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The Original Conversation Was: ‘You’re Out Of Your Mind’

A report from the Orlando Sentinel in Florida. “Real estate experts say some buyers have dropped out of the hunt. Los Angeles-based real estate investor André Stewart says that more of them should think about holding off. ‘The prices are going to have to come down,’ he said. ‘The prices aren’t the real values of those homes.’ Stewart points to a property he was watching near Clearwater that went from $550,000 in December to asking $900,000 in July. ‘Nothing can support that,’ he said. Even with the market shifting, Stewart said it will be a while before buyers can negotiate fair prices for homes. ‘[Sellers] aren’t ready to take a $100,000 haircut yet because they don’t think they have to,’ he said.”

The Quad City Times in Iowa. “‘We’re turning it back into a healthy market,’ said Kendra Mulcahy with Ruhl & Ruhl Realtors of Davenport. ‘Making any kind of correction from the crazy market (we were in) to being where we (are,) its a better market for buyers and sellers,’ said Sharon Smith, CEO at Quad City Area Realtors. ‘Last year was such a crazy, off-the-charts year, that you just don’t keep going up like that. That was a time in history that does not come around a lot.'”

From KIRO on Washington. “‘Buyers and sellers are reevaluating their one-year plan or two-year plan,’ said Adriano Tori, CEO of RexMont Real Estate. In turn, would-be buyers are stuck as renters and would-be sellers are becoming landlords. Nelya Calev, a real estate agent with John L. Scott Real Estate, said she had a client who recently pulled their listing and opted to rent the property in response to the housing market changes. ‘It didn’t make sense for him to drop his price to where it would sell because of what he paid for it, so we ended up pulling it off the market, renting the home and then we’ll just reevaluate everything a year from now,’ Calev said.”

From CNBC. “Home sellers are getting nervous, as the once-hot housing market cools fast. One in 5 sellers in August dropped their asking price, according to Realtor.com. A year ago that share was just 11%. The average home sold for less than its list price for the first time in over 17 months during the four-week period ended Aug. 28, according to Redfin. The supply of homes for sale is also rising fast, up nearly 27% from a year ago, even as fewer sellers decide to list. Pending sales in July, which represent signed contracts on existing homes and which are the most recent sales data available, were nearly 20% lower than July 2021, according to the National Association of Realtors.”

The Denver Channel in Colorado. “The pendulum is swinging in the Denver metro housing market, now favoring buyers more than it has the past two years. It’s now sellers who are trying to sweeten the pot for buyers. Seller concessions were unheard of six months ago. Now, they are very much part of the homebuying equation in metro Denver and Colorado. ‘Sellers are now willing to work with buyers to make the deal close,’ said Kelly Fogel with HDS Mortgage.”

From Mansion Global. “After a California couple lost bids on 10 homes in a year and a half, real estate agent Kristin Halton thought her clients might be on the verge of giving up. ‘They were getting tired,’ said Ms. Halton, an agent with Douglas Elliman in Newport Beach, California. But this month—just when they were about to call it quits, they found a house they loved. The couple was up against competing offers—but this time, only two others, rather than the dozens of people they’d competed with earlier in the year. They won the offer.”

“It’s a sign that the U.S. housing market is finally turning in buyers’ favor, after months of a hot seller’s market. The luxury market seems to be cooling faster than the overall market, making this fall an ideal time for buyers to strike. Across all price points, the number of properties with price reductions was up 9.7% year over year. But in the top 5% of the market, the number of properties with price reductions was up by 95% on average. ‘The overall market is seeing price cuts—but not nearly to the extent that the luxury market is,’ said George Raitu, an economist for Realtor.com.”

“Buyers will have the best luck in so-called pandemic boomtowns. Boise Idaho, is one such city. In July, 70% of houses for sale dropped their asking price, compared to 30% the year before. The number of single-family homes sold around Boise decreased 33%, and inventory had nearly doubled, according to the Intermountain Multiple Listing Service. And in certain Phoenix ZIP codes, like central and affluent North Scottsdale, the number of homes for sale have more than doubled year over year, according to the Realtor.com report, with median listing prices declining as well.”

