lenders are required per consumer protection laws to honor the already locked refinance transactions even though many of them may not get delivered to F or F until Sept. 1 or later. To my knowledge, many lenders immediately added the adverse market fee for new refinance loans locked as of last Aug. 13’

    Why those dogs! And they said they care!

    ‘It’s harder for Fannie and Freddie to offload risk at the moment due to the slowing market for so-called credit-risk transfer securities. There was no issuance at all in the second quarter’

    Circling drain?

    ‘Fannie and Freddie don’t have a lot of market incentive not to raise them: The pair are no longer locked in a battle for market share with private-label securitizers, as before the financial crisis. Today that market isn’t what it once was, and it’s still getting smaller: Bank of America estimates that the nonagency residential mortgage-backed security market will issue about $56 billion this year, down from $129 billion in 2019’

    Behold, the lenders callous hypocrisy laid bare. When it comes time to put up or shut up with their own money and risk, they scatter like cockroaches, which they are. But if the guberment adds a fee for pointless risk (we shouldn’t be subsidizing cash out refi – at all!) note the faux outrage. Go pound sand, a$$holes.

  4. ‘More capricious demand in the retail market results in longer days on market for distressed properties, according to an Auction.com analysis of more than 15,000 distressed property dispositions in Q4 2019’

    Yet we know Auction.com received 43,000 shacks in the 3rd quarter of 2019. Wa happened?

  5. ‘And yet another so-called conduit, or multi-loan, deal that priced on Thursday was nearly 40% comprised of office properties, including 1633 Broadway, a 48-story building in midtown Manhattan that was the fourth largest loan in the transaction. That building remains mostly empty as employees continue to work from home, and at least two tenants have seen their rents either reduced or temporarily deferred, according to the latest servicer report’

    Servicer means it’s in default. Larry says red hot, but I have my doubts.

  6. ‘Lenders said the surprise announcement of the surcharge didn’t give them time to adjust fees on refinancings already in the pipeline’

    How much notice did the FB’s in Miami give?

    ‘They will therefore have to pay the 0.5% fee on those loans rather than passing it on to borrowers. ‘For a lot of lenders, that’s more than they make on a loan’

    Yeah, and that was money you were going to stick in you purse, right Teresa? This reminds me what they say back home after a big turd floatin’ rain: if your stock tank isn’t full now, your watershed ain’t big enough!

  7. ‘The backlog of zombie foreclosures that built up in the wake of the Great Recession continued to have ripple effects into 2020, according to an Auction.com analysis of public record data. Among 487 U.S. ZIP codes with at least 10 zombie foreclosures and a zombie foreclosure rate of at least 10% (nearly twice the national average at the peak in the first quarter of 2014)’

    Twice the 2014 rate?

    ‘median home prices in this year’s first quarter were just 7.8% higher on average than median home prices 14 years earlier, in the first quarter of 2007’

    And a lot of these places will tell you prices are up that much or more in the last year. Somebody is a lion.

    BTW, I know this post is way too long, but I’m trying to catch up to the crater.

    1. “Twice the 2014 rate?”

      And yet real estate always keeps going up, due to the reported chronic industry shortage.

      Is there ever a point when the myriad zombie foreclosures will come back on the market as inventory to give the hapless Millenials a shot at a house to live in?

      1. Is there ever a point when the myriad zombie foreclosures will come back on the market as inventory to give the hapless Millenials a shot at a house to live in?

        Not if the FED can help it. Oppressive housing prices are their goal.

  8. Los Alamitos, CA Housing Prices Crater 10% YOY As Orange County Housing Market Turns Toxic On Skyrocketing Mortgage Defaults And Collapsing Demand

    https://www.zillow.com/los-alamitos-ca/home-values/

    *Select price from dropdown menu on first chart

    As an noted economist said, “With 25 million excess, empty and defaulted houses out there, there is no need to build more.”

  9. ‘The analysis shows that REO homes sold on the MLS took an average of 275 days to sell from the completed foreclosure auction while homes that sold via online REO auction on the Auction.com platform took an average 131 days to sell after the foreclosure auction – 144 days faster than the retail market’

    Need price cuts, faster please.

    ‘Of course, homes that sold to third-party buyers at the foreclosure auction were not held by the mortgage servicer at all, meaning zero REO holding costs and zero REO holding risks’

    OK, for those of you interested in distressed property, here’s what’s going on. Almost every shack is getting shoved into the auction market. that means people like me get to clean up the entire mess, usually without actually seeing the interior. The lenders rarely foreclose that I can see. Abandoned, falling apart, they don’t seem to care.

