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Now The Whole Industry Is Panicking

A report from CNBC. “‘I think over the next quarter or two there will be some price discovery as we match up mortgage payments with pricing,’ said Doug Bauer, CEO of Tri Pointe Homes. ‘The consumer, really, it was mid-June that we saw this kind of pullback, that pause. I kidded our sales people the other week that they’d gone from order takers to financial therapist.'”

“‘We have to work harder to sell homes. We have to be more nimble,’ Pulte CEO Ryan Marshall said on a conference call with investors. ‘Home price appreciation has slowed, stopped, or, through the use of incentives, is taking a couple of steps back. Through much of the second quarter, incentives were mostly tied to the mortgage, but this is now expanding to include discounts on options and lot premiums.'”

From ABC 11 in North Carolina. “New home sales have dropped 8% from May to June and more than 17% from June of last year. ‘We are seeing some price reductions, which we haven’t seen that in a couple years now,’ said Compass Realtor Danni Dichito. Ashton Woods recently slashed prices by $20,000 on a number of available townhomes in one development. Other builders are offering as much as $10,000 toward closing costs. ‘It’s been a huge shift, especially throughout COVID. No incentives were being offered to buyers,’ said Dichito.”

From Fox 5 in Georgia. “The deal Is off! Last month alone, it happened 60,000 times nationwide, and it’s happening in Atlanta as well. Just earlier this year, FOX 5 real estate expert John Adams was talking about sellers putting up a for sale sign and getting maybe 10 offers for full price or even above. Now things have changed. Home sales are getting canceled at the highest rate since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Buyers aren’t just canceling contracts in Atlanta, they are doing so in record numbers. During the month of June, the U.S. contract failure rate was about 14%. But here in metro Atlanta, we saw contracts fall apart at a might higher rate of 22%, and Adams can’t tell you why.”

The Dallas Morning News in Texas. “When Lori Buckley of Euless logged onto work for her job at First Guaranty Mortgage Corp. on June 24, she wasn’t expecting it to be the last time. She was among more than 400 employees who unexpectedly lost their jobs with the mortgage lender on that day in June, and the company filed for bankruptcy a week later. A few minutes later, her access to the company’s computer system was terminated. Just before the call, Buckley said she was in another meeting to discuss an expansion of the company’s non-qualified mortgage loans.”

“Jay Davies, a senior loan officer based remotely in North Carolina, had been with the company since July 2021 and said he was terminated from the company in not one, but two mass layoffs this year. Up until April, Davies was on a team focused on refinance loans and said it felt like ‘swimming upstream a little bit.’ He was trying to get more purchase loans into his pipeline, reaching out to real estate agents he had worked with in the past.”

“‘It was getting increasingly more difficult to get the refinance [loans],’ Davies said. ‘Not to the point where I felt like the company was in trouble, I thought it was more like, from my own bottom line, I needed to find different streams of revenue.’ In April, he and about 300 other employees lost their jobs, Davies said. ‘I think we all were in shock,’ he said. ‘We had been digging pretty hard to continue to put loans in and find different ways to do things.'”

A press release. “Popular migration destinations where home prices soared during the pandemic are most likely to see the effects of a housing downturn amplified and home prices decline year over year if the economy goes into a recession, according to Redfin. ‘Boise’s market is already turning around, as a lot of the people who moved to Idaho during the pandemic are either moving back to their hometowns or cashing in and moving to more affordable places,’ said Boise Redfin agent Shauna Pendleton. ‘Sellers are asking me if the cash buyers from California are still around, hoping they’ll swoop in and offer to buy their home for more than the asking price–but that’s not happening much anymore, and the cash buyers who are in the market are often offering below the asking price. I don’t expect home values to plummet, but we do need to come down from the clouds at some point and sellers need to adjust their expectations to the new reality.'”

From KPCW on Utah. “‘Well, there for a while, properties would go on, you’d have multiple offers, they would just move quickly,’ said Rene Wood, President of the Park City Board of Realtors. ‘Now sellers need to understand is taking a little bit longer. And they’re kind of panicking, because it’s not happening as quickly as it was their neighbors sold and, you know, had 10 offers in two days. And now that’s not happening.'”

Hawaii Real Estate Dreams. “Kona condo inventory held in the 20s for six months, starting in October of last year. Then in April they moved into the 30s for two months, and now they have moved to 43. That’s double from just a few months ago. House inventory also climbed again this month to 90 in all price points. The really good news for buyers is that inventory under a million is climbing as well. Condos went up to 40 available and houses to 21… yay!”

“Pending sales are telling… in April houses and condos combined had 167 pending sales, today that number is only 116 with inventory not as much of a factor since that is increasing. For the first time since January of 2021, available inventory has risen over the pending sales, a factor of pendings dropping and inventory increasing. This is another sign we are in the midst of a big shift in our market, from a sellers’ market to a buyers’ market, and I would say it is already here and we just don’t know it yet.”

The Bay Area Newsgroup in California. “The Bay Area’s once-scorching pandemic housing market continued to cool in June, with home prices plunging to the largest monthly drop for this time of the year in at least three decades. In June, the median price of existing single-family houses in the nine-county region declined 7% from the previous month — from just over $1.5 million to $1.4 million, according to data for the California Association of Realtors. That’s the steepest May-to-June dip ever recorded in the association’s regional home sales data, which dates back to 1990.”