“As more condo projects come onto the market around Miami, inventory will increase, and the seller’s market could become a buyer’s market, said David Siddons, an agent with Douglas Elliman in Miami. Mr. Siddons has already been able to use the cooling market to a client’s advantage. Earlier this summer, he had been working with a client who had made a deal to purchase a condo priced over $10 million from a developer. Seeing the market move, he went back to the developer and asked him to shave $1 million off the price. ‘The original conversation was: ‘You’re out of your mind,’ Mr. Siddons recounted. But a month went by, and the developer called back. He took the lower price. ‘I think there’s an awareness with developers that they can’t just keep asking whatever they want in perpetuity,’ Mr. Siddons said.”

The Detroit News. “Home Point Capital Inc., the Ann Arbor-based mortgage lender, is laying off hundreds of people as lenders face increased competition in a shrinking mortgage market. The company that does business as Homepoint is laying off 217 people in November at two offices in Ann Arbor, according to a worker adjustment and retraining notification filed with the state of Michigan on Wednesday. Spokesman Brad Pettiford says the layoffs are happening across the organization and beyond Michigan, though no specific total number of people affected was provided.”

“The layoffs follow Detroit-based Rocket Mortgage, the country’s top mortgage lender that’s a part of Rocket Companies Inc., offering a second round of buyouts to a small percentage of its employees. Rival United Wholesale Mortgage Holdings Corp. in Pontiac has been adamant that it won’t lay off workers, though its workforce has declined from more than 8,000 people to more than 7,000 people in recent months with the company citing ‘natural attrition.'”

The Phoenix Business Journal in Arizona. “Citing a lack of loan production, a 34-year-old Valley financial services company will exit the mortgage business. Ron Martin, the president of Phoenix-based Suburban Mortgage Inc., said in an email to the Business Journal that the operation isn’t shuttering but will focus on its insurance business going forward. ‘After 34 years we decided to conduct an orderly wind-down of our mortgage business,’ he stated. Suburban Mortgage’s decision to close comes on the heels of other mortgage lender layoffs throughout the Valley. A robust housing market in 2020 and 2021 caused firms to hire more employees to keep with demand. As experts say the market has cooled off with mortgage interest rates rising, some of those firms might be overstaffed while fewer transactions are coming in.”

“Scottsdale-based VIP Mortgage Inc. — the top mortgage lender and broker in the Valley — let go of 26 employees at the company. Michael Metz, operations manager for Scottsdale-based VIP Mortgage Inc, said that was because of increased rates have caused refinance volume to plummet, and purchase volume has dipped because of concerns about housing inventory and payment affordability.”

“Over the past few months, large banks such as Wells Fargo & Co. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. have pulled back on their mortgage lending. In June, JPMorgan confirmed it was cutting more than 1,000 employees from its home-lending unit as a result of cyclical changes in the mortgage market.”

From Bloomberg. “Citigroup Inc. joined rivals in trimming the ranks of its mortgage workforce as rising interest rates continue to crimp demand in the housing market. Mortgage application volume has plummeted by more than 50% this year and US pending home sales in July fell to the lowest level since the start of the pandemic. Wells Fargo & Co. is weighing how to shrink its vast mortgage empire, including through job cuts.”

The Windsor Star in Canada. “The average monthly sales price of Windsor area homes fell $37,355 in August compared to the previous month while listings lingered longer on the market as sales plummeted 42 per cent compared to 12 months ago. The average sales price in August was $520,634 compared to $557,989 in July. Average monthly prices have plummeted 28 per cent, or over $203,000, from the peak price of $723,739 in March. August’s average price was also eight per cent lower than the average of $568,253 for August 2021.”

“Even drawing prospective buyers to look at homes is proving a new challenge. Manor Realty broker/general manager Rob Agnew said it’s not uncommon for homes to have no viewings or offers for lengthy periods. The pool of buyers has been diminished, he added, because many can no longer pass the mortgage stress test with the higher interest rates.”

“‘The buyers have scattered to the sidelines and are waiting to see what’s happening with interest rates and whether prices will drop further,’ Agnew said. ‘The number of buyers has dried up dramatically. There are few if any multiple offers anymore.’ Agnew said there’s been a shift in the way homes are being priced and marketed. Listing prices are more closely aligned to where they are expected to sell. ‘You’re see us going back to the old-fashioned ways of doing business,’ Agnew said. ‘Homes are being priced closer to what is fair-market value.'”

