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Chained To The Cost Of Money That Could Become A Noose For Some

A weekend topic starting with Mark Zandi. “House prices are sizzling. Not just in swanky neighborhoods in the nation’s big cities or in resort towns. Not just in the suburbs or exurbs. Not just in inner cities or in rural areas. Just about everywhere. The median existing house price — half of homes sold for more and half for less — has surged to more than $350,000, about double what it was a decade ago.”

“Just in the past year, the price for a typical home is up almost 20 percent. And in about one-fourth of the nation’s 400-plus metropolitan areas, prices have rocketed by more. Even in the mid-2000s just before that housing bubble burst, fewer than one-fifth of metropolitan areas had seen annual prices increase as much.”

“So, are we in another housing bubble? No. Not yet. But I say this with less confidence than I did a year ago, and if current trends continue for another year, I won’t be saying it at all. The most graceful scenario is for prices to cool off, go more-or-less sideways, and allow incomes, rents and construction costs to catch up. This seems likely if mortgage rates soon push modestly higher, weighing on housing demand and ultimately prices.”

“There will likely be some price declines in the most hyped-up parts of the housing market. But the price declines won’t be broad-based. The stronger job market will forestall foreclosures and distressed sales, and the housing shortage will put a proverbial floor under prices in many communities. Of course, a much darker scenario could unfold, in which house prices continue to quickly appreciate, speculation intensifies and a bubble inflates. This scenario doesn’t end well. House prices ultimately would experience a severe comeuppance with widespread price declines.”

From WKRN in Tennessee. “Tom Brashear, Director of Development Services in Wilson County, knows where change is happening most. He says the area off I-840 and I-40, Central Pike and Stewart’s Ferry Pike, is a very active area with lots of subdivisions. Another fast-growing community in Wilson County is Gladeville — which includes a massive development that’s in the process of being built. We’re told it’s a more than 500-lot subdivision that’s going in to make room for those moving to a county some once considered far away.”

“‘I could certainly use a breather but I don’t want to see the economy crash either,’ Brashear said, adding that up until about four years ago a busy year would have involved 1,200-1,600 housing starts. In 2021, they’re on track to see about 2,800.”

“And these homes are rising in price. ‘It used to be that the median home price was $315,000 a couple of years ago. Now, I have several buyers that are looking to be in Wilson County in Mt. Juliet, and they want to stay under $500K for a newer house, five years or newer and it is very hard to find under $500,000,’ Wilson said.”

From CNN Business. “Homeowners saw average home prices skyrocket nearly 20% through the third quarter compared to a year ago, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency. It was the largest annual home price increase in the history of the agency’s House Price Index. And, in some hot markets, the price increase was double that.”

“Homes also sold at a record pace, with sellers often fielding multiple competing bids and all-cash offers. Even homes that were disgusting or burned out sold quickly, and at amounts that were well over the asking price. ‘It was an insane year,’ said Matt Holm, an agent with Compass in Austin. Last January, he put a smaller five-year-old home on the market at $425,000, higher than comparable sale prices, and was flooded with offers. ‘I stopped counting at 35 offers,’ he said. The home sold for $545,000, a 30% increase over the list price.”

“Another buyer, who bought a lakefront luxury home for $6 million in 2020, was offered $9 million a few months later and $11 million two months after that by buyers desperate for a lakefront property, Holm said. ‘My sellers said, that’s a lot of money,’ Holm said. ‘They wanted to sell and get something as good or better. But they realized they shouldn’t sell because to get something a little bit nicer than what they had was going to cost $18 to $20 million. That is a remarkable jump for a calendar year.'”

From Barron’s. “Hyman Minsky, the late American credit-cycle expert, taught us that a prolonged period of financial-market stability tends to set up the conditions for pronounced financial-market instability. By this he meant that as economic confidence rises and as asset prices soar, the financial system tends to make increasingly risky loans on the assumption that asset prices will rise forever. When asset prices eventually stop rising and when lenders realize that they might not get repaid, the whole credit-market house of cards collapses.”

“If ever we have experienced a period of highly risky lending in the context of rapidly rising asset prices, it has to have been that of the past eighteen months. The financial system has lent with abandon even as U.S. equity valuations jumped to nose-bleed levels experienced only once over the past 100 years and as U.S. housing prices adjusted for inflation exceeded their 2006 pre-crisis peak. Fueling this lending spree was the approximately $5 trillion in Federal Reserve bond purchases in response to the pandemic that induced investors to stretch for yield.”

“Economists and the Federal Reserve take comfort in the fact that today’s U.S. banking system is much better equipped to handle the bursting of an asset-price and credit-market bubble than it was in 2008. But this awareness seems to be blinding them to the high degree of exposure of the largely unregulated nonbank part of the financial system. That could be setting us up for a series of Long-Term Capital Management-like crises when the Minsky moment finally arrives. U.S. and world economic policymakers seem to be totally unprepared.”

From Paul Wallis. “After two decades of almost zero Interest Rates for Certified Morons, reality seems to have decided to make a comeback. The Fed has actually mentioned raising interest rates. Well, how about that? The markets, therefore, are having another quite unnecessary if muted existential crisis. It’s their usual reaction to anything which requires sentience of any kind. The world’s favorite human-hating parasites are in a real tizzy about it.”

“Let’s clarify – The ultra-low rates have made gigantic amounts of money for the Big End of Town, a very apt description anatomically. How could you NOT make money at those rates? Borrow at 0.25% and sell at 7-8%. That, pundits and other vermin, is a profit margin of about 3000%. Meanwhile, simultaneously screw anyone on Earth with a bank account and get their money for free, while charging them ridiculous amounts for the privilege. Fail totally to note that anyone with a working brain cell could offer interest of up to 7.9% and basically take over the market, and still make money. Ain’t you brilliant?”

“So these zero-IQ geniuses are much better off after a couple of decades of that. They’ve locked in at those rates, and now the rates are (shudder in one’s dear little booties) moving. Wind up the tired old dystopian analogies. ‘Oh, whatever will become of us all? Where shall we go? What shall we do?'”

“Frankly, you allegedly conscious pseudo-human spam, I couldn’t give a damn. It’s a measure of the insularity and vacuity of an entire generation of utterly talentless nobodies in the investment sector. It makes infant-level Monopoly look like quantum physics. I’ve seen more credible competitive behavior among actual gravestones. The interest rate market is simply a cartel in any possible context, from wholesale to retail.”