    This article was written by an auction guy. So it’s marketing. But the trends are there: auctions are how this is going down. The auction market is pretty much halted right now. So they are log-rolling the dates. They were somewhat doing that before, but anyway. And it will all come down to the appetite to buy a pig in poke at the virtual courthouse.

    1. “‘…the Auction.com platform took an average 131 days to sell after the foreclosure auction – 144 days faster than the retail market’

      Need price cuts, faster please.'”

      The mistake they may be making is to include a reserve price as part of the auction mechanism. It would be far more efficient to attract a large buyer pool and offload quickly at market value without a reserve price. They could move shacks in a matter of minutes, like Treasury bond auctions.

      Of course REIC constituents might not be able to handle the true market price discovery that would ensue.

      1. REIC constituents might not be able to handle the true market price

        Already a known fact. “So can-kick we must, when our cause it is just…”

  10. January 25, 2020

    A weekend topic starting with a report by Auction.com Vice President of Market Economics Daren Blomquist. “Growing competition from a new breed of foreclosure auction buyer is evident in proprietary foreclosure sales rate data from Auction.com. More than 37% of Tampa-area properties brought to foreclosure auction on Auction.com in the third quarter of 2019 were sold to third-party buyers, well above the overall market rate of 22.8% and up compared to a year ago for the fourth consecutive quarter. ‘Real estate investors purchasing fewer than five properties a year now comprise more than half of all repeat buyers using the Auction.com platform,’ said Ali Haralson, the company’s chief business development officer.”

    “Conversely many large-scale foreclosure auction buyers are proceeding with caution given their greater exposure to a home price correction, according to Lee Kearney, CEO of Spin Cos., a group of real estate investing businesses. Kearney began pulling back on his foreclosure auction purchases two years ago because he saw signs of another downturn coming in the Florida markets where he invests. The rate of home price appreciation slowed to a crawl, and he faced increasing competition from other buyers at the auction.”

    “‘What you’re finding now in Tampa, the general sentiment is ‘all the stuff is sitting around, margins are declining,’ he said, noting that at one point he was purchasing as many as 50 properties a week. ‘I’m hearing all the same sentiments I was hearing 10 years ago.’”

    “Southern California real estate investor Bruce Bartlett saw the warning signs back in 2005 and started selling the ‘meager’ portfolio of properties he had acquired investing part-time. ‘Flippers are the tip of the spear because they have the best information,’ said Bartlett. Home price appreciation has stalled recently in the coastal Southern California towns where Bartlett invests, causing many larger-scale investors to exit those markets. ‘[Investors] are looking at the prices they have to pay to acquire the asset, and they don’t like what they see,’ Bartlett said.”

    http://housingbubble.blog/?p=2856

  11. “The prediction is that will dramatically change come 2021, and many of those financial benefits will end.”

    And what if it doesn’t? Better off people will get free housing as less well off people end up in the street.

    As things melt down, there is tremendous pressure to redistribute income up, and from poorer later-born generations to richer earlier-born generations. After all, its what they are used to. And Washington is now a geriocracy.

    1. “…poorer later-born generations…”

      Coincidentally, this is the target group for government sponsored affordable (subprime) lending programs designed to tempt young families to buy homes they are destined to lose to the bank in the next recession, along with any home equity gains they didn’t manage to extract during their period of home HODLership.

      Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

  12. ‘Jim and Ginny Bertoncino were hoping that refinancing at a lower rate and extending the term of their loan would save them hundreds of dollars a month. That would help offset the loss of income they suffered when they had to close their indoor minigolf course in Scottsdale, Ariz., because of the pandemic. Since reopening in late May, business is down by 60%’

    ‘We were already banking on, ‘Hey, we’re going to have some extra money to pay some bills,’ and now we might not’

    Making a cash out refi to a sinking mini-put-put. Solid lending!

    1. I know what some of you are thinking: Ben, you so meanie! Jim and Ginny are just trying to live their dream!

      So why don’t Jim and Ginny go get a business loan? Probably couldn’t get one, and if they did it would be at a much higher rate. Now consider what Mr Pinto mentioned: refis aren’t arms length transactions. It’s pretty much hit the numbers stuff. What we have here is the financialization of housing. Business loan, no way. Oh, you gotta shack? Sign here!

      1. “I know what some of you are thinking: Ben, you so meanie! Jim and Ginny are just trying to live their dream!”