“Paddy Kehoe, a real estate agent with Compass in the East Bay, said active sellers now have to be more thoughtful about how they put homes on the market. ‘If it is marginally overpriced it’s not going to sell,’ Kehoe said. ‘Today, you have to know 100% what the price should be.'”

From KRON 4 in California. “There’s been a 90-percent jump in foreclosures in the Bay Area since last year. ‘What’s happening is lenders, who granted forbearance during COVID, are now requiring them to come up with all the arrears from the forbearance period, in addition to making their monthly mortgage payment,’ Jason Estavillo, of Estavillo Law Group told KRON 4. He says mortgage companies are requiring homeowners to make a balloon payment, saying to lenders, ‘Even if you make your monthly payment, we’re not going to accept it, until you come up with the arrears.'”

From Curbed New York. “At the weekly foreclosure auctions in Brooklyn, decades are undone in the space of a few minutes. Drew has a lot of friends; the auctions can feel as much like a social club for self-identified entrepreneurs as a staging ground for what might be the worst event of a person’s life. I asked him what brings people to the courthouse, week after week. ‘People come here for opportunity,’ he said. ‘Or out of desperation,’ countered Jonathan, another regular who arrived in New York from Trinidad as a teen and says he flipped his first house in less than 60 days after getting into the game. Jonathan didn’t have much sympathy for people on the losing end of the transaction. ‘How do people lose houses in this market? Does that make sense to you?’ But Drew, glancing at my notebook, was more contrite: ‘People have financial troubles,’ he said.”

The Sudbury Star in Canada. “Sudburians are – on average – paying just over 40 per cent of their monthly income on mortgages — much lower than residents in London (62 per cent), Kitchener-Waterloo (63 per cent), and Hamilton and Barrie (76 per cent). The average homeowner in the Greater Toronto Area is paying all of their monthly income on the mortgage, the report said.”

From CTV News in Canada. “A new report by RBC forecasts housing sales will drop about 40 per cent in the next year, while real estate prices will fall about 12 per cent overall. ‘We are currently down 18 per cent in that time already here in Simcoe County, so does that mean we’ve already reached the floor from their prediction? It’s really hard to say,’ said Luc Woolsey, president of the Barrie and District Association of Realtors.”

The Globe and Mail in Canada. “122 White Spruce Cres., Vaughan, Ont. Asking price: $1,997,000 (May, 2022). Previous asking price: $2,199,500 (April, 2022). Two Toronto buyers set out this spring in search of a new property with a specific list of demands – but a price below $2-million. They visited five options, and the best fit was this five-bedroom house in the Valleys of Thornhill neighbourhood, but it was over their budget. In May, the asking price was dropped below their threshold and their offer $67,000 below that was accepted.”

“‘They saw it back then when it was $2.2-million and really felt they couldn’t afford that kind of number,’ Vadim Vilensky, the buyers’ agent said. ‘It was a crazy time in the area where everything had been selling for over $2.2- or $2.3-million, so we had to be a bit patient finding the right moment to go in with an offer and make it happen.'”

The NL Times. “After years of outbidding being the only way to buy a house in the Netherlands, home seekers can now haggle for a lower price again, brokers said to the Telegraaf. ‘We see that the market is turning. Bids are declining. Viewings are declining. Brokers and consumers just have to get used to it again,’ Gijs van Wijgerden, director of Makelaarsland, said to the newspaper. ‘Our job is getting more fun again. It is no longer just submitting an offer.'”

From ABC Business. “A fast-growing mortgage boycott across dozens of cities in China has prompted some property suppliers to cease their bank loan repayments, raising fears the escalating situation could trigger a further downward spiral in the sector and even threaten the country’s financial stability. Hundreds of landscapers, sculpture-makers and construction companies have expressed their anger that they have been bled dry because some debt-saddled developers did not pay their bills while they continued to service or help build apartments, Chinese media Caixin reported.”

“The ABC has seen one joint statement, circulating on social media, signed by a group of contractors and suppliers of Evergrande in Hubei Province saying they are ‘broke,’ have ‘lost hope’ and will stop paying all loans and arrears. ‘We have been struggling for more than a year, we have sold our assets and cars, and have exhausted our credit cards to pay the bills,’ said the letter, which was addressed to the provincial banks and authorities in Hubei. ‘Now the whole industry is panicking.'”

“Some critics say Beijing’s “three red lines” scheme — which was introduced about two years ago in order to reduce debt within the industry, curb runaway property prices and lift construction standards — has gone too far. ‘Initially it would be potentially a positive thing, it would help prevent the risk of a market bubble,’ Rebecca Choong Wilkins, Asia politics and government correspondent for Bloomberg said. ‘But part of the issue with developers was they did have this extraordinary access to very cheap credit or what was the equivalent of quite cheap credit in the offshore market. So many global investors actually have quite a lot of exposure to Chinese developers via their corporate bonds. And this was once one of the most profitable corporate bond trades in the world that has since been demolished by this crackdown.'”