“After the same two decades of mindlessly driving prices for essentials through any number of roofs, inflation is suddenly an issue. Never mind insane prices for education, housing, and health. Someone’s now decided that current Main Street price moves are inflationary. Affordability has never been a market issue, of course. Low rates jacked up the sacred property prices. This fuelled property investment, credit, and probably the egos of a lot of two-dimensional policymakers and financiers.”

“Some are predicting that 2022 will be better than 2021 for price rises. The problem with that is this ‘improvement’ is in comparison with 2021. So the baseline cost, already up, is a justification for saying further rises are somehow better. Regardless of the fact that these are cumulative rises. If you add 5% to 100 in 2021, then 5% to that in 2022, you get 110.25. Your net inflation has actually doubled. That’s better than what, exactly? Anyway – goods prices may go down or up, but the net costs of the money that pays for them don’t have to behave like that. Maybe the best shot is not to try to justify theory in the face of head-kicking contradictory facts?”

“Except also that tens of millions of people spending big money they don’t have in a very expensive market and having to buy back into that market tends to be costly. Portfolio values begin to look a bit…edgy. Defaults are more likely. Raise rates, and these market mayflies are likely to die like flies, in theory. High-end properties get hit hardest and fastest. Asset values tend to move around a lot, depending largely on what values people want to be visible.”

“Those values will typically have nothing at all to do with actual sale prices. Even now, you only have to glance at prices in California to see a few obvious moves and a lot of upper-bracket stuff that’s been on the market for quite a while. The question is whether rates rises can trigger a panic stampede. You’d have to be a pretty timid soul to be bothered by a quarter-point move upwards, you’d think. The trouble is that every market has a lot of margin-dwellers. These guys are terrified of their own shadows, tax returns, etc.”

“So the smell of smoke is likely, whether there’s a fire or not in interest rates. Impossible as it is to sympathize with the bloodsucking rates vampires. Unlike the sub-primes of 2008, this isn’t just massive amplified fraud. The market is actually chained to the cost of money in this case. That chain could become a noose for some, so it’s not quite the usual financial hypochondria about losing a few bucks.”

“This is a comeuppance in so many ways. The good news is that some of America’s more conspicuously obnoxious trashy-peasant property investors obviously can’t and won’t be able to take higher rates, even slow small rises. You’ll hear squeals in the sewers of offshore finance, too. They’ll vanish in a well-deserved cloud of hydrogen sulfide much like their social skills.”

“Finally – In the name of god knows what, can someone come up with more innovative ways of making housing and other REAL core inflationary costs more affordable? How often do we have to go sailing around this black hole of anti-prosperity lending practices?”

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Someone Got Hosed

A report from the Globe and Mail. "It’s a troubling question that has been echoing…

This Post Has 159 Comments

  1. ‘Some are predicting that 2022 will be better than 2021 for price rises. The problem with that is this ‘improvement’ is in comparison with 2021. So the baseline cost, already up, is a justification for saying further rises are somehow better. Regardless of the fact that these are cumulative rises. If you add 5% to 100 in 2021, then 5% to that in 2022, you get 110.25. Your net inflation has actually doubled. That’s better than what, exactly?’

    March 26, 2020

    “As America heads into a deep recession, the $11 trillion residential-mortgage market is in crisis. Investors who buy home loans packaged into bonds are dumping even those with federal backing because of panic that millions might not make their payments. Yet one risky sector had started to show cracks long before the coronavirus pandemic sparked the worst financial meltdown in 12 years: the federal government’s largest affordable-housing program, whose lenient terms are geared toward marginal borrowers.”

    “As real estate prices soared in recent years, working-class adults everywhere have increasingly relied on mortgages backed by the Federal Housing Administration — and U.S. taxpayers. Since 2007, the FHA’s portfolio has tripled in value to more than $1.2 trillion, almost 11% of the market. While private lenders make these loans, they are packaged into Ginnie Mae bonds, common in mutual funds and pensions.”

    “Before Covid-19 started roiling China, a November FHA report found that 27% of borrowers last year spent more than half their incomes on debt, a level it describes as ‘unprecedented.’ The share of FHA loans souring in their first six months has doubled over the last three years to almost 1%.”

    “Not long ago, Alex Castillo drove his shiny black Infiniti SUV through an office park north of the San Antonio airport, along a busy seven-mile stretch of highway that loan officers call ‘Mortgage Row’ because of its abundance of small independent mortgage companies that dominate FHA lending. Castillo, who has the words ‘The Dream Starts Here’ stitched into his jacket, works for Pennsylvania-based American Residential Lending. Oddly, amid the pandemic, his business is booming. His customers locked in FHA mortgages after interest rates plunged this month — adding to federally backed mortgage debt.”

    “‘If the government tells me you’re good enough to get a loan, I have to trust and believe in the government,’ Castillo said. ‘Then we just hope and pray that the client doesn’t get foreclosed on.’”

    “In downtown San Antonio, scores of investors stood on a parched lawn beside the city’s historic granite-and-red-sandstone courthouse. It was the first Tuesday of February, the day of the foreclosure auction. Matt Badders, a San Antonio lawyer who represents lenders, auctioned off two houses. The failed mortgages remind him of the run-up to the financial crisis 12 years ago, when lending to customers with spotty credit nearly brought down the world’s financial system. ‘We’re almost back to 2007, when mortgage originators are waking people up on park benches, saying sign here,’ Badders said.”

    “At the auction, the crowd bid on 338 homes, a third with FHA mortgages, according to Roddy’s Foreclosure Listing Service. One house had dual master bedrooms, a game room and granite kitchen counters. It sold for $202,000 — $52,000 less than the homeowner borrowed only two years ago. The taxpayer-backed FHA insurance fund will take a loss.”

    “Dave Stevens, FHA commissioner under President Barack Obama and former chief executive officer of the Mortgage Bankers Association, said a recession will expose hidden risks in home lending. ‘This should be an alarm bell to policymakers,’ Stevens said. ‘Sometimes you get blinded by a good economy and suddenly look at it and see a bubble of defaults coming.’”

