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Unable To Sell For Even Close To The Price In March When They Bought

A weekend topic starting with KPIX in California. “Though homes across the Bay Area continue to sell for record prices, some real estate experts say the market is beginning to level off. ‘I think we’re seeing a little bit of leveling right now in the market. There’s a little more inventory, there are some price adjustments we haven’t seen before,’ said Tim Yee, a real estate broker and the president of RE/MAX Gold Bay Area. ‘Properties are staying on the market a little longer, pricing seems to have leveled and we’re seeing some price reductions which, six months ago, we never saw.'”

“Yee doesn’t think the market leveling is indicative of a crash or a major correction. ‘I think it was unsustainable, the market, the way it was,’ he said. ‘I believe the market is going to level. I think it’ll be healthy but not crazy. A ‘normal’ market is a good thing for all of us.'”

The Martha’s Vineyard Times in Massachusetts. “Maybe, just maybe, there are signs that buyers can take a moderate sigh of relief. In the past week, there were over 20 new properties listed for sale, and now over 150 properties are on the market. Days on market have settled up to an average 144 days from a low of, well you know, one. The best news might be that the past 30 days saw a 5% decrease in median price for all sold properties month-over-month back to January.”

The Toronto Sun in Canada. “For months it has felt like the ground was shifting beneath us and now it seems even the deniers among us are finally willing to say it out loud. One need only look to the wall-to-wall press coverage — the market has shifted! The bubble has burst! The end is nigh! After two years of hot, hot, heat, declining month-over-month sales data now leaves it undeniable that our pandemic real estate boom has come to an abrupt conclusion.”

“Some of the markets that surged the fastest in the early days of the pandemic are now in free fall with market data showing prices in strong decline.There are examples all over social media of homes that have seen their values drop by hundreds of thousands of dollars in a matter of weeks leaving once-happy buyers left wondering what to do as closing approaches. A real estate lawyer friend of mine is currently trying to help clients north of the city figure out how to close on their new home next month with their current home unable to sell for even close to the price it was valued at back in March when they bought.”

“And we should unfortunately expect more stories like the ones above — there are many who are going to feel the impacts of this market shift. I don’t even want to think about the preconstruction buyers who bought at the top of the market and are now on the hook for sale prices far above anything the bank will appraise.”

The Globe and Mail. “The trendiest type of home equity line of credit is in the crosshairs of Canada’s banking regulator, which is looking to curb risky borrowing as rising interest rates put added pressure on heavily indebted homeowners. The product under scrutiny is the readvanceable mortgage – a traditional mortgage combined with a line of credit that increases in size as a customer pays down the mortgage principal.”

“That sharp increase has caught OSFI’s attention. In a January speech, Superintendent Peter Routledge said readvanceable mortgages now make up ‘a significant portion of uninsured Canadian household mortgage debt.’ And while he acknowledged they can be useful financial tools when used responsibly, Mr. Routledge said ‘they can also create vulnerabilities’ for the financial system and increase the ‘risk of loss to lenders.'”

“‘HELOCs prevent a lot more defaults than they cause. The reason is simple. When times get tough and you have no fallback liquidity, readvanceable mortgages let you continue paying your mortgage,’ said Robert McLister, mortgage broker and strategist. What worries regulators is when stopgap measures turn into permanent solutions – a cycle of borrowing that the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada has labelled a ‘home equity extraction debt spiral.'”

The Daily Mail. “The Bank of England’s first ever book which vows to make learning about the economy ‘accessible’ to the masses has been branded ‘conceited’ and ‘patronising’ by critics. For £14.99, Can’t We Just Print Money? promises to explain the subject in ’10 bamboozling questions’, because ‘many of us have no idea how the economy actually works’.  Other social media users mocked the title of the book, with one tweeting: ‘Can’t we just print more money… you already did that, it’s led to 7% inflation and still growing with 10% predicted by your own governor, along with apocalyptic food prices.'”

From Bloomberg. “For global investors trying to gauge the fallout from surging interest rates and slowing economic growth, Hong Kong is quickly emerging as a must-watch market. ‘What’s difficult to predict is how bad sentiment can get globally. Things could get very volatile and systems could break before people get used to quantitative tightening. Hong Kong can’t be immune to that,’ said Rujing Meng, who lectures on finance at the University of Hong Kong.”

“The city has for more than a decade ridden a wave of cheap money inflated by central bank stimulus. The result of QE has been a property bubble, with residential prices rising 237% from 2008 through a record in August last year, Centaline data show. The abundance of money meant that even when the Fed raised borrowing costs in the 2015-2018 cycle, local rates stayed relatively low. The aggregate balance — a measure of interbank money supply in Hong Kong — is about 70 times greater than it was before the global financial crisis. Now, the flow of capital is going in the other direction.”

From ABC News. “About a year ago, Chinese billionaire Sun Hongbin was certain that his luxury real estate company Sunac China would never ‘bomb.’ Last week, his firm — China’s third-largest developer — defaulted, missing the deadline for coupon payments on a $US742 million ($1.1 billion) offshore bond.”

The Daily Telegraph on Australia. “More Sydney properties are being switched from auction to private treaty as buyer sentiment shifts from fear of missing out to fear of paying too much. ‘The mood of the buyer has changed in the sense that there is less urgency for them to act,’ auctioneer Damien Cooley said. ‘The mood of the vendor is more, ‘let’s try and get our property on the market and get it sold, because if the market does tank, we don’t want to be in a position where either we have to sell or we’ve missed the boat in terms of prices.'”