The Daily Mail. “Avocado growers are pleading with consumers to eat their produce up as Australia is overloaded with the popular fruit, sending prices to an all-time low. Increases in supply have caused a drop in prices at the register to around $1 each – almost 50 per cent compared to the five-year average. The report concluded a significant maturing of trees in the past season, primarily in Western Australia and Queensland, has lead to the national oversupply. A bumper crop in Western Australia was a turning point, with the state’s estimated production up a staggering 265 per cent.”

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This Post Has 120 Comments

  1. From the 17 minute video above:

    Toronto Home Prices Hit 20 Month Low – July 20
    Team Sessa Real Estate
    Toronto Real Estate Market Report for the week of July 14 – July 20, 2022.

  2. ‘‘Home price appreciation has slowed, stopped, or, through the use of incentives, is taking a couple of steps back. Through much of the second quarter, incentives were mostly tied to the mortgage, but this is now expanding to include discounts on options and lot premiums’

    Fooking recent buyers.

  3. ‘In May, the asking price was dropped below their threshold and their offer $67,000 below that was accepted’

    That’s the spirit!

  4. ‘A few minutes later, her access to the company’s computer system was terminated. Just before the call, Buckley said she was in another meeting to discuss an expansion of the company’s non-qualified mortgage loans’

    Sound lending!

  5. There 12+ year era of cheap and easy money is ending.

    “Jonathan didn’t have much sympathy for people on the losing end of the transaction. ‘How do people lose houses in this market? Does that make sense to you?’ But Drew, glancing at my notebook, was more contrite: ‘People have financial troubles,’ he said.”

    1. “Jonathan didn’t have much sympathy for people on the losing end of the transaction. ‘How do people lose houses in this market? Does that make sense to you?’
      He pretty well summarizes my thoughts on this whole topic. However, I suspect this is just the beginning.

    2. It’s not unseasonable. The market was insane, literally no one could lose money on a house the last 2 years. You get behind, you sell the house, clear the debt, no problem. Actually letting it go to foreclosure is just a refusal on the part of the homeowner to deal with the issue. In a declining market it’s a whole different issue, but the man’s comment is spot on.

    1. They’re coming for the cars.

      the World Economic Forum (FEC) wants to end “wasteful” private vehicle ownership and instead replace it with “communal sharing” of cars in an effort to reduce global demands for fossil fuels and precious metals.

      A paper published by WEF argues that private vehicles are not good for the earth and that most vehicles are barely used.

      In related news: the average price of a new car is $48,000, which is greater than the median wage. They won’t have to ban them, they will just continue to make them more and more unaffordable (hence the rush to quickly phase out ICE cars and replace them with even costlier EVs), and make the cost of operating them more unaffordable. That way, when Joe Sixpack can no longer afford a car, he will believe that at least he’s saving the planet, and accept his fate.

      And of course, the people who matter will still have cars.

        1. Monday’s child is fair of face
          Tuesday’s child is full of grace,
          Wednesday’s child is full of woe,
          Thursday’s child has far to go,
          Friday’s child is loving and giving,
          Saturday’s child works hard for a living,
          But the child who is born on the Sabbath Day
          Is bonny and blithe and good and gay.

  8. “The average homeowner in the Greater Toronto Area is paying all of their monthly income on the mortgage”

    Sounds sustainable.

    1. Does that mean the “above average” homeowner in GTA is paying more than his monthly income?

      Mr. Banker’s Canadian cousin sounds diabolical.

      1. Waiting for the stories about the poor poor Canadians that cannot qualify for refinancing when their 3 year mortgage expires.

        1. I can’t even begin to imagine financing a shack that way. The uncertainty has to be agonizing.

  9. Latest from #ClownWorld

    Police are forced to escort drag queen to safety after protesters storm ‘story hour’ event at library for three to 11-year-olds and tell ‘woke’ parents: ‘He’s probably teaching their children that there are 100 genders’

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11052687/Police-forced-escort-Drag-Queen-safety-protesters-storm-childrens-event.html

    Police were forced to escort a drag queen to safety after a group of protestors stormed a ‘Story Hour’ event run for three to 11-year-old children at a library.

    Thames Valley Police were called to a protest of around 25 people outside a library in Abbey Square, Reading, at around 9.30am on Monday morning.

    The demonstrators claimed they had turned up to ‘protect children’ and shouted at ‘woke’ parents who are ‘probably teaching their children that there are 100 genders’ as they walked inside the ticket-only event.

    1. and shouted at ‘woke’ parents

      It is mind boggling that any parent would subject their child to such depravity. They truly are sacrificing them to Moloch.

      1. This was in the UK.

        Here in the USA, we are approaching the point where violence will be the only solution (no Glowie, but…)

        One of the central tenets of Marxism is the destruction of the nuclear family and that children are the property of the state. Marxists gonna Marx, until some groomer librarians and groomer teachers and groomer school administrators start dying.

        There’s no negotiating with these groomers. One of the millions of p*ssed off parents out there is gonna decide they’ve had enough and declare it’s Go Time.

        Blue Checkmarks, now that you’re coming after the kids, you need to DIE.

      1. Real Journalists.

        The UK Daily Mail is Murdoch owned controlled opposition media. They, and the New York Post, will scratch the surface, but always retreat to a pro-globalist narrative (i.e. their failure to accurately report that Russia is, in fact, winning the war in Ukranistan).