    “The federal government has decided it doesn’t want to pursue — and has asked a judge to dismiss — a lawsuit against Utah-based Academy Mortgage Corp. The judge refused. The suit claims the company’s staff would repeatedly feed information into an automated federal underwriting system, manipulating it until the computer gave the green light. ‘Decline is a curse word,’ Plaintiff Gwen Thrower, a former underwriter, quoted a manager as saying. ‘We don’t use it.’”

    http://housingbubble.blog/?p=3070

    2. “While private lenders make these loans, they are packaged into Ginnie Mae bonds, common in mutual funds and pensions.”

      There’s the problem right there, folks. If these crooked to the core finance scumbags had to HOLD ONTO their loans, instead of passing them on to others to take the fall, we wouldn’t be in this sh*tty situation. They (lenders) would turn the screws squeaky tight, putting borrowers through the ringer…requiring huge down payments, higher interest rates and verifying incomes to the point that the mortgage lending industry would slow down to a realistic and sane pace. In a nutshell, they’d cover their asses to make sure defaults were kept to a minimum. Instead, we get weak, thinly veiled, “yeah, I’m a scumbag and the loans are bad” statements like:

      “If the government tells me you’re good enough to get a loan, I have to trust and believe in the government,’ Castillo said. ‘Then we just hope and pray that the client doesn’t get foreclosed on.”

      Come on a**hole. We know you don’t hope and pray…you just smile, cash your fat commission check and dump that sh*tty loan off like a dog that takes a sh*t, kicks the grass and prances off carefree. Then, when it all burns down, you’ll tell yourself you didn’t do anything wrong, but deep in your roiling gut, you know that’s not true at all.

      If you insulate those from paying the price of their fraudulent behavior, like they did after 07′-08′, why act surprised when meltdown 2.0 happens? We know the drill. The same perps saying “it’s different this time!” will will cry like children saying, “how could this happen? We had no idea this was coming!” And the complicit f*cktards in leadership, who should do their job in locking these criminals up will look the other way, because if justice was served at all levels, they’d be locked up themselves. .

      1. There’s the problem right there, folks. If these crooked to the core finance scumbags had to HOLD ONTO their loans, instead of passing them on to others to take the fall, we wouldn’t be in this sh*tty situation

        Or if the rule of law was still followed. Instead, the finance sector has turned completely lawless.

        1. “Or if the rule of law was still followed. Instead, the finance sector has turned completely lawless.”

          Yep. Just run your profit-gouging scam until it blows up, then blame it on the taxpayers and pressure you’re back-pocketed government to make them (taxpayers) bail you out.

          On a side note, I was pleasantly surprised in 08′ and shortly thereafter, that while the US Government said that perps in finance were “unprosecutable,” the citizens of Iceland refused IMF bailout money, hired a US prosecutor and threw their bankers to the wolves. The prosecutor (who was active in prosecuting executives in the 1980’s Savings and Loan scandal) said we could have done the same thing here. Zero integrity, zero ethics and zero accountability. Sadly, who could think of a better way to destroy an empire from within?

  2. ‘Those values will typically have nothing at all to do with actual sale prices. Even now, you only have to glance at prices in California to see a few obvious moves and a lot of upper-bracket stuff that’s been on the market for quite a while’

    We’ve been watching yuuuge a$$ poundings out there for years.

  3. ‘bought a lakefront luxury home for $6 million in 2020, was offered $9 million a few months later and $11 million two months after that by buyers desperate for a lakefront property…’they realized they shouldn’t sell because to get something a little bit nicer than what they had was going to cost $18 to $20 million. That is a remarkable jump for a calendar year’

    That is remarkable Matt. And Ima running with scissors!

      1. geniuses who allegedly turned down a $5 million profit in a matter of months.
        They “gotta” be dumber than h$ll. I’d taken it and been long gone. Screw that lake. Aren’t there 100,000’s of lakes in the USA?

        1. “It’s overrated.”

          Sadly, most house-horny folks don’t realize this until it’s too late.

  4. ‘up until about four years ago a busy year would have involved 1,200-1,600 housing starts. In 2021, they’re on track to see about 2,800′

    Now that’s a shortage!

    ‘It used to be that the median home price was $315,000 a couple of years ago. Now, I have several buyers that are looking to be in Wilson County in Mt. Juliet, and they want to stay under $500K for a newer house, five years or newer and it is very hard to find under $500,000’

    500,000 pesos is a sh$tload of money.

  5. This is a pearl clutching article.

    Washington Post — Omicron could have a silver lining by boosting immunity, some experts say. But don’t bet on it (1/7/2022):

    https://archive.fo/gY2Pn

    No article excerpt needed. It’s the usual globalist swill you can expect from the Washington Post, which is a globalist rag.

    Don’t bet on it?

    Bet your immune system on mRNA “vaccines” that are not actually vaccines.

    Bet on “boosting” yourself into an early grave.

    Revolver dot News has links to multiple Substacks and other non-globalist sources confirming what we already know: that the COVID “vaccines” don’t work and are going to kill you. Put down the globalist Washington Post and go read some of that…

    1. Unplugging from globalist propaganda mouthpieces and seeking out real news & real truth is the beginning of wisdom.

    2. Weren’t they saying a few weeks ago that breakthrough cases in the jabbed would confer “super immunity”? The goalposts have motorized wheels these days!

  6. Today is Saturday, January 8th, and Joe Biden is not the legitimately elected president of the United States, because the 2020 election was stolen, and it was stolen by globalists.

    We’re taking our country back.

    You can’t be a globalist and be an American. When you are a globalist, you forfeit any of your alleged rights as a now-former American. You don’t belong in this country.

    Get the ropes ready, it’s almost Go Time 🙂

    1. This is a pearl clutching article.

      Huffington Post — Ex-Homeland Security Chief Rings Alarm On Where Next Insurrection May Play Out (1/7/2022):

      “We are looking at what I would call an entrenched insurgency at this point, a decentralized insurgency”

      https://archive.is/3E0cs

      LMFAO@ these globalists thinking they were ever elected to govern anything. Archive website link provided because we do not give clicks or revenue to globalist rags.

      Glowies, you can’t stop the Leaderless Resistance.