From Reuters. “Australia’s housing market downturn is squeezing many home sellers into a double bind: They’ve taken out a mortgage for a new home but are holding out for a good deal on their old place, forcing them also to hold a bridging loan to cover their previous mortgage. And with prices now falling at their fastest pace in four decades, a sharp reversal from the 25% annual price rises seen just a year ago, the durations of those bridging loans are doubling or even quadrupling from their typical three-month span.”

“‘I think there are people who have been caught out,’ said Julie Buchanan, a seller’s agent in Sydney who recently extended a marketing campaign for a high-end property to three months from six weeks, due to lukewarm buyer interest. ‘A lot of them have had to have their price expectations revised,’ she said. ‘If they can’t get the price then bridging finance is something they use to get them over the line. Then they’re potentially holding two properties.'”

“Joe Bennett, a senior lending relationship executive at bridging lender ASCF, said inquiries had risen with interest rates, and the average term of a loan written by his company had ballooned from three months to between six months and a year. ‘Historically when markets are hot they only want that loan for three months because they knew – and it was realistic to assume – that they could list their property this Saturday and have it sold by the following Saturday,’ Bennett said. ‘That’s not happening now.'”

The South China Morning Post. “No one in the financial sector is feeling the pinch more than the small lenders, which account for about a quarter of the country’s total banking assets. This could spell trouble for millions of individual savers, analysts warned. Some 20 per cent of the 45 regional and rural banks listed on stock exchanges suffered a plunge in profits in the first half of 2022, while some saw their non-performing loan ratios deteriorate. It was the poorest half-year performance in years.”

“Li Min, a teacher in Anhui Province, recently opted to withdraw her three-year fixed term deposit of 200,000 yuan due in 2025 early from Bank of Liaoshen, forfeiting some 20,000 yuan in interest. ‘Who knows whether I can get my money back,’ said Li. ‘I do not want to bet my savings. I do not want to be like those miserable protesters in Henan province.'”

“Bank of Liaoshen, the worst performer, booked a negative 1.23 per cent net interest margin, according to calculations by the Post based on data released by the banks. That means the interest the bank is paying on deposits is too high to be covered by the loan interest it receives, leaving no possibility of making a profit. ‘Such a funding structure is no different from drinking from the poisoned chalice,’ said Lee Kaichung, financial institution analyst with Pengyuan Credit Rating International, a Hong Kong-based rating agency.”

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This Post Has 92 Comments

  1. ‘Last year was such a crazy, off-the-charts year, that you just don’t keep going up like that. That was a time in history that does not come around a lot’

    Heck of a job Jerry. Good luck with yer soft landing with every sh$thole in the country headed fer a brick wall.

    1. ‘Last year was such a crazy, off-the-charts year, that you just don’t keep going up like that. That was a time in history that does not come around a lot’

      “Heck of a job Jerry. Good luck with yer soft landing with every sh$thole in the country headed fer a brick wall.”

      – And this is Iowa of all places! A real Mecca for house (horse?) trading. Housing Bubble 2.0, courtesy of Jerome Powell and his minions at the Fed (aka The Bank of Evil), blew another massive RE asset bubble in the U.S., knowing full well of the outcomes, repercussions, and consequences from the experience with Housing Bubble 1.0. The RE bubble is national due to the Fed’s monetary experiments. Their Keynesian policies were copied and spread throughout the world. It’s a plague, a pandemic.

      – No where did I see mention of the word “bubble” in any of the article excerpts listed above. I did see “pandemic boomtowns,” but that’s inaccurate. The bubbles started in 2010 with the Fed’s “wealth effect” polices (aka asset inflation bubble policies). Most everyone in the REIC/UHS is disingenuously describing the current situation as completely normal and “healthy.”

      “‘We’re turning it back into a healthy market,’”

      “‘Buyers and sellers are reevaluating their one-year plan or two-year plan,’”

      “Home sellers are getting nervous, as the once-hot housing market cools fast.”

      “The pendulum is swinging in the Denver metro housing market, now favoring buyers more than it has the past two years.”

      “It’s a sign that the U.S. housing market is finally turning in buyers’ favor, after months of a hot seller’s market.”

      “Buyers will have the best luck in so-called pandemic boomtowns. Boise Idaho, is one such city.”

      “‘The original conversation was: ‘You’re out of your mind,’ Mr. Siddons recounted. But a month went by, and the developer called back. He took the lower price.”