From Reuters. “Former Bank of England Governor Mervyn King said on Friday that central banks including the BoE are to blame for the current surge in inflation to its highest in 40 years, after doing too much quantitative easing during the pandemic. In more recent years he has criticized the scale of central bank asset purchases, which were funded by newly-created money. ‘When you get an intellectual mistake in policy, and you allow inflation to rise, if you’re then hit by bad luck – which is what happened in the 1970s and is happening now – it becomes a very unpleasant outcome,’ he said in remarks to Sky News.”

From NBC News. “When Floyd Mayweather started touting an obscure NFT project on Twitter this year, Tyler jumped at the investment opportunity. Tyler was also looking for investment opportunities and figured Mayweather, who often calls himself ‘Money May,’ was worth listening to. Tyler, 35, a property manager whose family runs a small Miami-based trucking company, said he put together about $12,000 with the help of his mother and bought the non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, digital tokens that convey ownership of digital images.”

“Those NFTs are now worth far less than Tyler paid. ‘This basically financially crippled me,’ said Tyler, who asked to be identified by only his first name because he fears online trolls who ridicule unsuccessful NFT investors. Now, especially with inflation, Tyler said, he is struggling to afford gas for his car and groceries to eat. He said he feels Mayweather and the other promoters ‘took their payouts and moved on while everybody who scraped by to invest in their futures got robbed.'”

The New York Post. “Melvin Capital is maybe the first — but certainly won’t be the last — hedge fund hammered out of business  as markets wean themselves off the heroin of cheap money that has propelled stocks and just about everything else for the past two-plus years. Hedge-fund investors, even those who run train wrecks like Melvin, do have a way of making it through tough times. They still have their homes in the Hamptons or Miami as collateral, and often much more than a few million bucks stashed away for a rainy day.”

“So don’t cry for the big guys taking it on the chin. The question is, do the average investors who became day traders in recent years and chased the bubble in crypto, meme stocks and other inflated assets deserve our sympathy? Nope. Among the biggest absurdities arising from the Fed-induced market bubble of the past two years is how many of these novice traders thought they were smarter than the market pros. They piled into stocks during the pandemic shutdowns because there was nothing better to do. And who can blame them? The Fed was pumping astronomical amounts of liquidity into the system, making stock trading a no-lose proposition.”

“It also distorted reality. Retail, armed with Reddit message-board ‘research,’ drank the Kool-Aid. The smart move if you were one of these retail types would be to realize this was a once-in-a-lifetime event, and proceed with caution. After all, anyone can be like Warren Buffett when Jerome Powell is printing money. I’m sure some did. But many more bought the fallacy that the market could only go up.”

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This Post Has 147 Comments

  1. ‘The abundance of money meant that even when the Fed raised borrowing costs in the 2015-2018 cycle, local rates stayed relatively low. The aggregate balance — a measure of interbank money supply in Hong Kong — is about 70 times greater than it was before the global financial crisis’

    This is what I mean about no reporting on the direct amount of magical money that’s been created, also meaning what has to be done to “correct” it for lack of a better description. It’s just insane. I don’t even know of care what a NFT is. A child could see this would blow up.

    So how do you draw down a 70 times amount of fake money Jerry?

        1. “You will OWN all the debts and be happy.”

          Correction: It is I who will own all the debts and it is I who will be happy.

    2. So how do you draw down a 70 times amount of fake money Jerry?

      You don’t. That’s the problem. And these clowns had the audacity to uncork a puny quarter point rate hike in March.

      1. Hong Kong small, China big. It does seem like there is no safe RE market or segment in China. It’s advanced so far that the real carnage is in the RE debt markets. That will be some of the poof.

  2. There are so many sycophants (syc·o·phant) analysts. It is rare to find a few that will actually call out stupidity among the ‘masters of the universe’.

    Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem lamely defends his institution, saying “we got more things right than we got wrong.” Nonsense. What the bank got wrong was the only thing that should matter to a central bank: controlling inflation.

    Macklem should follow former Fed Chair William Martin in acknowledging he has made a mistake. When Martin retired in 1970 with inflation running at 4.7 per cent, he frankly admitted at his farewell luncheon: “I’ve failed.” Such candour and the promise to do whatever it takes to return inflation to its two per cent target as soon as possible would restore the bank’s credibility a lot faster than its own speculation, however transparent, about possible future interest rate moves. The bank’s target needs to be inflation, not interest rates.

    1. Re: return inflation to its two per cent target

      Can somebody explain what is this targeted inflation B.S. is about when throughout the entire Industrial Revolution created by Visionaries, Innovators, Entrepreneurs and Risk-Takers, prices of everything including textiles, food, steel, transportation and the rest had kept DROPPING thereby raising people’s standard of living until a coterie of glorified bean counters who never produced anything and could not run a grocery store were put in charge of running the economy which they could not even define?

      Before Nixon permanently debased the USD in 1971 the U.S. was the manufacturing and financial giant of the world as well as the biggest creditor nation. Now thanks to the asinine actions of Greenspan, Bernanke, Yellen and now “transitory” Powell the USD has lost over 95% of its purchasing power and the U.S. has lost its gigantic manufacturing base (which Yamamoto has warned the Japanese High Command about before Pearl Harbor) and has become the biggest debtor nation . . .

      1. ‘The entire Industrial Revolution created by Visionaries, Innovators, Entrepreneurs and Risk-Takers, prices of everything including textiles, food, steel, transportation and the rest had kept DROPPING thereby raising people’s standard of living”

        This historical fact and known truth of how the world works was pulled from textbooks long ago.