      You GLOW IN THE DARK, you’re not fooling anyone 😉

      1. Another urine soaked mattress narrative.

        The Hill — Far-right extremists shift online strategies (1/7/2022):

        “Research reports released this week highlighted disinformation narratives among far-right groups on platforms such as Parler, Gab and Telegram. The Department of Homeland Security also warned partners of an uptick in chatter on online extremist pages.

        Although fringe platforms brand themselves as separate from mainstream social media, they’re intertwined with the broader scope of internet conversations. Experts warned against dismissing the influence of alternative platforms despite their lower user base.”

        https://archive.is/XvKsP

        Remember, there are no “groups” and anyone talking about “groups” is a Fed, and any alleged “group” is infiltrated by Feds.

        Glowies gonna glow, but they can’t stop the Leaderless Resistance…

        1. ‘disinformation narratives’

          ‘Homeland security’ is sick enough, now free speech is verboten? Keep feeding the bear.

          1. Citizen Jones! You are free to espouse globalist narratives. Any non-Narrative Compliant speech, online content, or thought is inherently subversive and thus must be labeled “disinformation.”

          2. Ah, I see. I’m guessing the “uptick in chatter” DHS is seeing is driven by agents provocateurs out to lure the unwary & stupid into more FBI-sponsored “plots” that can then be touted as justification for even more Orwellian surveillance & control measures, not to mention more infringements on what few civil liberties still remain.

      2. “We are looking at what I would call an entrenched insurgency at this point, a decentralized insurgency”

        Gosh, we’d better make it an urgent national security priority to disarm those bitter clingers & boxcar any recalcitrants to re-education camps. Say, do you suppose the CCP would be so kind as to provide the blueprints to the Uighur internment camps to their DNC ideological clones?

    2. Hanging, when properly done, can be a quick and painless death. For you globalists that won’t be so. See, just a small shift in the knot will ensure your neck doesn’t snap. Instead, you will choke.

      As your tongue swells even less air will get in. But still enough for your suffering to continue. As everyone shuffles about uncomfortably you will pray for relief but none comes. You try biting your tongue but that only results in a mouthful of blood and your tongue rolling out of your mouth onto the floor where the sight of it causes you to vomit. However, the vomit has no where to go and you choke further.

      Then, when you catch my eye and see my hand on the trap door release, I’ll wink at you, smile, and give you the thumbs up.

    1. The Globalist view Whites as being the biggest group that would oppose the Takeover by them.

      All races should realize that this is warfare by a Innsurrection of about a thousand Monopoly Companies, in conjunction with corrupted Governments operating in lock step. They have been planning this One World Order take over for years, as the evidence shows.

      They have their fake news with censorship of any thing that disputes their ridiculous narratives.

      They are vicious killer psychopaths that I have no doubts now have a depopulation agenda. Look at how many people have already needlessly have died already because of their deliberate warfare against the human race.
      The kind of World they want to usher in would be so slave like and anti human that they have to be stopped.
      They want to chip people, alter genes, tell you what you get to eat , they want to control all resources, inject you whenever they want, how much energy you get, surveillance of your every move, while they live in the lap of luxury, all under the fraud that they are saving the earth or saving people from disease.
      Can’t be in the dark at this point on what the agendas are of these Entities .

      1. ‘They are vicious killer psychopaths that I have no doubts now have a depopulation agenda’

        They’ve been saying so for decades:

        ‘In the Club of Rome book, The First Global Revolution, the group called for a “limit to growth” approach to solve the world’s problems, in fact, a problem the global elite has with humanity. “In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill,” the book states. “All these dangers are caused by human intervention,” and thus the “real enemy, then, is humanity itself.”

        ‘It does not matter if this common enemy is “a real one or… one invented for the purpose.” In the process of struggling against this implacable enemy, democracy “will be made to seem responsible for the lagging economy, the scarcity, and uncertainties. The very concept of democracy could then be brought into question and allow for the seizure of power.”

        http://nwoogw.com/Club-of-Rome.html

        2. Its just murder by these Entities, rather than letting the people decide how they are going to confront potential problems ,such as to much population.

          1. Focus on corporations and entities neglects that these organizations are ultimately controlled by despicable and evil humans.

      2. Heritage American white males are being systematically marginalized and maligned in our NEA indoctrination mills and Cultural Marxist-run universities, and then the pearl-clutching set wonders who so many of them are becoming “radicalized.”

        Student Resident Assistants slam Western Carolina University for being ‘hijacked by wokeness’ after being told not to refer to America as a ‘melting pot’ in forced racial and gender sensitivity training

        https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10381665/North-Carolina-university-RAs-subjected-racial-gender-sensitivity-training.html

        A group of Resident Assistants has slammed Western Carolina University for being ‘hijacked by wokeness’ after they were subjected to mandatory racial and gender sensitivity training where they were told not to refer to America as a ‘melting pot’.

        During the training courses, the RAs were shown a series of slides that told them to avoid using certain phrases while working at the North Carolina school and were shown a ‘gender unicorn’ to highlight transgender identities.

        In one example, they were told to stop referring to America as a ‘melting pot’ because it emphasized the idea that people should assimilate to the country’s ‘dominant’ culture.

    2. The only white couples you see in advertising these days are in those aimed at the AARP demographic. This is by design. The next time you go to a movie, watch the advertising. EVERY white person under the age of 50 has a non-white partner. EVERY Asian female has either a black or white partner (of either sex, because per the MSM, about half of us are apparently LGBQT or whatever the acronym is. There is an agenda being pushed hard, and its being orchestrated across the entire globalist media-entertainment complex.

      1. The MSM is definitely pushing the BBC fantasy to upper middle class white women, but I think they’re smarter than that as the husband’s family tree is also included in their appraisal.

      3. Asian females are too smart and shrewd to fall for a black guy. Why? Before said female even looks at the guy, he better be making a six figure salary and have at least a Bachelor’s degree from a respectable university. Asian females aren’t big on the wife supporting the husband and kids.

      4. Sometime in the past few weeks I was glancing at a television in a place of business while waiting, and it was a Gap commercial which showed a biracial male gay couple kissing. I was shocked. There is zero need for that. It’s a clothing company, and how do people explain that to their young kids who are watching? This stuff is creepy.