      – These Realtor comments are all – intentionally in my view – obfuscatory, and completely avoiding the main issue of the collapse of another real estate bubble. It’s a “shift.” The “pendulum is swinging back.” “We’re turning it back into a healthy market,…” No, we’re not! The U.S. and global RE bubbles are now collapsing. This is neither healthy nor normal, and the outcomes are bad. As Jerome Powell recently said of the Fed’s alleged objective of reining in the (asset price and then general price) inflation that they themselves caused, there will be “some pain.” Talk about understatement!

      – So REIC, keep “whistling past the graveyard” as you ignore the “900 pound gorilla, or the elephant in the room” at your own, and more importantly, at the prospective buyers peril, but maybe that’s the idea.

      – “The emperor has no clothes.” Let’s call a spade a spade. It’s a bubble. The Fed intentionally created it. The Fed owns it, and governments were complicit. Orange jump suits for all of them (aka jail time).

      “Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.” – Mark Twain

      The duck test: “If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it’s a duck!” – Robin Cook, Crisis

      “You can ignore reality, but you can’t ignore the consequences of reality.”  – Ayn Rand

      “Sooner or later everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences.” – Robert Louis Stevenson

      1. ” ‘You’re see us going back to the old-fashioned ways of doing business,’ Agnew said. ‘Homes are being priced closer to what is fair-market value.'”

        Spoken like this is a new and novel idea. Imagine only paying what something is worth.

  2. ‘If they can’t get the price then bridging finance is something they use to get them over the line. Then they’re potentially holding two properties’

    No Julie, they are holding two loans.

    1. “No Julie, they are holding two loans.”

      Or, from my perspective, they are being held (by the short hairs) by two loans.

  4. ‘she had a client who recently pulled their listing and opted to rent the property in response to the housing market changes. ‘It didn’t make sense for him to drop his price to where it would sell because of what he paid for it’

    He’s kinda stuck eh Neyla?

    1. Same thing happened to the grandma-finally-died house on my block. It didn’t sell, and the flipper guy didn’t want to drop his price anymore. I think he’s preparing it for rental, but I haven’t seen any signs yet.

    2. ‘she had a client who recently pulled their listing and opted to rent the property in response to the housing market changes. ‘It didn’t make sense for him to drop his price to where it would sell because of what he paid for it’

      A failed strategy considering doing so simply delays the inevitable and extends the pain via monthly negative cash flow.

      Eeet that depreciation my helpless friend….. eet up.

      Sacramento, CA Housing Prices Crater 21% As California’s Fraud Riddled Housing Market Implodes

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

  5. ‘After 34 years we decided to conduct an orderly wind-down of our mortgage business’

    Said from a beach somewhere. I’d every one of these fired hacks has at least one shack loan.

    3. “Ron Martin, the president of Phoenix-based Suburban Mortgage Inc., said in an email to the Business Journal that the operation isn’t shuttering but will focus on its insurance business going forward. ‘After 34 years we decided to conduct an orderly wind-down of our mortgage business,’

      They must see something really really bad if they close their mortgage business after 34 years based on a few months of drought.

  8. Even with the market shifting, Stewart said it will be a while before buyers can negotiate fair prices for homes. ‘[Sellers] aren’t ready to take a $100,000 haircut yet because they don’t think they have to,’ he said.”

    I’ve got all the time in the world, greedhead sellers. You don’t.

  9. ‘Last year was such a crazy, off-the-charts year, that you just don’t keep going up like that. That was a time in history that does not come around a lot.’”

    Yet lying realtors were telling their “clients” to buy now or be priced out forever.

  10. ‘It didn’t make sense for him to drop his price to where it would sell because of what he paid for it, so we ended up pulling it off the market, renting the home and then we’ll just reevaluate everything a year from now,’ Calev said.”

    You’re an idiot, Nelya. A year from now that FB’s loss will be far greater than if he would’ve sold earlier.

  11. The couple was up against competing offers—but this time, only two others, rather than the dozens of people they’d competed with earlier in the year. They won the offer.”

    A year from now, let us know how that “win” worked out for ya, FB couple.

  12. The number of single-family homes sold around Boise decreased 33%, and inventory had nearly doubled, according to the Intermountain Multiple Listing Service.

    As the indictors of a bursting housing bubble proliferate, we can all take comfort in Yellen the Felon’s assurances that we will not see a new financial crisis “in our lifetime.” So as long as Old Yellen is still with us, we have nothing to fear, frens.