        1. We had honest money back then. Then the robber barons of the era stood up the Federal Reserve in 1913.

          1. As a distinguished economist stated so eloquently, Get rates back up into the long term historic range of 12% to 15% and most of these problems go away on their own.”

            He’s right.

            Bend, OR Housing Prices Crater 15% YOY Defective Appraisals Blanket US Housing Market

            https://www.movoto.com/bend-or/market-trends/

      2. Can somebody explain what is this targeted inflation B.S. is about

        It’s about stealing the fruits of your labor, that is all. Inflation is a tax on labor and savings.

        1. I was getting 5.25% APY on a savings account with AmTrust Bank in 2008, with no minimum balance requirement.

  3. ‘A real estate lawyer friend of mine is currently trying to help clients north of the city figure out how to close on their new home next month with their current home unable to sell for even close to the price it was valued at back in March when they bought’

    There are many things to say after this K-da “shift.” Supply and demand aren’t laws. It’s relationships. For instance if a price goes up demand should go down. That’s not what happened but it is what happens in a mania.

    A mania also ends like this. Blow out euphoria followed by a similar price crash down. That’s what has happened. And this relationship of price and demand isn’t any different in California or Auckland or Miami.

    Did they build so many airboxes and shacks in greater Toronto that prices cratered? Nope. Those of us who said, get rid of the guberment/central bank gravy and prices will crater have been proven correct again. And it didn’t take much, did it?

    1. Those of us who said, get rid of the guberment/central bank gravy and prices will crater have been proven correct again. And it didn’t take much, did it?

      The government is the problem, both in Canuckistan and the US. They lie and try to talk a good game about “affordable housing,” but everything they are doing is intended to blow asset price bubbles.

  4. Australia election: A great shock to the system

    ‘It is akin to San Francisco, another great harbour city, losing all its Democrats.’

    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-61503380

    There’s another two bit tyrant looking fer a job: Alberta’s tough guy isn’t even going to run. Yes, these were the people who told you to stay in yer shack, close yer business don’t go to school, and then take the death injection or we’re firing you and other sh$t.

    The mass formation psychosis is lifting and has been for a while. When they announced the Honda Omicon, people didn’t care. I posted a video that same day of people in a mall in South Africa shopping and eating in a food court. Enough were sick of the lies and threats.

    We’re gonna beat the monkey pox outta you bashtards and then we’re gonna hang yer a$$.

      1. Pardon me sir but where might I find the nearest lamp post for me little parasitic friend here?

    2. Swapping out one globalist stooge for another and thinking anything is going to change – let us know how that works out for ya, Aussie sheeple.

        1. Plus we all know the new gooberment in Oz will be even more repressive with lockdowns and jabs. That an allegedly “conservative” government could was so repressive was both shocking and disheartening.

          Anyway, I expect the new leftist government will impose “price controls” in addition to runaway spending. It will be a train wreck to remember.

    3. We’re gonna beat the monkey pox outta you bashtards and then we’re gonna hang yer a$$.

      We have lost the rule of law. Treason has always been punishable by death. James Comey needs to ride ol’ sparky. Same with Hitlery Clinton. The list is looooooooooong.

    1. Perhaps you can put together a web crawler than aggregates falling housing prices that are appearing across the country…. and the internet.

      1. Better yet, webcams that capture the precise moment in time when FBs figure out they’re on the bullet train to Schlongville.

    2. It looks like mine automatically updated. How do the challenged people like myself post an image as you just did?

      1. simply include the URL of an image (ending in .jpg or .png, etc) in your comment.

        Note that only users of the extension will see the image in the comment. Everyone else will just see a link/url they can click to see it.

    3. if the joshua tree extension has a branch good fer
      a’hangin, count Deplorable in. haha!

      ( i even CAPITALIZED your name. that means yer in the will . .. whoaa)

    5. Thanks for posting the image of what FBs will soon feel against their buttocks.

  7. ‘Days on market have settled up to an average 144 days from a low of, well you know, one’

    Wa?

    ‘The best news might be that the past 30 days saw a 5% decrease in median price for all sold properties month-over-month back to January’

    No big deal, what’s a shack up there sell for 20 or 30K? 5% can’t be that much.

        2. The long term historic trend is 2x annual income for resale house, 2.5x for new.

  8. ‘I think it was unsustainable, the market, the way it was,’ he said. ‘I believe the market is going to level. I think it’ll be healthy but not crazy. A ‘normal’ market is a good thing for all of us’

    Denial

    Anger

    Bargaining <- Tim you are here.

  9. ‘For £14.99, Can’t We Just Print Money? promises to explain the subject in ’10 bamboozling questions’, because ‘many of us have no idea how the economy actually works’. Other social media users mocked the title of the book, with one tweeting: ‘Can’t we just print more money… you already did that’

    I put that in cuz it’s funny.

  10. Orange, CA Housing Prices Crater 11% YOY As Mortgage Defaults And Foreclosures Ravage Southern California

    https://www.movoto.com/ca/92705/market-trends/

    As one regulator shared, “Housing sales in California rival any of the known crime syndicates out there. And we’re getting set to deal with it.”

  11. ‘‘HELOCs prevent a lot more defaults than they cause. The reason is simple. When times get tough and you have no fallback liquidity, readvanceable mortgages let you continue paying your mortgage’

    Click!

    1. “readvanceable mortgages”

      I like to call them “Magical Miracle Mortgages”. They are magical and miraculous because, in effect, the houses buys itself. All that is needed for this magical miracle to ensue is for a multitude of neighbors to go crazy and pay up some very big bucks for the comps. The more big bucks the neighbors pay the greater the miracle.