        I wasn’t

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  13. a recap from “Feed.thee.Fed!” $eason 2, episode 5: “Imagine, a hurricane, tornado, tidal wave, & derecho all hit in the $ame area on a dark moonle$$ night, & all you got to view the damage$ is a 1960’s boy.scout 🔦 with 1/2 used ray-O-vac batteries.”

    Economic$
    $mall Busine$$es Are Dying By The Thousand$ — And No One Is Tracking the Carnage$

    Bloomberg, By Madeleine Ngo / August 11, 2020

    They simply close down and never show up in bankruptcy tallies
    More than half of owners are worried their firm won’t survive

    Bloomberg: 8/23/2020

    A Love Letter to the Fed From the Adoring $tock Market$

    Dear Fed,

    Hey there! It’s me, the stock market. I know it’s weird to write you like this, but I felt like I needed to drop a quick thank-you note for everything you’ve done for me this year. I mean, your big ol’ balance sheet is almost $3 trillion larger since early March! You’re backing up the truck and loading it with Treasuries and corporate bonds and bond ETFs, all to keep the competition to stocks from fixed-income yields as limited as Jim Cramer’s understanding of me. It’s been a dream come true, honestly. I mean, fess up: Have you been reading my diary?!

    Maybe you’ve noticed, but everything else is a royal mess. Covid-19 is still killing people. Parents are dreading the beginning of “school.” U.S. unemployment is still above 10%, higher than it’s been since the 1980s. The country is facing the biggest economic contraction in its history. Corporate profits are plunging. The recession is forecast to continue at least through the first quarter of next year. And me? I’m soaring! Have you seen these record highs I’ve been setting?

    To be honest with you, it’s getting kind of wild—and I’ve seen plenty of weirdness before. I’m more popular with sports fans than March Madness! Of course, there was no March Madness this year, so that’s not really a fair comparison—kind of like comparing my dividend payouts to yields in the bond market. Amirite, or amirite? LOL!

    Have you heard of Dave Portnoy, aka Davey Day Trader, yet? He was just some middling internet celebrity until suddenly he’s going viral for using Scrabble tiles to pick stock ticker symbols. The Robinhood set thinks he’s smarter than Warren Buffett! This probably isn’t going to end well, I’ll tell you that much.

    Speaking of Robinhood, that whole Hertz saga was about as weird as it gets. A rental car company was trying to sell new shares while in bankruptcy court, because its stock price was on a tear? Let me repeat that: Hertz. Sold. Shares. While. In. Bankruptcy. I can’t even! You’re sure keeping your pals over at the SEC busy! I mean, it’s so weird out there, Bloomberg Businessweek is resorting to cringeworthy satire to make sense of it all.

    If I hear anybody mutter something about “irrational exuberance,” I swear I’m gonna blow my top and hurt a few of these Robinhood types, you got that? The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away. It’s what I do—and I’m good at it! But right now, this is still a lot of fun for me … and when I do end up burning folks, do you really want to be the one who gets thrown under the bus? I mean, you know you’re going to catch all the blame, right?

    C’mon, Fed. We both know you’re smarter than that. What’s another few trillion?

    With sincere and deepest gratitude,

    The Stock Market

    (—Michael P. Regan is a senior editor at Bloomberg News.)

    1. “Imagine, a hurricane, tornado, tidal wave, & derecho all hit in the $ame area on a dark moonle$$ night, & all you got to view the damage$ is a 1960’s boy.scout 🔦 with 1/2 used ray-O-vac batteries.”

      Seems like you forgot a form of disaster.

      2. Seems like you forgot a form of disaster. Like Godzirra and Mothra having a duel to the death in the middle of all that?

      3. Well, mega.fires are kinda of “illuminating” even in a moonless night.

        (One can roughly gander what they might see in the coming morning light, even without a 1960’s boy.scout 🔦 with 1/2 used ray-O-vac batteries.”)

    2. You’re sure keeping your pals over at the SEC busy!

      The SEC, like all of our captured, complicit regulators, isn’t going to lift a finger to protect retail investors or intervene to shut down systemic risks to the financial system.

      1. The SEC just wants their cut of the loot. Anytime they find something, they levy a fine to line their own pockets with some of the ill-gotten gains. They’re like the mob.