        1. and it was a Gap commercial

          One of the many reasons I have simply stopped watching broadcast TV. Also, because they don’t have an original idea and all their remakes are duds. Just watch a recent Hawaii 5-0 with the sound off. Can you tell who is McGarret is? Ditto with the other remakes: Walker, Magnum, McGyver, etc. All of the leads are unremarkable soy boys.

    2. Creepy Merrick Garland will have sicced the DNC’s FBI Chekists on this “domestic terrorist” by now.

    2. “And O’Connor—who has bipolar disorder and has been in and out of psychiatric hospitals herself—continued to beg for him to return.”

      Mental disorders are often hereditary, but that doesn’t stop the afflicted from having children who suffer the consequences.

  11. January 8, 2022 08:11 IST

    “No, I don’t think COVID is here to stay, but having COVID in the environment here and in the world is probably here to stay,” Biden said at the White House briefing, according to The Hill.

    https://youtu.be/b9434BoGkNQ

  13. The lying globalist media informs us it was Covid that caused soaring shack prices, not the Fed’s deranged money printing and easy money policies since 2008. Nor do they mention how “solving the homeless crisis” is one of the most lucrative, and costly, Democrat-Bolshevik patronage & graft rackets.

    With more than half a million Americans unhoused, the U.S. is still struggling to solve the homelessness crisis

    https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/07/why-the-us-cant-solve-the-homelessness-crisis.html

    The Covid pandemic caused a surge in housing costs and a rise in unemployment, leaving nearly 600,000 Americans unhoused in 2020.

    “What people don’t typically realize when they walk past a person who’s homeless is that this person is costing taxpayers a lot of money,” said Sam Tsemberis, chief executive officer at Pathways Housing First Institute.

    1. The more I read about all of this, the more I see a concerted effort by central bankers and politicians to loot the US Treasury and line their own pockets as well as those of their connected buddies. This is a jaw-dropping level of corruption.

  14. This whole fraudulent system is going to implode under the weight of its own debt, fraud, parasitism, lies, and corruption. Prepare accordingly.

    Doomer Optimism: What I See Coming, & How I’m Preparing

    https://www.tuckermax.com/doomer-optimism-what-i-see-coming-how-im-preparing/

    My life has changed substantially over the last 2 years, and the biggest change has been where I live, and how I use my time.

    I moved out of Austin to a ranch 45 minutes away, and now spend most of my time with my family, working on the ranch and building my immediate community.

    The easiest way to describe it would be to call me a “Doomer Optimist.”

    What is Doomer Optimism? My favorite way to describe it:

    The shit’s gonna hit the fan, but if I do my work, it’ll be OK.

    The more in depth explanation is that Doomer Optimism is a social movement in which people recognize and accept the very hard problems they see coming down the road, but still move forward with a sense of hope for what might come of it all.

  15. The financial system has lent with abandon even as U.S. equity valuations jumped to nose-bleed levels experienced only once over the past 100 years and as U.S. housing prices adjusted for inflation exceeded their 2006 pre-crisis peak.

    It’s easy to be a reckless lender when the Fed & middle class taxpayers have your back.

  17. Washington State Board of Health — Clarifying Online Misinformation about the Jan. 12 State Board of Health Public Meeting (1/7/2022):

    “The Washington State Board of Health (Board) is not voting to require a COVID-19 vaccine for school-aged children at its meeting on Jan. 12. The Board will receive a briefing on the progress of the technical advisory group (TAG), which is convened to consider COVID-19 for inclusion in chapter 246-105 WAC, at next week’s meeting (agenda item 8). The Board will not take action on this agenda item at the meeting …

    The Board is not voting to change isolation or quarantine policies at its meeting on Jan. 12. The Board is continuing a November 2021 rules hearing on the proposed rule changes to chapter 246-100 WAC, Communicable and Certain Other Diseases, as published in WSR 21-20-127 at the meeting. The Board is proposing updating its rules to reflect current state law to align with Engrossed Substitute House Bill (ESHB) 1551. Agenda item 9, while related to rulemaking on chapter 246-100 WAC, is scoped only to the implementation of ESHB 1551 (Chapter 76, Laws of 2020) and does not include changes to isolation and quarantine policies nor does it suggest law enforcement be used to enforce any vaccination requirements.”

    https://sboh.wa.gov/News/Articles/ID/3050/Clarifying-Online-Misinformation-about-the-Jan-12-State-Board-of-Health-Public-Meeting

    “nor does it suggest law enforcement be used to enforce any vaccination requirements”

    Happy twenty-two month anniversary of “two weeks to flatten the curve.”

    1. Looks like The Board are squirming like insects on pins after having a spotlight shone on their efforts to implement globalist agendas.

  18. Our BLS employment numbers are as manipulated and fake as our Soviet-style CPI inflation statistics. Former Iraqi Information Minister Baghdad Bob would blush with shame and mortification if asked to put across the kind of bullish*t that spews every day from Little Red Lyin’ Hood and the White House Twitter feed.

    White House bragging about Biden job gains draws social-media backlash

    https://www.foxnews.com/politics/white-house-biden-jobs-social-media-backlash

    Social media users on Friday balked at a graphic the White House posted online that claimed President Biden has created far more jobs than any other commander-in-chief.

    “Ever,” the post boasted.

    The graphic – which appeared on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook – was posted just hours after a disappointing jobs report showed hiring had fallen far below expectations in December.

  19. “Once-healthy” in MSM parlance means the company in question had a long good run of concealing the true state of its finances.

    China’s real estate problems are spreading even to once-healthy developers

    https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/07/chinas-property-problems-spread-to-once-healthy-developers-like-shimao.html

    BEIJING — One of China’s healthiest real estate developers has reportedly defaulted, a sign of how more pain is ahead for the heavily indebted industry.

    Shimao Group shares briefly plunged more than 17% Friday after Reuters reported the property developer failed to make full repayment on a trust loan. A subsidiary of the company subsequently said in a filing it was in talks to resolve the payment. Shares closed more than 5% lower in Hong Kong, while most major developers posted gains for the day.

  20. Per usual, brief but excellent analysis.

    Jonathan Turley via The Hill: Federal vaccine mandate enters ‘major question’ land

    Excerpts:

    “It was not a good sign for the administration that the most referenced individual during oral argument was Biden’s chief of staff, Ron Klain, who tweeted that the mandates were ‘workarounds’ of the Constitution. Chief Justice Roberts, Justice Neil Gorsuch, and others referred to Klain’s admission as the administration’s lawyers tried to argue that the executive had the constitutional authority to implement a national mandate.”