  13. Re-post from the last thread.

    Russia Today — ‘Almost a quarter’ of humanity could go hungry – European leader (5/21/2022):

    “Nearly a quarter of the world’s population could run short of food if the war in Ukraine continues for much longer, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said during a speech at the 89th International Agricultural Fair in Novi Sad on Saturday.”

    Nearly a quarter? What is that, about 2 billion? Is that a lot?

    “If something does not change in the conflict in Eastern Europe, almost a quarter of the world will be in need of basic quantities of food, which will create new problems,” Vucic said in an address opening the week-long event in the Serbian city, which brings together exhibitors from 21 countries.”

    https://www.rt.com/news/555896-vucic-quarter-world-food-crisis/

    Globalists gonna globe.

    2. The famished hordes of Africa and the Middle East will be migrating in their millions to the globalist-run welfare states of Western Europe. It’s almost like this was the plan all along….

  14. I crossed paths with this old retired Japanese guy I used to work with yesterday at someone else’s retirement party. He told me that he had taken up real estate investment as a hobby in retirement. He was clearly proud of how much money he had made.

    I tried to warn him about the incipient crash, and he just laughed in my face.

    Then I told him about parties where lots of alcohol is consumed, and how the drunk people can stay drunk for quite a while after the alcohol runs out.

    And then I told him about how the recent real estate price runup was a lot like a tsunami, where the incoming wave lifts all the boats high above sea level, but the receding wave washes everything away except for the naked swimmers left behind on the beach.

    The conversation left me with the realization that there are plenty of investors out there with dumb borrowed money who have no clue of what is coming their way.

      2. Thank you, Jeff.

        I’m looking forward to running into my “friend” at another retirement party in a couple of years and asking if he followed my advice to dump his property HODLings before their prices nosedived.

    2. I tried to warn him about the incipient crash, and he just laughed in my face.

      I learned my lesson after last bubble. I keep my mouth shut. People don’t like the truth. Even after it blew up, some were angry and treated me with indifference like I somehow helped cause it.

      1. “Don’t be economic girly men” — Arnold Schwarzenegger, 2004

        Yes, he actually said this.

        1. Our RINO gubenator who mired the California state government in debt just before the Great Recession…

      2. ome were angry and treated me with indifference like I somehow helped cause it

        One thing you can do is say: “You lost everything and had to file for bankruptcy? Wow, dude, that’s rough. Me? No, I never bought any rental properties, I’m good.”

        1. If you share with them that the sole purpose of some people’s existence is to serve as a warning to others, they’ll probably appreciate the truth of that sentiment.

          1. “Experience keeps a dear school,
            but fools will learn in no other.”

            — Benjamin Franklin

      3. I’m looking forward to saying “I told you so” to this guy after his miniature real estate empire implodes. I can’t think of a more deserving mockery victim.

    1. Coatesville, PA

      Once the last stop in civilization before crossing the Brandywine into the frontier. Get your Conestoga wagon and a Kentucky rifle.

  17. Good Sunday Morning HBB.

    How much more are you paying for food and gas and electric and heating now, versus in January of 2021?

    I was at the local bar on Friday, and four beers and two whiskey shots with tip was $35.

    I took my nephew out to lunch in Denver a few weeks ago at a restaurant that was only meh and it was $55.

    Any fast food combo meal is now running at least $10.

    How much more are you paying?

    1. “How much more are you paying?”

      Well, the skin that was ripped off my @ss which has not grown back yet from the contract I signed at the end of the Trump administration for a job that started at the beginning of the Brandon administration which included 400 sheets of 1/2 inch plywood that I bid at $22 a sheet but cost $57.05 a sheet when I had to order it along with the 220 ten ft. 2x4s I had in at $4.75 each but cost $14.50 at show time etc.

      And I love me some $157.50 fill-ups in my F2-fiddy that cost $75.25 when MAGA was King.

      As far as fast food combo meals go I went to Wendy’s the other night and a couple of combo meals (which included 1 double Baconator meal 🙂 ) and an extra small chili was about $24 and if memory serves it was about $16 before the election was stolen and they waved those protesters into the Capitol before throwing them in the Gulag as a warning to the rest of us.

      Not to mention how I feel like I won the lottery when I find cream cheese, 1/2 and 1/2 or Gatorade at the grocery no matter what they charge for it.

      I guess I should thank my lucky stars I’m 62 years old and I don’t have any kids that need baby formula that can’t be had at any cost.

      Anyway, that’s what I’ve been paying.

      1. WOW.

        I haven’t been running work long enough now to have a good frame of reference, but the roll of 12-3 MC wire I picked up the other day for the common area lighting circuit on my job was almost $300 for one roll.

        Non work related, I invited one of my ladies from Back East to come out and visit late summer / early fall, and do a roadtrip down to Santa Fe and Taos, New Mexico and we are probably cancelling the trip because of inflation.

    2. All future increases in my fuel costs were prepaid by investment in energy stocks in spring 2020.

      1. I just looked up San Diego on the gasbuddy website and it says the average there for a gallon of regular is $6.01.

          1. PS However, I think I’m up 75% or so on my Vanguard Energy Stocks mutual fund HODLings, which should cover a lot of future fillups at whatever price.

    3. “Any fast food combo meal is now running at least $10.”

      Indeed. No more sausage, egg and cheese McMuffins over here. I can buy a box of eight in the frozen section from Jimmy Dean for less than the McD meal. If those go too high it’ll be back to Oatmeal again.

      1. In my neck of the woods the only drive thru that still has a longish line is the new Culvers. Everyplace else has short to no lines.

        Those Jimmy Dean egg sandwiches aren’t bad.