        Scripted outrage narratives, but always with Real Journalist boundaries. Half of Tim Pool’s content is from the Daily Mail, which is of course Newsguard™ approved.

        As always, HBBers, aim for the Blue Checkmarks.

        One-way helicopter rides to the ocean (hat tip to Pinochet) are coming your way, globalist sh*tbags 🙂

      1. Back in the day a 13-oz police sap would put that feisty kid into sleep mode with the first blow.

  13. ‘Through much of the second quarter, incentives were mostly tied to the mortgage, but this is now expanding to include discounts on options and lot premiums.’

    Historic housing prices are 2x annual head of household income for resale, 2.5x annual head of household income for new construction.

    Speaking of construction. Production cost doesn’t care about pandemics, location or personal opinion. As we all know and understand, production cost range is on the order of $45-$55 a square foot. Production cost has always governed cost baseline in the absence of appraisal and mortgage fraud.

    Santa Ana, CA Housing Prices Crater 14% YOY As Double Digit Price Declines Blanket Orange County California

    https://www.movoto.com/ca/92706/market-trends/

      1. My dad was making $200/wk (10K) in the early 60’s when he bought a 20K house. 2X. This was in Orange Co, SoCal. He could have spent more had he bought closer to LA.

        1. This is the per capital income from 1967 from the US census bureau.

          https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/cps/tables/time-series/historical-income-people/p01ar.xlsx

          Same as above to 1947 for families

          https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/cps/tables/time-series/historical-income-families/f01ar.xlsx

          Here is the median home price from 1965 from the St Louis Fed.

          https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MSPUS

          In 1965 median family income was about 6000$ and the median house was 20,200$ for a ratio a bit above three.

          In 1975 the median family income was about 13000$ and the average house was 37, 200$ For a ratio of about 3.

          For 1985, the numbers were about 28000$ and about 85,000$, respectively, for a ratio of about three.

          Interesting that census bureau income data does give a lower ratio but it appears to be about 3.

          1. FedRea data is case shiller=garbage.

            Census bureau has new and resale historic data.

        2. MB, if you have historical data to support your assertion, it would be great to see it. I have never seen any historical data for the modern era in the US showing a ratio that low. But if it were correct, it would mean the current bubble is a greater statistical anomaly than presumed even by the most ardent bubble watchers.

          1. No assertions. Just the facts.

            https://www.census.gov/construction/nrs/historical_data/index.html

            But back to the core issue. There seems to be a reluctance to discuss appraisal and mortgage fraud.

            Let’s put aside appraisal fraud momentarily and take a look at production cost. Our firm has designed and put out to bid billions in construction contracts over the 90 years we’ve been in business. Perhaps tens of billions. We develop plans, drawings and specifications and they hand them to my group(construction) to estimate, price, vet subs and get these shitholes built. We don’t care what the cost is. The cost is what it is. We simply get it built according to plans and specs. Once its built, it’s handed over to the owner with a CO at substantial completion. It isn’t worth more than the cost of materials, labor, overhead and profit at the point of substantial completion. Logically it’s impossible… but it happens …only 18 months after we’ve turned it over to the owner it sales double digits higher than the production cost…. but how? Enter the appraiser and realtor. This is where the appraisal fraud begins and ends. It only takes one single fraudulent appraisal to drive the price double digits higher than production cost across an entire region. Again…. cost doesn’t care about pandemics, location or personal opinion. Whether production cost is $40, 50 or $60 a square foot, the only way you get to $100+ a square foot on a $40/sq ft job is fraud.

      3. not been below 4 since at least 1950.

        Is it “normal” for people to spend over half their pay on their house? I never did. My first house was a pretty nice ranch at less than 2x.

        Something is fishy about this. In the last bust we read here that the market started to crack when the ratio hit 4.

        1. Something is fishy about this.

          It reeks of gaslighting, telling us we were always up to our eyeballs in debt.

        2. What was your interest rate at the 2x? 3x income at 4% interest, and 2x income at 7-8% income, results in roughly the same howmuchamonth.

          2. Which sounds about right. If 4x at 6% get 1/2 your take home, then 2x at 7% is what, 1/3 of income. The traditional recommended figure is 28% DTI gross income on housing, give or take. So we’re not far off being sensible. IIUC, that 2x or 3x income is just a quick and dirty approximation of how much you can afford and keep that 28% DTI.

            It’s still far better to have a higher interest rate and lower price. Mortgage interest deduction was much more $$ because you were paying so much interest. Just putting the tax refund in the house knocked out a huge chunk of future interest. And you could refi to a lower interest rate and pay off the house far quicker.

      1. Average.

        The average American thinks Covid is real, vaccines work, Biden is the elected President, there are dozens of genders, and Kim Kardashian’s body is natural.

        There’s average for ya!

  14. Zelensky Regime Puts Senator Rand Paul And Other Prominent Americans On Blacklist

    by Chris Menahan | Information Liberation
    July 27th 2022, 4:34 am

    The Government of Ukraine has issued a blacklist of individuals who they judge to be “promoting Russian propaganda” — including a number of prominent Western intellectuals.