  14. So One Manhattan West has law firms, E&Y and Accenture. Why the heck in the new world do you need these employees to work from the office. Sure they signed a 5-8 year lease – but then what

    ——-
    “A nearly $1.5 billion CMBS for a new high-rise tower, One Manhattan West, part of the Hudson Yards development in New York, priced its AAA slice above par, and the entire capital structure was oversubscribed.

    1. Secrecy. Keeping al the paperwork ,IT in a secure location? Imagine stealing the presidents secretaries laptop from a home invasion

  16. ‘We were entering into this pandemic with 43 percent of households in our region that were barely able to make ends meet, living on what we call a survival budget,’ said Emery Ivery, the Tampa Bay Area Chief Impact Officer for United Way Suncoast.

    How many of these “victims” have been living beyond their means and going deep into debt to buy luxury cars, take fabulous vacations, and buy shacks they couldn’t afford? We know several households that fit that description.

    1. We know several households that fit that description. I gave up trying to count all the brand new overpriced tricked-out pickups in driveways along my daily neighborhood walking route.

      1. I was reading an article on auto loans recently, and one of the commenters was an older gentleman who managed lumberyard. He said most of the young guys at work who were driving brand new diesel 4×4 trucks had stopped paying not only their truck payments, but rent, etc.

        None of these people had any business buying these trucks to begin with. In order to “afford” a $70,000 truck, you should be making well over $200,000 per year. These guys are making less than $50k. It’s absolutely sickening what the financialization of this economy has created.

        1. It’s absolutely sickening I’ve grown to accept (i.e, note the patterns and cease to react to the next iterations) human foibles like greed, herd behavior and heedlessness — they’ve been with us since forever. It’s all I can do to handle these elements in my very self.

    2. ClownWorld gonna glown.

      Meanwhile, I’ll re-read “The Millionaire Next Door” and “A Random Walk Down Wall Street” and continue to be unimpressed by people who pay interest on a rapidly depreciating vehicle.

  17. Somebody was asking if Hertz was selling their cars, and they are. But their prices are stupid high. If I was going to buy a used rental car, I’d want a hell of a deal. Because, as the saying goes, “drive it like a rental.” Do you really want to pay top dollar knowing that? Not to mention the fact that they use recycled oil for their changes, etc.

    Here’s an example of what I’m talking about. Notice the dent on the passenger front fender, yet they’re asking a fortune for this car, considering this is the price that you could buy it for BRAND NEW.

    https://www.hertzcarsales.com/certified/Toyota/2019-Toyota-4Runner-df8b49410a0d0cc73c6311ab14876b15.htm

    1. this is the price that you could buy it for BRAND NEW I was faced with that situation when I shopped for my Elantra in 2012. Bought a new one and got the 5 year / 500,000 mile warranty which did not come with the used ones.

      1. That vehicle has been in an accident, and it wasn’t just a minor fender bender. To get a crease like that in the front fender, you have to hit something very hard. And they didn’t even fix it!

    2. I got a good deal from Hertz on Lawnguyland in late June. A 14 month old Impala with 22,700 miles for $16,600. GM doesn’t have Toyota’s reputation for durability, but since we only use the car for trips out of town, 100,000 miles in total will last us 12 more years or so. And with the cost of rental cars around here, that means it will be cheaper.

      Used car prices have since increased, and for SUVs and trucks they never fell. You have to buy a car that is better than its weak reputation. Personally, if I’m going to drive a truck I expect to be paid to haul a load. And, damn that 1960s generation yet again, here I am approaching being an old man and they aren’t going to be making old man cars anymore. So I had to get one while I could.

      1. A 14 month old Impala

        The V6 or a the 4 banger? The current Impala (which ends with the 2020 model year) isn’t a bad looking car.

        1. Just the 4. Plenty of power to ride down the road, and 32 mpg+ on the highway, which is where we drive it. Looks were not the issue. The back seat is large, as is the trunk.

    3. 4runner is a bad example, they have insane resale value. Esp. in places like Colorado. I bout a new one years ago because 1-2 y/o models were going for almost the same price.

    1. She’s going to need prescription drugs and therapy when Biden-Harris gets their proverbial ash handed to ’em. I can see it now, Biden will look like Christa McAuliffe’s father after the defeat.

      1. The WaPo calls this globalist hack and fawning groupie of the Democrats a “conservative opinion writer.” You can’t even make this stuff up. This is the Post’s idea of “diversity of opinion”: the full spectrum of approved globalist dogma is represented in their fish wrap.