        1. Culvers is delicious! We have one near our current jobsite, but sadly half of the time the dining room is closed, and the drive through only offers half of the menu items.

          Dining room closed because nobody wants to work in the Joe Biden economy 🙁

        2. Most of the Jimmy Dean Delights breakfast products are pretty good but beware those with green pepper.

    4. two whiskey shots with tip

      Ironically, my favorite Scotch is exactly the same price at the store as a year ago. I haven’t bought any 2by lately, I can only afford Black Walnut for my projects!

      Marine fuel though, it is double. It will be a mostly low speed (no wake) trip down the river this year.

  18. I believe the market is going to level. I think it’ll be healthy but not crazy. A ‘normal’ market is a good thing for all of us.’”

    These REIC shills are recycling the same BS they were pitching as Housing Bubble 1.0 was starting to implode circa 2006-2007.

  19. Days on market have settled up to an average 144 days from a low of, well you know, one.

    Better get to sawin’ and slashin’ like you mean it, greedheads. It only gets worse from here.

    1. Martha’s Vineyard is mostly affluent summer homes. The demand for secondary homes has gone out to sea.

      1. 1/5/2022

        ​​’Washington, D.C. – Today, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) announced targeted increases to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s (the Enterprises) upfront fees for certain high balance loans and second home loans. High balance loans are mortgages originated in certain designated areas above the baseline conforming loan limit. The new fees will go into effect for deliveries and acquisitions beginning April 1, 2022, in order to minimize market and pipeline disruption.’

        ‘In April, upfront fees for high balance loans will increase between 0.25 percent and 0.75 percent, tiered by loan-to-value ratio. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac refer to these mortgages as high balance loans and super conforming loans, respectively. For second home loans, upfront fees will increase between 1.125 percent and 3.875 percent, tiered by loan-to-value ratio.’

        https://www.fhfa.gov/Media/PublicAffairs/Pages/FHFA-Announces-Targeted-Increases-to-Enterprise-Pricing-Framework.aspx

    2. What exactly blew up? Servers are not known for exploding. Was it a transformer or a UPS (battery backup system) that blew up?

      I also find the who “mining” nomenclature a bit absurd.

  22. Re: some real estate experts say the market is beginning to level off

    The classic definition of maxima in Calculus where the first derivative (slope) becomes zero and second derivative (rate of change of slope) becomes negative . . .

    1. When a cannon ball levels off, what is the very next thing that it does? Even a child knows this, without Calculus.

        1. True, but stating things so simply gets one no respect . . .
          This is So true with so many “intellectuals”, and so sad!

  23. From Zero Hedge:

    Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla explains Pfizer’s new tech to Davos crowd: “ingestible pills” – a pill with a tiny chip that send a wireless signal to relevant authorities when the pharmaceutical has been digested. “Imagine the compliance,” he says

    (Every “conspiracy theorist”: I f##king told you so!)

    1. a pill with a tiny chip that send a wireless signal to relevant authorities

      Ok, I’m curious. What powers this transmitter? Does the pill have a battery in it too? It’ll need some juice to broadcast a signal that could be picked up from some non trivial distance (like say to the nearest cell tower). How safe is it to swallow a battery (yeah, I know, TPTB don’t care). Does it use your stomach acid to generate power?

      If it’s an RFID chip, then something has to scan it. But what happens if its flushed down a toilet before you get close to an RFID scanner?

      What if I break open the pill and remove the chip, then drop it into some acid? Or just drop the whole pill into some acid to trigger the signal?

      2. FDA Gives Thumbs-up to EtectRx’s Wireless Smart Pills

        “The system is made up of the ID-Capsule, ID-Tag, ID-Cap Reader and the associated software. It provides real-time, dose-level data on when the pill is ingested. The ID-Capsule is a regular pharmaceutical capsule that contains the ID-Tag, which is an ingestible sensor. The ID-Tag produces a low-power digital message that is activated by the patient’s stomach fluid. The ID-Cap Reader is worn on a lanyard and it verifies the message as a valid ingestion event, forwarding the data to a secure smartphone-based mobile app and to the healthcare provider via a secure web-based portal.”

  24. US lied about Ukraine’s NATO prospects – ex-Obama official

    21 May, 2022

    Washington has been deliberately lying about Ukraine’s prospects to ever join NATO, knowing that the former Soviet republic isn’t a legitimate contender to qualify for membership of the Western military bloc, former US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul has acknowledged.

    https://www.rt.com/news/555895-us-ukraine-nato-prospects/

    Kamala Harris tweet mistakenly suggests Ukraine is part of NATO

    March 16, 2022

    “The United States stands firmly with the Ukrainian people in defense of the NATO alliance.”

    Callie Patteson
    March 16, 2022

    “When I was in Poland, I met with U.S. and Polish service members, thanking them for standing with our NATO allies for freedom, peace, and security,” read the tweet from @KamalaHarris, which was preserved in a screenshot taken by the WayBack Machine internet archive. “The United States stands firmly with the Ukrainian people in defense of the NATO alliance.”

    “This is the Vice President of the United States, sent [to] defuse what could be WWIII – including nukes – and she does not know the most basic facts about the situation,” tweeted former Navy SEAL Derrick Van Orden. “This is as dangerous as it is stupid.”

    https://nypost.com/2022/03/16/kamala-harris-tweet-mistakenly-suggests-ukraine-is-part-of-nato/

    2. My personal theory: the level of one’s support for “stand with Ukrainistan” is inversely proportional to the degrees of separation of that supporter from a family member or personal friend who has / or is enlisted in the United States military and served in combat.