    Other prominent Americans on the list include Col. Douglas MacGregor (ret.), Col. Richard Black, former U.S. diplomat Jim Jatras and former CIA officer Ray McGovern. (Tulsi Gabbard)

    While our government is busy sending over $60 billion to this corrupt regime, they’re busy putting us on blacklists and lecturing us about how we’re not giving them enough.

    Two months ago, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Croatian President Zoran Milanovic were both placed onto the Kyiv-based Myrotvorets database, a doxing outfit run by Ukrainian intelligence which has been used as a de facto hit list in the past.

    The U.S. should be sanctioning the Zelensky regime for human rights abuses, torture and corruption rather than funneling endless billions into their coffers.

    https://www.infowars.com/posts/zelensky-regime-puts-senator-rand-paul-and-other-prominent-americans-on-blacklist/

    1. “While our government is busy sending over $60 billion to this corrupt regime, they’re busy putting us on blacklists and lecturing us about how we’re not giving them enough.”

      A page taken from the jooz play book except that they prefer $trillions, and they routinely interfere in the elections of U.S. senators and members of congress.

    2. Zelensky is not a U.S. citizen.

      And he needs to die. Russia is winning, and the sooner they take him out the sooner peace can be restored to Europe and start reviving the European economy.

      The only good globalist is a dead globalist.

    4. I don’t think Zelenskyy needs to die, but he needs to shut his mouth lest he bite the hand that feeds him. Without that American weaponry and cooperation from Europe, he likely would be dead by now. And not mercifully either.

  15. “Avocado growers are pleading with consumers to eat their produce up as Australia is overloaded with the popular fruit, sending prices to an all-time low”

    Where’s Mr. Banker? We need an avocado chart.

    1. Probably too late to export them here.

      I bought some the other day. Didn’t check the label at the store. They’re from Peru. I noticed that the flavor was sub par. Will check next time.

      1. Just bought a small bag of Hass Avocados from Mexico yesterday from Walmart. They’re still a bit firm, so we’ll give ’em a few days.

      1. As does guac.

        Costco’s Kirkland Signature Organic Chunky Guacamole is convenient and good!

  16. Bokhari: Big Tech’s Blueprint to Stop a Red Wave in 2022

    ALLUM BOKHARI
    27 Jul 2022

    In the runup to the 2020 U.S. presidential election, Google completely suppressed Breitbart News from its search results. Compared to 2016, Breibart News went into the 2020 election with a 99.7 percent reduction in visibility for its links on Google search. The censorship was so severe, no-name blogs with plagiarized headlines and content would appear in search results before the original Breitbart News articles. On searches for the term “Joe Biden,” Google cut visibility on Breitbart News links to zero.

    Then, a few weeks before the election, Big Tech teamed up to suppress one of the biggest stories of the cycle: the Hunter Biden laptop story. A post-election poll found that 17 percent of Biden voters would have reconsidered their decision had they been aware of the laptop story alone, not counting the hundreds of Breitbart News stories voters didn’t have access to due to Google censorship.

    Biden’s margin of victory in three swing states was less than a percentage point, making tech censorship a pivotal factor in the outcome. There is no law preventing Silicon Valley from not only repeating this plan in 2022, but scaling it up to a massive level – and that’s exactly what they are doing. The groundwork is already being prepared, in a number of ways:

    #1 “Independent” Watchdogs Downgrading Conservative Media — NewsGuard Discredits The Right

    No matter how mainstream you are, you aren’t safe. NewsGuard, the establishment “misinformation” watchdog that received funding from the Pentagon and whose software is being rolled out by millions of schoolteachers across the country, recently downgraded Fox News in its rankings of trustworthy and untrustworthy news sources.

    NewsGuard users will now see a red warning label next to Fox News links all around the internet, signaling to users that the source is considered untrustworthy by the organization, which was set up by former establishment media figures Steven Brill and L. Gordon Crovitz in 2018, in the early years of the media-concocted “misinformation” panic.

    Fox News and Breitbart News have now both received the negative “red” rating from NewsGuard. This means that, going into the 2022 midterm elections, NewsGuard is warning its users not to read the two leading conservative-leaning sources of online news.

    Naturally, the sources that pushed the Russiagate hoax and said the Hunter Biden laptop was “Russian disinfo” — a claim repeated by NewsGuard’s co-founder — receive no such warning label.

    #2 Facebook Suppressing The News — If The Wrong Side Is Winning, Call Off The Game

    Facebook has an answer: if conservative media is winning the news war on its platform, it will simply suppress all news at the same time. This month, the Wall Street Journal reported that the platform is shifting resources away from its News Tab and news distribution, and towards a “creator economy.” This means that news will be featured less frequently to users, whether they ask for it or not. This is a way of preventing unwanted narratives from reaching the public, at the very moment when news coverage of the failures of Democrat rule in D.C. will be ramping up.

    This is a repeat of what Facebook did after the 2016 election when it reduced the visibility of political posts — a change that resulted in engagement on Donald Trump’s page dropping by almost half.