    “Putting aside the factual claims supporting the mandates, there remains the even more dubious constitutional claims. Of the two rules at issue, the OSHA rule has the greatest reach and likely the greatest chance of being struck down. The conservative justices seemed more willing to recognize the government’s inherent authority to issue a mandate for health care workers. However, virtually no health care facilities challenged the rule, and the impact of the rule is not especially great given the industry-wide practice of requiring vaccinations. The OSHA rule attracted the most skepticism from all six conservative justices.”

    1. If the globalist-captured Supreme Court rubber-stamps these illegal and unconstitutional “mandates,” our national descent into corrupt & lawless banana republic will be complete.

    2. I’m not a lawyer, but this mandate needs to go.

      My income, my occupation, my financial goals, and my plans for the future are all affected by this.

      So yeah, it’s f*ing personal.

        1. I applied for my exemption over 2 months ago. I still haven’t received a reply. Under the OSHA mandate I am already exempt as a remote worker, but the Federal Contractor mandate requires that even remotes be jabbed.

      2. OVER MY DEAD BODY will I get jabbed. And there are hundreds of millions like me. They can stick their mandate up their loose asz!!

  21. Lies, damned lies, & statistics.

    New York hospitals admit that nearly HALF of their ‘covid’ patients were admitted for other reasons after Gov. Kathy Hochul ordered them to disclose the key statistic

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10381687/New-York-hospitals-admit-nearly-HALF-COVID-patients-admitted-unrelated-maladies.html

    Under pressure from Governor Kathy Hochul, hospitals in New York have disclosed that nearly half of their so-called COVID-19 patients currently hospitalized were admitted for other reasons.

    Of the roughly 11,500 COVID-19 patients currently hospitalized in the state, COVID was not included as one of the reasons for admission for 43 percent, according to data Hochul released on Friday.

    In New York City, the rate was even higher, with 51 percent of current COVID patients classified as ‘with’ COVID, as opposed to ‘for’ the virus.

    2. after Gov. Kathy Hochul ordered them to disclose the key statistic
      Good for the Gov. I doubt Cuomo would EVER have done that.
      If I recall correctly, John Campbell, a few days ago, presented a statistic that around 80% of the people in South Africa in the hospital with Covid where there for NON-Covid related issues. In Hospital with Covid Not because of Covid.

      2. The 80% number may have been the UK. I believe South Africa was around 50%.

        I believe those are the numbers for Omicron specifically. The hospitalization in the US are still ticking up. These are people who were exposed 2-3 weeks ago, when the US still had a substantial proportion of Delta. That will be the last wave of Delta. After that, both cases and hospitalizations will be downhill.

        1. The hospitalization in the US are still ticking up.

          Ironically, officials are still reluctant to tell us what those people are being hospitalized for. So, the narrative is a lie, even if 5% true. We don’t know. We’re not allowed to know.

          Yet you parrot the narrative, without critical thinking in the least. Shame on you.

          1. We’re not allowed to know.

            This. They send the truth to the memory hole and crank up the propaganda dial to 11.

  22. Tragic: 14-Year-Old Israeli American Girl Suffers and Dies from COVID Vaccine – Makes a Video of Her Story Five Days Before Her Death

    https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/01/tragic-14-year-old-israeli-american-girl-suffers-dies-covid-vaccine-makes-video-story-five-days-death/

    Sarah Jessica Blattner, a 14-year-old Israeli American girl with an underlying health condition, died in her sleep on October 12th reportedly from a heart attack after receiving one dose of the Pfizer vaccine five months earlier.

    Her parents decided to finally speak out three months after her death and urged the public not to vaccinate their kids. In their case, it was a big “mistake.”

          1. Another Narrative

            Two narratives: % hospitalized COVID patients vaccinated and jabs preventing hospitalization. Add in all-cause mortality, and the entire jab narrative has completely crumbled.

          2. and the entire jab narrative has completely crumbled

            Several of my Bay Aryan colleagues, fully jabbed and boosted, cancelled all their year end plans. Trips, get togethers, parties, etc. all cancelled. Bottom line, they know their precious jabs convey no protection and they instead hid under their beds, just like they did in 2020, except the current virus has no bite.

            Those who do come down with it initially panic and run off to the ER, which sends them home with no treatment. That is when they finally realize they were freaking out over a mild cold.

          3. “the entire jab narrative has completely crumbled”

            The data coming out of South Africa confirms that the alleged COVID from the alleged “omicron variant” is, in fact, over.

            COVID is over. I walked away from a bar / restaurant today without going inside because they have a security theater “mask required at all times unless you are seated at your table consuming food or drink” posted on the outside door.

            Get it, got it, good. You don’t want my money.

            And I’ll be happy to not give you money, FOREVER.

        2. 57% of their hospitalized COVID patients are fully vaccinated

          There’s that dodgy statistic again… I’m not even going to bother today.

    3. Her parents decided to finally speak out three months after her death and urged the public not to vaccinate their kids. In their case, it was a big “mistake.”

      I am sorry for them and appreciate that they aren’t saying “It was the right thing to do, and we would do it again”

      1. What a terrible thing to have to live with. The parents acted in good faith to “protect” their child, but thanks to the conspiracy of silence enforced by the globalist media, Big Pharma, and the captured medical establishment, this poor girl had her life cut short.

    4. “…reportedly from a heart attack after receiving one dose of the Pfizer vaccine five months earlier.”

      If she died five months after recovering from a COVID-19 infection, would you be claiming that the virus killed her?

      Methinks no.

  23. The I-95 Traffic Jam and Electric Cars

    https://thesilicongraybeard.blogspot.com/2022/01/the-i-95-traffic-jam-and-electric-cars.html

    As I’m sure you’ve noticed, this week’s news has featured a traffic mess outside DC on I-95 where people were stuck for up to almost 24 hours in snow and cold. People survived by running their engine intermittently to keep the vehicles warm. People who are in the habit of keeping some blankets in their cars along with water and maybe food were better set to survive and there are stories of some of them sharing their supplies.