  13. “Australia’s housing market downturn is squeezing many home sellers into a double bind: They’ve taken out a mortgage for a new home but are holding out for a good deal on their old place, forcing them also to hold a bridging loan to cover their previous mortgage.

    I’m going to feel pure schadenfreude as these greedy bashturds get financially annihilated.

  14. ‘Who knows whether I can get my money back,’ said Li. ‘I do not want to bet my savings. I do not want to be like those miserable protesters in Henan province.’”

    In a time of universal fraud, if you don’t hold it, you don’t own it.

  15. ‘Such a funding structure is no different from drinking from the poisoned chalice,’ said Lee Kaichung, financial institution analyst with Pengyuan Credit Rating International, a Hong Kong-based rating agency.”

    Lee just earned himself a big fat raise with that kind of brilliant analysis.

    3. Ben, I appreciate what you and the regulars post here, great stuff. I just moved from Boise to Sierra Vista a few months ago and after researching Kari Lake I like what I hear. I may actually vote for something other than Giant Meteor this time around.

  19. Southern California Home Price Update: Orange, Los Angeles, San Sep 2, 2022

    Home prices in Southern California are continuing to decline in most counties. In this video we cover Orange County, Los Angeles County, San Diego County, Riverside County, Ventura County, Santa Barbara County, San Bernardino County, and Kern County.

    The median home price is still up on a year-over-year basis in most Southern California counties. On a month-over-month basis, most counties are seeing a drop in the median home price. Orange County and Riverside county are the only 2 that saw an increase in the month-over-month median home price.

    In this video we are looking at charts from InfoSparks, which gets their data from the California Regional Multiple Listing Service. We look at the median home price in April 2022 for each county, and compare it on a year-over-year and month-over-month basis.

    10:24.

  20. Ben “Alex” Jones, you naysaying conspiracy-mongering alarmist, you’ve got this housing bubble thang all wrong. The “housing analysts” at our esteemed globalist propaganda mouthpieces assure me of this.

    Canada’s housing market isn’t melting down as you’ve been led to think

    https://financialpost.com/real-estate/housing-market-not-melting-down-statistics

    More nuanced statistics show the magnitude of sale and price movements is in the expected range

  21. Remember the hanging chads Florida Election in recount in the Bush/Gore National Election when Gore questioned the election.
    For days on the news people recounting those punch out voting chads. Than I think the Court ended up deciding the Election.

    They have books written about the Mafia being involved in the Kennedy/ Nixon Election .
    Now all of a sudden you can’t question Elections , you can’t question vaccine, you can’t have a political view, or your job is threatened, or your considered a domestic terrorist. You can’t go against the manufactured narratives.

    1. I do remember that. I was a kid at the time, and I distinctly remember all the hooting and hollering about West Palm Beach. SE Florida is a joke.

    2. “Now all of a sudden you can’t question Elections , you can’t question vaccine, you can’t have a political view, or your job is threatened, or your considered a domestic terrorist. You can’t go against the manufactured narratives.”

      Excellent summation.

    1. Ben, are you ready to make any predictions on the Dallas Metroplex yet? (how come only Dallas gets to have a Metroplex?) Didn’t you say 50,000 foreclosures during the last one? The data is already showing that the Dallas area is spiking way above normal levels and this shitshow is barely getting started. I predict that the Dallas region will have lists of foreclosed properties that are so long that only the most obsessive compulsive types will be able to look at them all. We will reach a point where people are depressed by it and will toss the stack aside because it’s too much effort. Most people have no idea how deep this bust is going to be. It is going to be epic.

      I had to laugh at this gem, “Buyers will have the best luck in so-called pandemic boomtowns.” If they meant buyers in 4 or 5 years they would have a good point. The current buyers will become known as bag holders and will not feel lucky at all when the bust becomes clear to everyone. Instead of predatory loan complaints, I think this time they are going to say, “They never should have given me all that free money!”

  24. Brandon keeps telling patriotic ‘Muricans they don’t stand a chance against F-15s, but he doesn’t seem to understand how our once formidable military has declined under Democrat-Bolshevik “leadership.” In our “woke” feminized military, standards are rayciss and thus are in free-fall. This is causing the most capable and committed officers and NCOs to leave in droves, or not join the military in the first place, as the Brandon regime escalates its witch-hunt against Trump supporters in the ranks. Xi must be laughing his ass off as he gets ready to roll the dice.