    #3 Taxpayer-Funded Censorship — NPR Creates Misinformation Bureau

    Meanwhile, in the media, the steady drumbeat of the “misinformation” panic continues. Taxpayer-funded NPR is running a whole series about the media-concocted crisis, with a near-exclusive focus on stories that spread in conservative circles. “Misinformation” and “disinformation,” like “fake news,” wasn’t a buzzword before Trump won, but now it is everywhere: it is pushed by think tanks, it is pushed by government-funded agencies, it is debated by congressional committees, it suddenly becomes a new responsibility of the federal government. This is how elites manufacture a crisis — every institution they control saturates the information environment to create a sense of panic.

    #4 Regulatory Gridlock — No Recourse For Citizens

    #5 The Institutionalization of Censorship — Facebook’s $150 Million ‘Oversight Board’

    With the actual courts of the U.S. having their hands tied, Big Tech is funding a parallel justice system to take its place. Facebook recently announced $150 million in new funding for its “Oversight Board,” the private body where users can go to beg for their censored accounts back. Naturally, this “Facebook supreme court” is a farce — filled to the brim with leftists and globalists, it failed to overturn the most egregious act of political censorship ever conducted by Silicon Valley, the blacklisting of Donald Trump.

    In short, Silicon Valley will ensure that the misinformation of the establishment gets a megaphone, while any conservative counterpoints are silenced. We already know from 2020 that this works. The question is, what are Republicans going to do about it

    https://www.breitbart.com/

    1. They can memory hole stories all they want. People know they are getting eaten alive by inflation, while the regime tells them there is nothing they can do about it.

      They’re gonna need a bigger ballot box stuffing machine this time.

      1. 2020 was a lo-o-o-ong time ago in media cycle terms. All of the Republicans and most of the independents are onto what the media is doing. All this censorship is just preaching to the choir now.

    1. Correction: As one Denver broker joked, “We got buyers desperate sellers lined up for a haircut….. and a bath. Some are getting limbs amputated.”

  20. Your property taxes are paying for this in the public schools:

    “A group of far-left progressives has launched a legal challenge against four school districts in Florida for their adherence to the Parental Rights in Education legislation recently signed into law by Governor Ron Desantis …

    the far-left progressives who control the Democrat party believe that the right of public school educators and employees to sexualize their children behind their back is perfectly fine.

    Now, a woman is leading the charge against the removal of filthy pornographic novels in Florida schools. Her name is Jen Cousins, who before castigating public officials for removing tomes that include abhorrent text and graphic pictorial representations of sometimes pedophiliac sex acts, she was a leader of the Mask Up OCPS group in Orange County, Florida that demanded students and employees of said schools remain in a permanent state of mask-wearing and forced vaccination of public employees.”

    https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/07/radical-lgbt-activists-file-lawsuit-desantis-demand-pciture-porn-books-elementary-school-libraries/

    Democrat Party is the Groomer Party.

    “They’re not sending their best”

    1. 75 basis points, but Powell hinted that he’s thinking about thinking about maybe easing up a bit on the next one. The market had already priced in the 75 basis point, but the Pending Pivot is what sent the market up today.

    1. Hmmm … IMO there are two types of buyers pushing up today’s prices: Those who are right and those who are wrong.

      Those who are right (the longs) are elated at rising prices and are eager to add to their gains, meaning they are eager to buy more stock.

      Those who are wrong are the ones who shorted the market and are eager to limit their losses. These people limit their losses by buying stock so as to close their short positions.

      So the question becomes: If all these people are buying stocks then who is it that is doing the selling?

      Think: Sucker rally.

      IMHO, of course; there are other opinions. That’s what makes a market.

      Stay tuned.

    1. There’s a theory out there that housekeeping staff at the lab took some COVID-infected test animals from the lab and sold them at the local wet market for a few extra yuan. It sounds farfetched, but the scenario does fit ALL the data.

        1. …. and the janitors at the bank forgot to lock the door on the way out the other night and someone got in and emptied the vault.🙄

  25. From msnbc:

    McDonald’s and Chipotle say customers are trading down, visiting less often as inflation hits budgets

    How does one “trade down” from Mickey D’s? To Burger King?

    Anyway, this matches my empty drive thru observations.

    3. I actively boycott Chipotle. That joint poisons more people than Putin. Far healthier to skip.

      1. Me too. Chipotle’s management handled those outbreaks very poorly. I have no confidence in their operations.

  26. “Fed hikes interest rates by 0.75 percentage point for second consecutive time”

    https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/27/fed-decision-july-2022-.html

    Don’t fight the Fed my good friends…. Don’t fight the Fed.

    Westlake Village, CA Housing Prices Crater 27% YOY As Rampant Appraisal Fraud Blankets Ventura And Los Angeles Counties

    https://www.movoto.com/westlake-village-ca/market-trends/

    As a noted economist explained, “The Fed is accomplishing their objective of double digit lending rates and resetting housing prices to dramatically lower levels.”