    An article headline on Watts Up With That got me thinking about how Brandon’s Build Back Better Bill has as a policy goal to get Internal Combustion Engines off the road. If everyone had been driving a battery-powered Electric Vehicle, would this have been a mass casualty event? Everyone knows that battery electric cars get a double whammy when it’s cold. The heater runs on the batteries, which reduces the range, and the batteries lose capacity when it’s below freezing, further reducing the charge life. Anyone in that traffic mess would have had to run the heat intermittently.

  24. California libtards fleeing what they voted for should be barred by law from infesting red states & communities.

    Californians fleeing for Texas so fast U-Haul runs out of trucks for them: report

    https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/californians-fleeing-texas-uhaul-trucks-report

    A new report from U-Haul found that migration to southern states continued throughout the pandemic, with Texas being the top destination.

    “Gone to Texas” was such a well-known phrase during early migrations to the state that people simply carved “GTT” on trees or fence posts when they headed west from the young United States. Now a highway version of “GTT” is underway, but it’s headed from west to east: California and Illinois ranked as the states with the greatest one-way net loss of U-Haul trucks, and most of that traffic appears to have gone to Texas and Florida.

      1. It’s been a weird week for me coming out of winter break after completely unplugging from MSM following Tucker Carlson’s Kyle Rittenhouse interview.

        1. The thing about the globalist media-entertainment complex is that their lies, omissions, and propaganda tell their own kind of truth.

      2. Most of my Bay Aryan colleagues are hiding under their beds again.

        Same with my (former) colleagues in Seattle. Talk is all about needing to get boosters before going out in the world, even from those that have had COVID

  25. In the former Soviet Union, generations of schoolchildren were taught to venerate the example of 13-year-old Pavel Morozov, who when the Communists were imposing collectivization on previously independent farmers, the kulaks, informed on his own father for hiding grain with which to feed his family. Pavel the commie rat was killed in retribution by other kulaks, including his own grandfather. The globalists and their Democrat-Bolshevik Quislings similarly exalt snitches who betray their own fathers as examples to be admired and emulated. Forward, Soviet!

    https://www.vice.com/en/article/z3n3m8/guy-reffitt-capitol-rioter-family-torn-apart

    My Dad Attacked Cops at the Capitol Riot. I Turned Him In.

    How one 18-year-old’s decision to turn his father in to the FBI tore his family apart.

  26. Per The Narrative, bare supermarket shelves, a la Venezuela, are due solely to workers falling ill from the coronavirus. Mentioning the impact of vaccine mandates, the Brandon regime paying millions of workers to sit at home, or the economic mismanagement that is a feature of all socialist regimes, is verboten.

    FOOD CRISIS LOOMING? Meat and egg shortages fears after stores report ‘bare shelves’ amid Omicron cases

    https://www.the-sun.com/news/4420761/meat-egg-shortages-fears-omicron/

    SEVERAL American supermarkets are reporting incidents of “bare shelves” as fears grow over an imminent meat and egg shortage amid a surge in Omicron cases.

    Food chains have been one of the first to be disrupted by the new super strain as workers fall ill and productivity drops.

        1. Get it, got it, good. You don’t want my money.

          Looks like KIngs is going on strike. While not all King Soopers stores are union, almost all those who work in the meat departments are. So I’m guessing that the meat counters at Kings will be empty of they go on strike.

      2. Plenty of milk on the shelves 3 days ago. I didn’t have to go without my half and half for morning coffee. A half gallon lasts me a few weeks. The bread aisle was a bit thinner than normal. Same with chips and things, but I don’t eat too much of that junk.

      3. Milk was way down in my grocery in the MD burbs yesterday, but it’s probably because we had a couple winter storms this week and people cleared out the stocks.

    2. The one thing I’m seeing being consistently unavailable in my neck of the woods is lactose free milk. No one has it. There is plenty of regular milk as well as the soy, almond and oat counterfeits. Is there an enzyme shortage?

      Eggs and meat seem to be in ample supply here.

  27. Cryptos baggies who levered up on margin debt to speculate on these latter-day Dutch tulip bulbs are screwed, blued, & tattooed. Will a crypto bloodbath be a leading indicator that true price discovery is about to overtake the Fed’s Everything Bubble?

    https://www.cnbc.com/cryptocurrency/

    1. Is there a more apt name than Avalanche for a cryptocurrency on the brink of a ginormous crater?

      1. Why Solana, Terra, and Avalanche Cryptocurrencies Tanked Today
        Cryptocurrency investors may have bet on margin — and lost.
        Rich Smith
        (TMFDitty)
        Jan 6, 2022 at 11:20AM

        Key Points
        – Media report that $800 million in cryptocurrency was liquidated over the last 24 hours.
        – Traders may have loaded up on crypto using margin loans to fund their purchases.
        – As those loans get called in via margin calls, driving prices even lower, the cycle of continued sell-offs could become self-perpetuating.
        …

    2. Once the bottom falls out of this garbage once and for all, you’ll see a mass surge in job applicants. Those crypto day traders are toast.

  28. You’ll never take our freedom! Thousands of defiant protesters stage largest anti-lockdown rally in recent months as they march through Glasgow against Nicola Sturgeon’s draconian Covid restrictions

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10381913/Anti-lockdown-protest-kicks-Glasgow-anger-Nicola-Sturgeons-Covid-curbs-boils-over.html

    Police have been called to manage an ‘unplanned’ anti-lockdown protest in Scotland’s largest city that appears to be one of the country’s largest demonstrations since the pandemic began.

    Thousands of protesters gathered at Glasgow Green at 1pm on Saturday as public anger boiled over at First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s latest Covid curbs.

    1. What is with female prime ministers and their love of lock downs?

      Of course, the answer is to get jabbed a 4th time.

  29. “Even in the mid-2000s just before that housing bubble burst, fewer than one-fifth of metropolitan areas had seen annual prices increase as much.”

    Whistling away he strolls past the graveyard…

    “So, are we in another housing bubble? No. Not yet. But I say this with less confidence than I did a year ago, and if current trends continue for another year, I won’t be saying it at all.”

    Well Mark is a mainstream media prostitute economist, and as Alan Greenspan and others pointed out years ago, economists are unable to spot bubbles until after they collapse.