      Ukraine isn’t a country, it’s a virtue signal.

  27. Published just now, less than two hours ago.

    The Hill — More than two-thirds in new poll say economy is bad:

    “A new poll shows 69 percent of Americans refer to the economy as “bad,” up from about 46 percent in the spring.

    The CBS/YouGov survey, conducted May 18-20, also shows more than 60 percent of Americans agree that the state of the nation is “uneasy,” as well as “worrying” and “frustrating.”

    Inflation hit a 40-year high in March and has remained near those levels. Meanwhile, gas prices continue to climb across the country. The Biden administration has been slammed for the economic woes, expected to be a major issue in the November midterm elections.”

    https://thehill.com/news/sunday-talk-shows/3497189-more-than-two-thirds-in-new-poll-say-economy-is-bad/

    69 percent, is that a lot?

    1. It gets even better:

      “In the new poll, a slight majority, or 51 percent, of Americans agree with the label of “weak” for the Democratic Party, while 49 percent agreed with the description of Democrats as “extreme.”

      Trannies raping kids in school bathrooms is extreme? Aborting live babies is extreme? Two million illegals a year crossing our southern border is extreme? $6 a gallon gas is extreme?

      “They’re not sending their best”

      I was on the phone with my mother who is in her 70s earlier today and she said it feels like we are living through a civilization collapse.

      At least there’s no more mean tweets now…

    2. A new poll shows 69 percent of Americans refer to the economy as “bad,”

      It’s showing in discretionary spending. When you have to spend a lot more at the pump and at the grocery checkout, you cut back on non-essentials. You eat out less. You spend less at Target and WalMart. You skip upgrading the phone, and if your hand is forced, you buy a cheap one. You don’t impulse purchase cr@p from Amazon and other online retailers. You cancel the cable/satellite/streaming.

      This summer should be a good time to go on a vacation, as many will be cancelling their plans. Beaches, hotels, restaurants, theme parks, etc. will be less crowded.

  28. This is a urine soaked mattress article.

    The Hill — As cases rise, Americans are ‘checked out’ on COVID-19 (5/21/2022):

    “COVID-19 cases are on the rise, but many Americans are over thinking of the virus as a crisis.

    Even in blue cities, restaurants are packed with people, and many Americans don’t wear masks even on the subway or on airplanes.”

    Checked out?

    Hey Jeff, do we need to like, check in or something? Everyone must check in?

    “Amid this national attitude, it may be extremely difficult for local or national leaders to try to reimpose any COVID-19 restrictions.”

    Go ahead and try, sh*tbags. This isn’t Australia or New Zealand.

    “An Axios-Ipsos poll this week found just 36 percent of Americans said there was significant risk in returning to their “normal pre-coronavirus life.”

    At the same time, cases are rising to over 100,000 per day.”

    The concept of a “case” is meaningless, because there is no actual medical diagnosis of a case.

    https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/3496253-as-cases-rise-americans-are-checked-out-on-covid-19/

    The number of people wearing masks around Denver is increasing. Additional link for them:

    https://www.amazon.com/bedwetter-mattress-cover/s?k=bedwetter+mattress+cover

    1. “Amid this national attitude, it may be extremely difficult for local or national leaders to try to reimpose any COVID-19 restrictions.”

      I will not wear a mask again. I’m done.

      1. I think the Canada Freedom Convoy was the turning point.

        Not for Canada, but for here in the U.S. Had that happened here (as it almost did) it could have been the tipping point into a new civil war.

        It’s not over either. Everyone who ever supported firing people from their jobs for not taking a non-vaccine “vaccine” has a name.

        They have a name. And (waves at Glowie) they will face justice in a courtroom, or we will have no choice but to hunt them down, and kill them.

        No Glowie, but you will not be forgotten.

    2. At the same time, cases are rising to over 100,000 per day.”

      And 90,000+ are asymptomatic, meaning they aren’t sick at all.

      So, how many weeks until the screeching doctors reappear on the local evening news, imploring everyone to get jabbed or boosted?

    1. The link works.

      I haven’t spent much time in Texas. What is the average monthly summer electric bill to run the A/C in one of these shacks?

      1. This one would probably be north of $400 or $500 a month, I’m not sure:

        $1,360,000 5 bd 5 ba 4,328 sqft
        Price cut: $132.5K (5/17)
        4022 Carmel Rd, Celina, TX 75009

        New construction

        https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/4022-Carmel-Rd-Celina-TX-75009/242107099_zpid/

        Date Event Price

        5/17/2022 Price change $1,360,000 (-8.9%) $314/sqft

        5/3/2022 Listed for sale $1,492,500 $345/sqft

        3/12/2022 Pending sale $1,492,500 $345/sqft

        3/7/2022 Listed for sale $1,492,500 $345/sqft

        Looks like they had it under contract in March, fell out and slash! after two weeks.

        1. We had a blackout last week that found me practicing guitar by flashlight. It was fun, though I didn’t enjoy having my computer shut off when I was almost finished with a hellishly difficult report I was working on.

    2. “What is the average monthly summer electric bill to run the A/C in one of these shacks?”

      Whatever it is, it would definitely be higher if you were allowed to run your AC.

      Published: 12:14 PM CDT May 17, 2022

      AUSTIN, Texas — Is the Texas power grid ready for summer 2022 heat?

      It’s the question on everyone’s mind as ERCOT sends periodic notices to the public urging Texans to conserve energy as the state undergoes an early heatwave. And, on Friday, six power generation facilities tripped offline, prompting ERCOT to again ask Texans to conserve power.

      https://www.kvue.com/article/news/local/texas-power-grid-summer-2022-heat/269-8e7e3ca7-e8cb-424b-9b28-37ef0fd05aa6

      1. We have been warned in my neck of the woods that there is a small risk of blackouts during extreme peak consumption periods.