    2. Right now maybe 5 percent of the population, at best, are aware of the Fed’s con games against the 99%. But if every red-pilled person went out and bought as many ounces of physical gold and silver as they could afford, they could crush the Fed’s bullion bank accomplices who are holding massive short positions in precious metals. Once the Fed’s market-rigging blows up in its face, it’s going to open the door to true price discovery re-asserting itself.

      https://www.cftc.gov/dea/futures/deacmxsf.htm

      1. Wishful thinking I’m afraid. The FED has the power of the printing press and they are saying “fawk you” to all their critics as they make prices whatever they want them to be.

        1. JM Bullion is one of the biggest online bullion retailers. The link below is to silver bullion coins and bars they actually have in stock. The site warns that they are experiencing extremely high order volumes so shipping may be delayed. As the Fed weakens the dollar with its deranged money printing, the growing public loss of confidence in the dollar is going to cause more people to seek to protect their wealth with physical precious metals, with the resultant surge in demand driving real-world prices higher and availability lower despite the attempted market-rigging by the Fed’s bullion bank accomplices. If the latter are unable to cover their massive shorts, it’s Game Over for their years of market manipulation, as they are going to be bankrupted, and their wrong-way bets are going to be exposed and probably investigated.

          https://www.jmbullion.com/search/?q=#/?_=1&filter.instock.low=1&filter.instock.high=1&page=1&resultsPerPage=60&filter.metal_type=Silver

          2. $3? Maybe using Common Core math. 2020 Silver Eagles are going for $34.67, while the spot (paper) price is $26.82. The premium over spot used to be about $1.50, now it’s between $6-9. NOBODY is selling silver for the notional spot price. No matter how hard the Fed’s bullion banker accomplices try to smash down the spot price, the real-world price been staying at around $33 an oz. It’s glorious to see their market rigging go nowhere.

          3. the growing public loss of confidence in the dollar is going to cause more people to seek to protect their wealth with physical precious metals

            Yup. We’ve been saying exactly that same thing for the last 50 years, and it’s still true.

            The time frame seems to be rather elusive. Right now, most don’t have the dollars to pay their obligations, much less speculate in metals.

            The first thing people who are waking up to the central banks should do is get out of debt. Their debt is the life blood of the banks.

          4. $3? Maybe using Common Core math. 2020 Silver Eagles are going for $34.67, while the spot (paper) price is $26.82.

            I wasn’t talking about spot vs. paper price. I was talking about eagles vs non mint rounds.

        3. Vitaliy Katsenelson’s Contrarian Edge
          The U.S. dollar’s sharp decline is driving this investment manager — reluctantly — into gold
          Published: Aug. 22, 2020 at 4:07 p.m. ET
          By Vitaliy Katsenelson
          Spiraling debt, slow COVID-19 response and trade wars could spike prices, inflation and interest rates for Americans

          The U.S. has competitive advantages globally that are rooted in its geography, but the reason the U.S. dollar became the world’s reserve currency is that America has had the largest, strongest (steadily growing and conservatively financed) economy and a stable political system (anchored in the U.S. Constitution).

          Yet for the dollar to continue to be valued, the world has to believe in it. Since the end of World War II that’s been the case. People basically looked at the U.S. and many of them concluded that it was the safest place to keep their savings. They didn’t have to worry that if they put their money in the U.S. dollar it would lose its value. The dollar was not going to be diluted by hyperinflation or burned up by a foreign- or civil war. The U.S. political system was stable and strong, and people didn’t have to worry that at some point they wouldn’t be able to take their money out of U.S. banks.

          The problem with being the envy of the world is that it changes your behavior. You start believing that you are very special for reasons that are not grounded in reality. You start believing that bad things happen only to other people and nations because they are not as special as you. You can do anything you want — borrow and spend as much as you like — and nothing bad will happen to you. This behavior in turn starts to undermine the core reasons why people trusted your country and currency to begin with.
          …

  20. Published less than an hour ago:

    “City officials on Sunday strongly rebuked the people who vandalized buildings and set fires in downtown Denver on Saturday night, calling them anarchists and rioters and saying their actions had nothing to do with calls for social justice.

    “What we experienced last night was not a protest. It was anarchy,” Denver Director of Public Safety Murphy Robinson said. “I want these anarchists to hear me clearly and loudly that this will not be tolerated in our city. You are not welcome here.”

    https://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/crime/denver-officials-on-saturday-night-fires-vandalism-it-was-anarchy

    The articles gives the names of the dozen LARPing phonies arrested last night, all between the ages of 18 and 29, most from Denver or Boulder. George Floyd would be so proud of all of you.