    An Army Of Doofusses

    https://www.theburningplatform.com/2022/09/03/an-army-of-doofusses/

    Chaz Andrews is 29 years old. He’s been trying to get into the US Army since he was 19. He failed the academic test more than 10 times. But, now he has a chance to pass thanks to a new Army program that gives low performing recruits up to 90 days of academic and/or fitness training to help them meet military standards. If Chaz is able to raise his test score he will be allowed to continue on to basic training.

    The program, which was started this year, is one way the Army is hoping to fill its ranks as it struggles with recruiting efforts, which are falling dramatically short (as high as 25%). The Army is blaming it on Covid, low unemployment, and better paying jobs in the private sector. Yeah, that, and the fact only 23% of people aged between 17 – 24 are physically, mentally, or morally fit to serve without receiving some kind of waiver.

    1. The Army has other issues in it’s recruiting , they have gone woke …..One of our renter’s son graduated this summer and tried for 10 weeks to join up , but something always came up……..so he turned to the Marine Corp , and is at Paris island almost immediately…..Yeah, he’s a brawny White male ….

    2. Didn’t a bunch of illiterate savages wearing rags just beat those F-15’s so badly that we donated an entire military force to them just to get out of there? FJB!!

    1. Don’t you think that’s its pretty weird that two children of Biden left criminal offenses on a laptop and diary, both at the same time surfacing?
      What I’m getting at is Joe Biden is compromised by blackmail. In other words, we will obstruct this as long as you do what we want.
      Extortion, bribery, blackmail, job loss threat, inflitration, slander and deplatforming and censorship , etc , are the methods of this criminal take over.

      It appears that they wanted the biggest crook , pervert, demented , black- mail- able dumb ass to run and win.
      While they faked that Trump was compromised by being a Russian operative , Biden is really compromised.

      The US voter had the right to know anything that might compromise a Presidential candidate, or indicate a conflict of interest in holding the presidency.
      Hilary was compromised by the lap top offences, that the FBI knew about close to the election in 2016. The FBI dismissed it and made light of it. In truth it would of disqualified her as a candidate for president.
      How many in politics were compromised by Jeffrey Epstein?

  27. Chris Menahan
    InformationLiberation

    14 hours ago

    The White House announced Friday that they are hiring Clintonista political hack John Podesta to oversee a whopping $370 billion in federal spending on “green energy.”

    Biden might as well have hired Hunter for the job.

    From the New York Times, “Biden, Remaking Climate Team, Picks John Podesta to Guide Spending”:

    https://www.informationliberation.com/?id=63310

  28. A reader sent these in:

    my current energy bill for my tiny 22 cover restaurant is £2,928 a year. This is my new quote. Unsure what to actually do next but as a business that cost would now be more than I pay in rent and more than I take some months. I simply don’t have the money for this.

    https://twitter.com/jrmallcock/status/1565732298892480513

    Yes, I have an idea. Lower the price by 20%, not 8%. #DFW #housingbubble

    https://twitter.com/OGtexasrunner/status/1565771703799660547

    The median monthly mortgage payment was almost 1.5x the median monthly asking rent in q2, the largest differential in records going back to **2009**

    https://twitter.com/GunjanJS/status/1565740799798788098

    Realtor: I got this bro trust me

    https://twitter.com/DonMiami3/status/1565756561275998208

    John Wake

    Remember way back in July when people started saying it was a housing “correction”?

    Now, everyone is calling it a housing “recession”.

    https://twitter.com/JohnWake/status/1565757091112816640

    1. Per the twitter link, the Brit restaurant owner is paying over a dollar per kilowatt hour. At those prices even turning on LED bulbs is unaffordable. Not sure where the 2928 number came from. The quote he included in his post show an annual cost of over 22500 Pounds. For a 22 table restaurant with no A/C.

      At those prices can anyone afford to charge their EV? Can any industry operate with those prices?

      Anyway, this is what they want to do to us. The objective is to utterly destroy the western economies in order to usher in the great reset. And right now Europe seems to be right on track, I could see them collapsing as early as next year.