    3. I am truly shocked by how many people, I don’t care if they’re speculators, can actually afford to buy and carry these massive monthly debt anchors.

      1. Some people have ridiculously stupid high incomes. But that will be changing soon.

        I know a guy who runs a local residential HVAC firm. I remember he was living the high life before the 2008 crash, after which he lost everything as he was overleveraged to the hilt. He used to live on my street then traded up, twice. Before the crash he had some 6000 sq ft monstrosity on acreage, all the toys, etc. Then, poof, it was all gone. He did eventually restart his business. I haven’t stayed in touch with him, so for all I know he has another mansion he’ll be losing again soon.

    4. So many down arrows. So many nearly identical and very ugly houses. Vaulted ceilings in a hot climate?

    1. Imagine the compliance, indeed. You can’t call this a conspiracy theory when these gold collar criminals are completely up-front about what they’re planning for us.

      1. No Glowie (waves at Glowie) but considering that this will likely never get resolved in the court system, we are going to have to hunt down and kill these people. ALL of these people.

        No Glowie, but 4chan can deliver the goods.

        It’s a f*ing medical genocide.

          3. “It was mighty hard,” writes Crockett, “to go against such arguments as these. But my countrymen had been murdered, and I knew that the next thing would be that the Indians would be scalping the women and children all about there, if we didn’t put a stop to it. I reasoned the case with her as well as I could, and told her that if every man would wait till his wife got willing for him to go to war, there would be no fighting done until we all should be killed in our own houses; that as I was as able to go as any man in the world, and that I believed it was a duty I owed to my country. Whether she was satisfied with this reasoning or not she did not tell me, but seeing I was bent on it, all she did was to cry a little, and turn about to her work.”

            ‘David Crockett hastened to Winchester.’

            http://www.bookrags.com/ebooks/4355/37.html#gsc.tab=0

          4. In general, people do not fight back when they still have something to lose.

            Of course, if our founding fathers were of that ilk, this country wouldn’t exist…

          5. “It was mighty hard,” writes Crockett

            I just bought this book to give to one of my grandsons to read on our June fishing trip.

    3. This is a list (warning pdf file) of the attendees at the 2022 Davos World Economic Forum meeting:

      https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_AM22_List_of_confirmed_PFs.pdf

      These people are *NOT* soft targets.

      If you have a stage 4 cancer diagnosis, but still have enough energy, consider doing the rest of humanity of favor and taking one or more of them out.

      Switzerland is a separate jurisdiction from the United States, plan accordingly.

      Glowies gonna glow, but just imagine if that dumb kid who shot up the supermarket in Buffalo, New York channeled his energy away from killing innocent shoppers, and into confronting true evil.

      The World Economic Forum is evil. God will forgive you, because it’s not murder.

      1. Unintended Consequences by John Ross would make good reading material for a person facing such a medical condition.

        1. Unintended Consequences by John Ross

          ‘Its thesis, as discussed in the “Author’s Note – A Warning and Disclaimer” in the beginning of the book, is that enough bullying, by what is widely perceived as a hostile occupation government, will inevitably end in revolt if the occupied area is large enough and has a culture that is significantly different from the occupying state, and that this revolt will be undefeatable if the rebels use very low-tech “leaderless resistance.”

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unintended_Consequences_(novel)

        2. “Unintended Consequences” is a Libertarian propaganda novel serving as a treatise on the history of firearms rights in the United States of America, which has been compared by many public figures to works written by Ayn Rand. Originally published in 1996, the copyright was preemptively terminated by the author, Mr. John Ross in 2009, as indicated on the more recent softcover editions of the book, which were published beginning in 2010. The text is therefore now in the public domain, though the movie rights to the work are retained by the author.

          https://archive.org/details/unintended-consequences-by-John-Ross/

  31. ‘Can’t we just print more money… you already did that, it’s led to 7% inflation and still growing with 10% predicted by your own governor, along with apocalyptic food prices.’

    Heckuva job, global central banking cartel members!

    1. Whoever wrote the article posted below is either a clueless idiot or a liar. Anyone who was awake during the 2007-2009 episode knows the housing market took a deep dive that lasted until the Fed aimed its money-printing bazooka at the housing market, starting in 2012.

      Work in Progress
      The U.S. Housing Market Has Peaked
      But no, we’re not headed for anything even close to 2008. CLICK!
      By Derek Thompson
      A crow perches on a negative trend line that creates the outline of a house’s roof and chimney.
      The Atlantic
      May 19, 2022

      If you’ve tried to buy a home in the past two years, you have my most profound sympathies. Your experience has probably gone something like this: You found your dream home online; sent photos around to your family; visited the premises (or decided to buy, sight unseen); got your financial statements in order; smartly offered 10 percent over asking; and learned, several hours later, that no fewer than 831 other people had bid for the same house, which sold to a couple who paid 50 percent over asking, all cash, and cinched the deal with a contract amendment promising to name their firstborn child after the seller.

      Yes, the American real-estate market really has been historically hellish, or historically hot, depending on whether you were trying to buy a home or sell one. Within the past year, just about every housing statistic you could imagine set some kind of berserk record. Home prices hit a record high, the share of homes that sold above asking hit a record high, and the number of available homes for sale hit a record low.

      But the vibe is shifting. I count at least three signs that the national housing market is about to experience a significant slowdown.