    1. “I want these anarchists to hear me clearly and loudly that this will not be tolerated in our city. You are not welcome here.”

      STFU, Bolshevik biatch. The Soros scum who rioted and the globalist Quislings in the Denver statehouse are birds of a feather.

    2. “people who vandalized buildings and set fires in downtown Denver on Saturday night,”

      In other words peaceful protesters who need a ballot mailed to their residence because it is too dangerous for them to vote in person.

    3. calling them anarchists and rioters

      Hey! Cindi CdeBaca doesn’t appreciate people talking about her brown shirts future peace force officers that way.

    1. “What they do?
      Gonna ban the AK
      My sh*t wasn’t registered
      Any f*cking way” — Ice Cube, 1990

  22. I have to be honest in that I have had to stop looking at real estate listings. The prices are so delusional that it’s disconcerting. I like to read this blog to see the bigger picture, which is not clear when looking at what’s for sale.

  23. Today’s update in the COVID-19 wars:

    “Trump to announce emergency authorization of plasma treatment for COVID-19”
    Published: Aug. 23, 2020 at 4:06 p.m. ET

    “President Donald Trump was set to announce on Sunday the emergency authorization of convalescent plasma for COVID-19 patients…

    The announcement will come after days of White House officials suggesting there were politically motivated delays by the Food and Drug Administration in approving a vaccine and therapeutics for the disease that has upended Trump’s reelection chances…

    “The blood plasma, taken from patients who have recovered from the coronavirus and rich in antibodies, may provide benefits to those battling with the disease. But the evidence has been inconclusive as to how it works or how best to administer it.”

    https://www.marketwatch.com/story/trump-to-announce-emergency-authorization-of-plasma-treatment-for-covid-19-2020-08-23?mod=home-page
    ——————

    Long story short, the blood plasma generally works, especially if given early. But the FDA is now demanding their vaunted randomized-control-trial studies in order to approve anything at all. That entails denying these treatments to dying patients, just to get a control group. (The Mayo Clinic didn’t do controls; it’s unethical.) The FDA knows full well that any RCT will delay cures until after the election.

    I will take some satisfaction in knowing that the Democrats will preside over the worst Depression in almost a hundred years.

    1. I got tested as a potential donor for that program several months ago. Test said I didn’t have COVID-19.

  25. Is there any utility to looking at houses for sale on Zillow? Is there a way to track the general market prices for areas I am interested in? If I think that by this time next year houses will be cheaper to buy based on the prices asked, how do I make a log of keeping tabs on the zip codes using Zillow? Honestly, I see the MSM throw out that housing starts are up, housing prices are up, everything up, up, up and yet we all know that this can not stay solvent very long without some folks having to throw in the towel and sell their places at a loss, maybe even get foreclosed. My SO and I are not getting house fever as much as we want a place to get away from the transience of renting. Neighbors are driving me batty and yeah, we can move to another rental somewhere else but I am thinking I want a garden, I want a hobby room/mancave room/my room to hang my hiking gear and have a study of sorts in it too. Just don’t feel the connection to a rental property. Been living in the same place since GWB was leaving office. Seen this place get random and then more enjoyable and now it is getting random again.

    1. I have not found any sites which offer price tracking, etc. What I have done in the past is just watch particular houses, see how long they were on the marketplace, make note of listing price and then of sale price. I’ve done it all by hand on paper. This allows me to kind of keep a finger on the pulse of the market in certain zip codes.

      I have been doing the same thing for auto inventories. I have a list of dealer sites I visit, and I track inventory levels for certain vehicles weekly, as well as incentives and asking prices. I am trying to gauge how fast the turnover is. I will have to say that right now I am giving up on both because of the recent uptick in sales activity. It makes no sense and I once something becomes annoying I stop engaging.

      1. I found this on Zillow, since my daughter is looking for a place. Brooklyn is now more expensive than Manhattan, which trashes my idea of both Brooklyn and Manhattan. She wants to stay here.

        $1,706/mo1 bd1 ba 600 Square Feet
        546 W 50th St APT 5FE, New York, NY 10019
        Apartment for rentRent Zestimate®: $2,590/mo

        Lots of those. I guess those Zestimates will be coming down. NYC has less zest than it once did.