  27. A reader sent these in:

    Danielle DiMartino Booth

    On the other hand…WOOF

    US June pending home sales fell by the most since April 2020, decreasing 8.6% vs -1% EST from a month earlier to 91, lowest since the start of the pandemic. An index of 100 is = to level of contract activity in 2001. Pendings sank ~20% YoY.

    https://twitter.com/DiMartinoBooth/status/1552295631577915394

    “The buyers just disappeared off the face of the earth.” Housing boom towns such as Boise are deflating fast. https://wsj.com

    https://twitter.com/TaylorAMarr/status/1552317109073592323

    The Kobeissi Letter
    @KobeissiLetter
    Current situation:

    1. Median home price down 9.5% last month

    2. U.S. credit card debt near $1 trillion

    3. Interest rates rising at fastest pace in history

    4. 60% of Americans unable to keep up with inflation

    5. Mortgage demand at 22-year low

    The bubble is finally bursting.

    https://twitter.com/KobeissiLetter/status/1552064546000568320

    Weekly wages (incomes) adjusted for inflation are falling of a cliff

    This will hit demand harder than any interest rate hikes

    https://twitter.com/AndreasSteno/status/1551990737826373632

    In the last 50yrs, whenever New Homes for Sale materially diverged from New Homes Sold, the end result was always a recession and most of the time ugly ones.

    https://twitter.com/JulianMI2/status/1552067078307434498

    2. 2. U.S. credit card debt near $1 trillion

      3. Interest rates rising at fastest pace in history

      Variable interest rates on credit cards, oh my!

  28. I’m forming PETI (People for the Ethical Treatment of Insects); I want to get in on the ground floor of that inevitable grift.

    1. Over here at Bug-Fil-A we don’t need your kind or your immoral ways. You and your koolaid haired friends at PETI should get a job and stop trying to shake the rest of down.

      1. Oooh, Bug-Fil-A, sounds delish. You got me. Despite being founder of PETI, I have the principles and attention span of a gnat. I’ll be right over 😋

    2. When I was in college I knew a girl who was very active in the abortion rights scene. She ended up in the same biology class as I did and she got an exemption from the lab section on dissection because we were cutting up cockroaches and she said it was against her principles as an animal rights activist.

  30. (this is a long read, but hey …)

    A Storm Of Indicators Show The US Consumer Is Tapped Out
    Tyler Durden’s Photo
    BY TYLER DURDEN
    WEDNESDAY, JUL 27, 2022 – 09:50 AM
    The US economy is a 70% retail and service economy, which means it is entirely reliant on continued growth in domestic consumption in order to maintain all other elements of the system. With manufacturing only a small part of overall employment (8%) and agriculture also limited (10%), our country is overly dependent on spending habits and ultimately consumer debt. If we produced more goods domestically and exported more overseas then stagflation might not be as big a concern. However, as it stands now the stability of the entire machine rests on people’s faith in the economy and their willingness to continue spending in the hopes that a return to normalcy is “right around the corner.”

    In order to measure when our system will break, it’s important to track the health of the average consumer as well as their concerns for the future. Sadly, as soon as Americans stop spending and start saving, our economy goes down. That is the way the system has been designed.

    The mainstream media was quick to jump on news this month of “increased” retail spending – overall retail sales climbed 1% for June. Of course, what they don’t mention is that official inflation is at 9.1% and REAL inflation is closer to 17% . OF COURSE retail sales are climbing, everything costs far more than it did a year ago.

    But if we look at this data closer some alarms should go off. Why did retail only climb 1% when official inflation is at 9%? Sales should be much higher, but they are not. The 1% increase in retail in the midst of 40 year highs in price inflation is a sign of a sales implosion, not an improvement. A year ago in 2021, retail sales spiked by 7.73% in the middle of the inflation chaos. Inflation didn’t go away in the past year, it only got worse, and now the increase is only 1% in 2022.

    What about consumer sentiment? Well, it has plunged 37% since last year, indicating that faith in the economy is rapidly devolving and that Americans are more likely to cut their expenses in order to protect themselves from potential fiscal shocks in the months ahead.

    What is causing this consumer decline? There are numerous factors.

    First, the $6 trillion-plus in covid stimulus funds from 2020 has cycled through the retail chain and well out of people’s pockets. It’s gone, and the huge increase in economic activity that it triggered is gone also. We are finally feeling the effects that naturally occur at the end of helicopter money.

    Around 43% of all Americans are falling into debt this year. Around 23% say they have no savings at all, while 28% say they have savings but only enough for three months of expenses should they lose their jobs. Half of Americans said inflation was the primary cause of their financial struggles and 64% classify themselves as “financially unhealthy.” What does this translate to in the near term? Far less spending.

    US credit card debt peaked at $856 billion in the fourth quarter of 2021 and has started to decline, hitting $841 billion in the first quarter of 2022. Once again, with rising inflation you might assume that credit spending would continue to climb, but this is not the case. This is yet another signal that consumers are tapped out and simply can’t spend the way they were a year ago.

    Unemployment dropped to incredible lows as retailers frantically hired as many people as possible to keep up with the wave of consumer spending fed by covid checks and PPP loans. As is the case with most economic trends, it takes time for the system to realize that the money has disappeared. This is building up to mass layoff in the final quarter of 2022.

    Rising job losses in tandem with rising prices is the last technical indicator of stagflation along with falling GDP. With GDP well in decline recession has essentially already arrived, but the Biden Administration continues to tout the high employment rate as proof that all is well in the economy. They consistently ignore all other important factors including GDP, rising prices, rising debt and loss of consumer spending power. An avalanche of job losses this year going into 2023 is so predictable it hurts, yet the White House acts as if it is oblivious.