      First, as the Federal Reserve raises interest rates to combat inflation, mortgage rates are soaring. In April, the 30-year fixed rate surpassed 5 percent for the first time in more than a decade. As borrowing becomes more expensive, so does buying.

      If you take the long view, financing a house is still pretty cheap. The 30-year rate is lower today than it was for any month except one (June 2003) from the 1990s to the Great Recession. But on an annualized basis, rates are rising faster than at any time in 40 years. Buyers seem to have anticipated this moment. In the late winter, one index of housing prices hit its highest month-to-month increase ever, which might suggest that home buyers said “Ah, screw it!” and made ridiculous offers to lock in a cheaper mortgage rate, just before rates took off.

      Second, the number of homes for sale—a.k.a. housing inventory—is finally perking up after plunging to all-time lows during the pandemic.

      In the hottest markets, such as California and Colorado, the number of available homes is increasing significantly faster than the national average, according to Altos Research, while the share of new listings going into contract “immediately” (meaning within days, or even hours) is declining quickly.

      Inventory doesn’t sound as sexy as home prices, but this might be the single most important statistic to watch. “My view has been that the market shift will show up first in inventory, [because] as inventory increases, house-price growth will slow,” says Bill McBride, a real-estate and economics writer.

      In 2006, McBride famously called America’s housing bubble when he saw inventory skyrocketing to absurd highs. Today doesn’t look anything like 2006, he assured me. During the worst of the housing crash, inventory as a share of the market was about five times higher than it is today. Instead, McBride said that the next few years will likely resemble the period around 1980. To combat high inflation from the 1970s, the Fed Chair Paul Volcker hiked up interest rates, jolting the economy into a deep recession. The housing market basically stalled until 1982.
      …

      1. “Today doesn’t look anything like 2006, he assured me.”

        Insanely overvalued prices rising at double-digit rates? Check

        Greater fool investors snapping up anything that goes for sale? Check

        Subprime borrowers taking ever riskier financing to get into a house, any house? Check

        Waved inspections and bid wars above list on any home that is listed for sale? Check

        Yep…it’s just like 2006.

        “During the worst of the housing crash, inventory as a share of the market was about five times higher than it is today.”

        But that inventory can rocket up as fast as LUNA crypto rocketed down to $0.

  33. does anyone know if there are any ETFs or other investments that short the the us housing market? i know the S&P case/shiller housing has three housing indexes that are priced quarterly. seems like most of the real estate short funds are just reits. thanks for any info.

    1. Direxion Daily Real Estate Bear 3X Shares
      NYSEARCA: DRV
      It tends to move with the 10 yr yield though

  34. The Financial Times
    Global Economy
    Business leaders warn that three-decade era of globalisation is ending
    Executives and investors gather in Davos to discuss mounting economic and financial challenges
    Since the World Economic Forum last met in Davos in January 2020, the supply chains that underpin globalisation have weakened
    Kaye Wiggins and Antoine Gara in New York and Jamie Smyth in Cambridge, Massachusetts
    9 hours ago

    The three-decade era of globalisation risks going into reverse according to company executives and investors, as world leaders prepare to meet in the Swiss town of Davos for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic began.

    The geopolitical fallout from Russia’s war in Ukraine, combined with the disruption to global supply chains caused by the virus, recent market turmoil and the rapidly worsening economic outlook leave corporate leaders and investors grappling with vital strategic decisions, several told the Financial Times in interviews.

    “Tension between the US and China was accelerated by the pandemic and now this invasion of Ukraine by Russia — all these trends are raising serious concerns about a decoupling world,” said José Manuel Barroso, chair of Goldman Sachs International and a former president of the European Commission.
    …

    1. “Business leaders warn that three-decade era of globalisation is ending”

      Here’s to hoping that a generation of foreign real estate investors in US housing go bankrupt and lose everything when US residential craters over the next half decade.

    1. Market Snapshot
      Buy the dip or sell the ‘rip’?: What’s ahead for stock investors as ‘sticky’ inflation fears heighten consumer concern
      Last Updated: May 21, 2022 at 9:38 a.m. ET
      First Published: May 21, 2022 at 9:09 a.m. ET
      By Christine Idzelis
      Stock-market bottoms tend to form after a ‘panic selloff,’ says Tastytrade’s chief market strategist

      The stock market has been rocky amid rising recession risks and high inflation.

      Investors, already grappling with a sinking stock market and fears that the U.S. economy may be heading for a recession, now turn their focus to the consumer. For one thing, consumer discretionary stocks are among the hardest hit.

      The market’s fixation on peak inflation and how many times the Federal Reserve could hike interest rates is giving way to recession fears, according to Paul Christopher, head of global market strategy at Wells Fargo Investment Institute.

      That shift was seen over the past week, as stocks sank amid investor worries over consumer spending trends, said Christopher, in a phone interview.

      “The market is finally starting to price in realistically a recession,” he said.

      For now, the mood of consumers has proven as hard to pin down as market entries and exits.

      The slump has been “very difficult to sit through,” said JJ Kinahan, chief market strategist for online brokerage firm Tastytrade Inc., in a phone interview. “It’s like going in and boxing day after day, getting your butt kicked, but you haven’t been knocked out yet. So you have to go back in and box again.”

      Stocks have not yet seen a “big low,” and because the market is vulnerable to a bear-market rally, sell any “rips,” advised investment strategists at BofA Global Research, in a May 19 note.
      …
      https://www.marketwatch.com/story/buy-the-dip-or-sell-the-rip-whats-ahead-for-stock-investors-as-sticky-inflation-fears-heighten-consumer-concern-11653138573?mod=home-page

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