        $1,800/mo1 bd1 ba– sqft
        320 E 34th St APT 1C, New York, NY 10016
        Apartment for rentRent Zestimate®: $2,663/mo

        $1,850/mo2 bd1 ba– sqft
        303 E 46th St APT 5E, New York, NY 10017
        Apartment for rentRent Zestimate®: $2,900/mo

        $1,650/mo2 bd1 ba500 Square Feet
        325 E 21st St APT 13, New York, NY 10010
        Apartment for rentRent Zestimate®: $2,995/mo

        $1,850/mo1 bd1 ba500 Square Feet
        154 E 28th St APT 3R, New York, NY 10016
        Apartment for rentRent Zestimate®: $2,995/mo

        $1,828/mo1 bd1 ba– sqft
        149 E 33rd St APT 4F, New York, NY 10016
        Apartment for rentRent Zestimate®: $2,795/mo

        $1,850/mo1 bd1 ba– sqft
        214 1st Ave APT 25, New York, NY 10009
        Apartment for rentRent Zestimate®: $2,770/mo

        $1,737/mo1 bd1 ba500 Square Feet
        56 E 7th St APT 7, New York, NY 10003
        Apartment for rentRent Zestimate®: $2,700/mo

        $1,833/mo1 bd 1 ba 650 Square Feet
        120 W 3rd St APT 19, New York, NY 10012
        Apartment for rentRent Zestimate®: $2,900/mo

        $1,825/mo1 bd1 ba470 Square Feet
        221 E 5th St APT 3, New York, NY 10003
        Apartment for rentRent Zestimate®: $2,350/mo

  27. Democrats plan “chaos presidency” events around RNC

    Alexi McCammond
    1 day ago

    On Monday, Rep. Val Demings of Florida will talk about families in crisis dealing with everything from childcare to seniors and Social Security.

    On Tuesday, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey are addressing the economy.

    On Wednesday, Speaker Pelosi will talk about health care.

    On Thursday, Pete Buttigieg will discuss challenges facing the country.

    Between the lines: Democrats aren’t looking to Biden to be the central voice of their counter-programming in the way that Trump was during the DNC, tweeting or doing cable news call-in interviews.

    https://www.axios.com/democrats-rnc-trump-counter-programming-718a97f1-a5ee-4d23-a2fb-b23f34cb9e8f.html

    1. “Between the lines: Democrats aren’t looking to Biden to be the central voice of their counter-programming in the way that Trump was during the DNC”

      L.A. Woman

      https://youtu.be/vHXjcdNIN-Q

      Mr. Slow Joe Biden’, Mr. Slow Joe hidin ‘,
      Got to keep on hidin’
      Hidin’, Biden’
      Well, hidin’, hidin’
      I gotta, woo, yeah, hidin’
      Whoa, oh, yeah

      Drivin’ down your freeway
      Midnight alleys roam
      Cops in cars
      The topless bars
      Never saw a woman so alone, so alone
      So alone, so alone

      Well, I picked Kamala Harris about an hour ago
      Took a look around, see which way the wind blow
      Where the little girls in their Hollywood bungalows

      Are you a lucky little lady in the City of Light
      Or just another lost angel?
      City of Night, City of Night
      City of Night, City of Night, whoa, c’mon man

      L.A. woman, L.A. woman
      L.A. woman, you’re my woman
      Little L.A. woman, little L.A. woman
      L.A., L.A. woman woman
      L.A. woman, c’mon man

  28. TDS is off the charts on Twitter with Melania’s renovation of the White House Rose Garden. Pictures are comparing Spring tulips with new August plantings. 🤦‍♀️

    1. “The #Trump family did its best to turn the lovely Rose Garden into a neo-fascist parade ground.”

    3. Ozymandias
      By Percy Bysshe Shelley

      I met a traveller from an antique land,
      Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
      Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
      Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
      And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
      Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
      Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
      The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
      And on the pedestal, these words appear:
      My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
      Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
      Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
      Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
      The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

    1. The Financial Times
      Coronavirus business update 30 days complimentary
      Opinion Inside Business
      Green ambition has short-circuited California’s power supply
      Approaching energy transition piecemeal can expose system’s fragility and lead to higher prices
      Jonathan Ford
      Solar panels in El Centro, California. The state now generates a third of its electricity from renewables, but it has also just experienced its first electricity blackouts for two decades
      © REUTERS
      Jonathan Ford 10 hours ago

      Five years ago, Elon Musk gave a speech before an admiring crowd in California in which he outlined his big idea for “a fundamental transformation of the way we deliver energy here on earth”.