    Perhaps Joe Biden is oblivious (as his mind continues to degrade into dementia), but his economic advisers are not. They are well aware of what is about to happen and they are trying to keep the American people in the dark. Some might consider this tantamount to treason, but that’s a discussion for another time. Needless to say, a considerable downturn is about to take place going into 2023 and hopefully people are preparing for the inevitable consequences.

  31. Working in Downtown Denver today, this is a cage that the building recently installed around their rear basement entrance to keep the zombies from doing drugs and p*ssing and sh*tting in the stairwell:

    https://ibb.co/5r7DXMv

    On Blake Street between 17th and 18th by Coors Field. When we rolled up at 6:00 this morning all the nastiest tweakers and junkies were sniffing around and eyeing our vans.

    Vote like California, become California.

  32. Sacramento, CA Housing Prices Crater 21% YOY As California Median Rental Rate And Sale Price Plunge Double Digits

    https://www.movoto.com/ca/95832/market-trends/

    As one local broker explained to his clients, “You may as well start slashing double digits if you want to sell….. because the bottom is a long way down.”

    1. It’s astonishing how quickly the WEF is rushing to shutdown food production around the world. Other than to create a global famine and possibly starve billions to death, I can’t see any other reason to do this. If this isn’t Satanic, I don’t know what is.

      Meanwhile, riots are breaking out in places like Ecuador and Sri Lanka because they are already starving. They are but the tip of the iceberg.

      1. Meanwhile, riots are breaking out in places like Ecuador and Sri Lanka because they are already starving.
        Panama also

    1. Garland isn’t North Dallas; it’s east of the city.
      Other than that, keep up the good work!

  38. Dumb question of the day:

    If the whole industry is panicking, what is holding back investors from dumping inventory?

    Unrelated anecdote:. A work colleague in WA emailed me yesterday to let me know that he had to skip a work meeting obligation due to having to get his house ready to sell on short notice. The timing struck me as odd, and made me wonder if he is among the untold number of Mom and Pop amateur real estate investors out there who picked up extra houses (“second homes”) to capture a slice of Ben Bernanke’s housing market targeted Quantitative Easing. I’ll try to get the story when I see him next month.

      1. The Financial Times
        Chinese business & finance
        China’s central bank seeks to mobilise $148bn bailout for real estate projects
        Heavily indebted sector to receive new loans to complete unfinished apartments owed to angry homebuyers
        A worker sits on a pile of steel pipes near an under-construction residential housing development in Shanghai
        Increasing numbers of customers in China’s real estate sector are boycotting mortgage repayments, creating concern in the government over socioeconomic stability
        Sun Yu in Beijing and Cheng Leng in Hong Kong yesterday

        Beijing is seeking to mobilise up to Rmb1tn ($148bn) of loans for millions of stalled property developments, in its most ambitious attempt to revive the debt-stricken sector and head off a backlash by homebuyers.

        In a bid to end a property downturn that played a big role in bringing year-on-year growth down to just 0.4 per cent in the second quarter, the People’s Bank of China will initially issue about Rmb200bn of low-interest loans, charging about 1.75 per cent a year, to state commercial banks, according to people involved in the discussions.

        Under the plan, recently approved by China’s State Council, or cabinet, the banks will use the PBoC loans along with their own funds, lent at market rates, to refinance stalled real estate projects.

        The government hopes the banks will be able to leverage its initial fund by up to five times to raise a total of about Rmb1tn and partially fill the funding gap needed to complete unfinished projects, the people said. But bank executives and analysts have warned that the PBoC may struggle to raise its targeted amount given the difficulties banks will face in making a return on distressed real estate projects.

        Overleveraged developers have had to suspend the construction of millions of apartments nationwide over the past year, raising concerns of financial and social turmoil if increasing numbers of home buyers withhold mortgage payments or take to the streets.

        Multiple developers in China have defaulted on domestic and foreign debts after Beijing implemented tighter credit controls, undermining one of the most important engines of the country’s economy and leaving millions of homebuyers in limbo.

        Analysts, however, warned that the PBoC’s refinancing scheme would only work if the targeted developments could generate enough cash flow from sales or rentals of unsold apartments to repay the new loans.

        “A lot of unfinished residential projects have already been sold out or are located in under-developed cities where home purchase and housing rentals are weak,” said Dan Wang, chief economist at Hang Seng Bank China. “That limits the number of developments the bailout fund can invest in without suffering a loss.”

        Housing transactions in smaller “third-tier” cities, where most unfinished developments are located, fell more than a third this month from a year ago even after local authorities rolled out numerous support measures to boost buyer demand, ranging from interest rate cuts to subsidies on purchases.
        …

        1. “Beijing is seeking to mobilise up to Rmb1tn ($148bn) of loans for millions of stalled property developments, in its most ambitious attempt to revive the debt-stricken sector and head off a backlash by homebuyers.”

          Classic hair-of-the-dog hangover cure:
          Attempt to rescue a debt-stricken sector by handing out more loans like candy…

          1. ‘Analysts, however, warned that the PBoC’s refinancing scheme would only work if the targeted developments could generate enough cash flow from sales or rentals of unsold apartments to repay the new loans.’

            Sounds like the drunkard has developed cirrhosis of the liver. More alcohol may not be all that helpful from here on out.

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