    1. Why do some economists like to predict implausible scenarios ?

      “The most graceful scenario is for prices to cool off, go more-or-less sideways, and allow incomes, rents and construction costs to catch up. This seems likely if mortgage rates soon push modestly higher, weighing on housing demand and ultimately prices.”

    2. “The stronger job market will forestall foreclosures and distressed sales, and the housing shortage will put a proverbial floor under prices in many communities.”

      Mark must be a macroeconomist, as they are experts at glossing over relevant details, such as the widening gap between housing prices and incomes. Doesn’t he know that most of those jobs pay peanuts and won’t support mortgage payments on an overpriced house, or that the mythical shortage is due to a combination of corporate idiots like those at Zillow hoovering up inventory, massive though temporary Fed Quantitative Easing support of mortgage lending, and rent and foreclosure moratoriums suppressing turnover?

    3. Remember in 2013, Shiller received the econ Nobel for his work on bubbles… and he shared it that year with Eugene Fama, who seems to deny that bubbles exist!

      “In 2013, Yale economist Robert Shiller was asked if he would accept the Nobel Memorial Prize for Economics for his research on the stock market. He said yes. Then he learned he would be sharing the prize with someone else who studied the stock market, Eugene Fama at the University of Chicago. They were two of the three people who won the prize that year.

      Shiller and Fama are a bit of an odd couple. Robert Shiller is probably the most famous analyst of bubbles; Eugene Fama is probably the most famous skeptic of bubbles.”

      From: http://www.npr.org/2021/06/30/1011906325/whats-a-bubble-classic

    1. Unsuprisingly, NPR neglects the off-record misinformation spewing from the liberal justices, Breyer’s Biden moment, and Sotomayor forgetting the 10th Amendment.

  31. The Free Sh!t Army is going to be disappointed. From 9News:

    Petition to give Americans $2,000 monthly payments reaches 3 million signatures.

    I guess these people just want even more inflation.

      1. Those of us who live in Colorado have been enriched by the vibrancy of “Vote like California, become California.”

        Remember what Reagan said?

        “I didn’t leave the Democrat Party, the Democrat Party left me”

        1. “I didn’t leave the Democrat Party, the Democrat Party left me”
          That’s what a lot of prominent Dems are currently saying in so many words, including Hillary, as they warn the Party to not go totally woke.

    3. The Free Sh!t Army is going to be disappointed. From 9News:
      Petition to give Americans $2,000 monthly payments reaches 3 million signatures.
      Social Security only averages what $1,514 or so per month? WTF $2,000 for never working. Assuming 250MM American’s quality for the $24K “stimulus” the cost is $6 Trillion dollars/year. Totally doable.

      1. $2000 a month is more than most Mexicans make (never mind Central Americans). That will be a huge incentive to join a caravan.

  32. $399,999 3 bd 3ba
    3,208 sqft
    10040 E Lan Dr, Kingman, AZ 86401

    For sale
    Zestimate: $443,400

    https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/10040-E-Lan-Dr-Kingman-AZ-86401/8391631_zpid/

    1/7/2022 Price change $399,999 (-11.1%) $125/sqft

    9/27/2021 Listed for sale $450,000 (-1.5%) $140/sqft

    8/5/2021 Listed for sale $456,700 $142/sqft

    I think it has a really unsafe elevator shaft. The outdoor cooking area is a wreck. And is that semi-permanent plastic pool for them or a dog?

    1. Some kind of hot tub in a utility/laundry room? A “sewing room” outbuilding? I don’t understand this at all.

  33. Saturday night and time for some music. Apologies for the YouTube links (if you are logged out of Google services and clear your browser cache it will generate less revenue for globalists when opening the link).

    Traffic — Shouldn’t Have Took More Than You Gave (1971):

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JweZ_wzmifw

    1. Transgender swimmer loses to another transgender swimmer.

      Remember, the demented people who insist that these male athletes are women are the same crowd who insist the jabs are safe and effective and who are demanding the you either get jabbed or lose your job.

      The whole point of anarchotyranny and its associated madness is to demoralize you so that will you will give up and obey, and do as you’re told, including lining up for the kill shot.

    2. “Transgender swimmer loses to another transgender swimmer.”

      I guess it’s time for him to cut his toenails too short and see if he can bring home the gold in the women’s Paralympics.

    1. Because mainstream media seems to turn EVERY news story into a “go get your vaccine” pitch? Even the vaccinated people are losing patience by now.

  37. Was reading that in addition to the 1000 houses that were destroyed in the Marshall fire, that another 2000 were sufficiently damaged to be uninhabitable until repaired (I’m assuming smoke damage). The smoke damaged houses will likely need to be gutted.

    I wonder how many of those affected will take their insurance payout, leave Dumver and go back to wherever they came from?

    1. I’m sure many families will certainly avoid the region’s hazardous geography once they have the means to move on. It’s amazing how developers are able to put families in harms way with the blessings of local planning departments.

      1. To be fair, it has been very dry out here this season. The big snowfall that fell the day after was the first precipitation in months on the front range.

        That said it is very fashionable out her to have “open space” around a neighborhood. Unfortunately that open space became tinder. Add unseasonable 100 mph winds and you get a disaster. Anyway, far too many people live on the front range. Once the aquifers in Dumver are sucked dry (10-20 years) it will get very interesting.

  38. I have written a new song Pelosi can have the cast of Hamilton perform next year.

    I do have to admit I stole it from the Stones.

    https://youtu.be/knp9-GY6fHE

    Ohhhhhhh

    Happy Insurrection Day
    Happy Insurrection Day
    Happy Insurrection Day
    Happy Insurrection Day
    Happy Insurrection Day!

  39. “Or if the rule of law was still followed. Instead, the finance sector has turned completely lawless.”

    Yep. Just run your profit-gouging scam until it blows up, then blame it on the taxpayers and pressure you’re back-pocketed government to make them (taxpayers) bail you out.

    On a side note, I was pleasantly surprised in 08′ and shortly thereafter, that while the US Government said that perps in finance were “unprosecutable,” the citizens of Iceland refused IMF bailout money, hired a US prosecutor and threw their bankers to the wolves. The prosecutor (who was active in prosecuting executives in the 1980’s Savings and Loan scandal) said we could have done the same thing here. Zero integrity, zero ethics and zero accountability. Sadly, who could think of a better way to destroy an empire from within?

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