      Generation wasn’t the issue, explained the solar entrepreneur. There already existed technology that could generate power without producing carbon emissions. “We have this handy fusion reactor in the sky called the sun,” Mr Musk quipped. “You don’t have to do anything, it just works. It shows up every day and produces ridiculous amounts of power.”

      The key challenge was to get round the next obvious problem — how to make power at night or on dull days when the sun wasn’t shining. But Mr Musk had the answer to that too: battery storage. And with that he unveiled his new product, the Tesla Powerwall, an electricity storage system that hangs on the wall of a garage.

      “You can basically make all electricity generation in the world renewable and primarily solar,” Mr Musk said, before adding: “I think it’s something that we must do and that we can do and that we will do.”

      The speech, recounted in a new book, Apocalypse Never, by the environmental activist and pro-nuclear campaigner, Michael Shellenberger, goes some way to explaining why California has just experienced its first electricity blackouts for two decades.

      The US state has followed at least part of Mr Musk’s prescription, building plenty of renewable capacity. It now generates a third of its electricity from renewables such as solar and wind. What it hasn’t done so much is to commission lots of new back-up, whether non-intermittent generation or batteries such as scaled-up versions of Mr Musk’s Powerwalls. California has only about 500 megawatts (MW) of battery storage capacity.

      Instead, it has relied on other states selling it their power surpluses to fill in gaps in its increasingly intermittent system, creating a wider network called the “Western Energy Imbalance Market”. This innovation has allowed the state to claim it has shaved some costs by exploiting generation synergies. In the five years to 2018, California’s independent systems operator claimed gross consumer benefits of $122m.

      These rather trivial gains must now be weighed in the balance against the outages Californian consumers have experienced in the recent “heat storm” — events that, the last time they happened in 2001, cost the then governor Gray Davis his job.
      …

  31. Harbor Bluffs, FL Housing Prices Crater 14% YOY As Gulf Coast Housing Prices Drop Like A Rock

    https://www.zillow.com/harbor-bluffs-fl/home-values/

    *Select price from dropdown menu on first chart

    As a noted economist said, “I can ask $50k for my run down 10 year old Chevy truck but where is the buyer at that price? So it is with all depreciating asset like houses and cars.”

  32. “You’re a racist and you ain’t gonna do sh*t,” man allegedly says while robbing 14-year-old of his bike

    August 20, 2020 CWBChicago Avondale

    The robber had some thoughts as he ripped a 14-year-old’s bike from his hands outside a Logan Square cycle shop last Tuesday afternoon: “You’re a racist and you ain’t gonna do sh*t.”

    Then, the man rode the kid’s bike a couple of blocks and robbed someone else, prosecutors say.

    Isaac Lacy, 22, is now charged with two counts of felony robbery.

    https://cwbchicago.com/2020/08/youre-a-racist-and-you-aint-gonna-do-sht-man-allegedly-says-while-robbing-14-year-old-of-his-bike.html

    2. Toughest punishment, No early release until you can read, write and speak English, and discuss current events in the NYimes, in front of the parole board. Why do keep letting functionally Illiterate people out with no hope of rehabilitation?

  33. Will the bulls heed Uncle Warren’s timeless dire warning before it’s too late?

    Key Words
    Market timing when ‘clocks have no hands’ — Warren Buffett’s warning is relevant now as it was in 2000
    Published: Aug. 23, 2020 at 10:58 p.m. ET
    By Shawn Langlois
    Berkshire Hathaway Chairman and CEO Warren Buffett Getty Images

    They know that overstaying the festivities — that is, continuing to speculate in companies that have gigantic valuations relative to the cash they are likely to generate in the future — will eventually bring on pumpkins and mice. But they nevertheless hate to miss a single minute of what is one helluva party. Therefore, the giddy participants all plan to leave just seconds before midnight. There’s a problem, though: They are dancing in a room in which the clocks have no hands.

    …

    1. The algos are pushing the Fed’s Ponzi markets to all-time highs this morning on hopium (news that a trial COVID treatment shows promise). The disconnect between the Fed’s Ponzi markets and asset bubbles and our terrible and worsening economic fundamentals and staggering public and household debt burdens has never been more mind-boggling.

    2. “They are dancing in a room in which the clocks have no hands.” Jesus
      (But, the $econd$.are.tick.tick.ticking away$!)

      Heheheeheeee … Poor Uncle.Warning, $itting in a bean.bag $tuffed with $x86 Billion$+ in prophet$ since the debacle of covid-19 on March 15th, ($ad)

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