      November is crucial for us. If the Dems manage to hold onto the House and Senate, they will utterly annihilate our economy. And if we are victorious in November, it is crucial that Brandon and Heels be impeached and removed, AND that there be trials, lots of them. And everyone in the Alphabet agencies and the deep state in general needs to be fired. If we do not do all this then all we are doing is buying time.

      We are approaching the event horizon, once we pass it there is no turning back, except perhaps through bloodshed. Actually, Thomas Sowell has said that we already have passed the point of no return.

      1. It’s starting to look like these bills we are seeing are gong to be cheap compared to what is coming. This is historic stuff.

        P.S. They had to scrub the launch again. Starting to look like you were right, that thing is never going to get off the ground. Did you see The Bee’s headline on it? They said the female pilot who drove it last forgot to fill it up again.

        1. The SLS is made of old shuttle parts. I figure they will eventually get it to fly. But it’s too expensive and too unreliable. And at most they can make one per year (most likely it will take longer).

          SpaceX will get NASA back to the moon. Assuming that our nation hasn’t collapsed by then.

  29. Do you recall that a bond market crash preceded the Black Monday selloff on Wall Street (October 19, 1987)? I do.

    I was working in financial services at the time, among colleagues who were deeply invested in Wall Street stocks. I’ve never seen whiter faces or heard more gloomy prognostications than on that workday.

    1. The Financial Times
      High yield bonds
      US junk bond sell-off resumes after Fed snaps summer rally
      Rate rises and recession fears lift costs for riskier borrowers
      Outside the Federal Reserve building
      Traders expect the Federal Reserve to lift rates to nearly 4% by early next year
      Adam Samson and Harriet Clarfelt in London and Eric Platt in New York
      5 hours ago

      Risky US corporate borrowers are facing a renewed jump in borrowing costs as concerns that further sharp Federal Reserve rate rises will weigh heavily on the world’s biggest economy grip markets.

      Yields on US junk bonds have jumped to almost 8.6 per cent from a mid-August low of 7.4 per cent, according to an Ice Data Services index. The rise reflects a significant decline in the price of the debt.

      The fresh selling in high-yield bonds comes after a brief summer respite, in which most risky assets recovered somewhat from a dismal first half of 2022. Traders had hoped the Fed would take a softer approach to rate rises, but concerns the central bank will step up its fight against inflation have shattered the calm.

      “As this summer of optimism draws to a close, the Fed path and recession fears are returning to the fore,” said Srikanth Sankaran, strategist at Morgan Stanley.

      As a result, investors have raced out of funds that buy junk-rated US corporate bonds, with $8.7bn withdrawn from accounts over the past two weeks, according to flows tracked by EPFR. Redemptions in the past week ranked as the sixth-biggest weekly outflow since the coronavirus pandemic rocked US financial markets in 2020.

      Lotfi Karoui, a strategist at Goldman Sachs, said Jay Powell’s speech in late August at the Jackson Hole economic summit in which the Fed chair vowed to “keep at it” in the central bank’s tightening of monetary policy to fight inflation spooked investors.

      “Powell’s annual speech . . . delivered an unambiguous message that a dovish pivot is not in sight,” Karoui said. “For markets, this means a return to square one as investors readjust their expectations to a growth, inflation, and policy mix that is likely to stay unfriendly for quite some time.”

      The rise in junk bond yields reflects an increase in rate rise expectations that have affected the entire US debt market and intensifying jitters about lower-rated companies’ ability to make good on their obligations. Traders now expect the Fed to lift rates to nearly 4 per cent by early next year, up from between 2.25 and 2.5 per cent today.
      …

    2. Inflationary Bear Market Spells Trouble For Investors
      Contributor
      Dylan LeClair, Sam Rule
      Bitcoin Magazine
      Published
      Sep 2, 2022 08:30PM EDT

      With more good news is bad news jobs data, the world’s inflationary bear market is spelling trouble ahead.

      The below is an excerpt from a recent edition of Bitcoin Magazine Pro, Bitcoin Magazine’s premium markets newsletter. To be among the first to receive these insights and other on-chain bitcoin market analysis straight to your inbox, subscribe now.

      Rates On The Rise

      Yesterday’s initial jobless claims data release came in below expectations, signaling a stronger labor market which is another “good news is bad news” signpost.

      We can see some of these developments play out via the Eurodollar Futures curve where the market’s expected federal funds rate is steepening (more rate hikes), now expected to be over 4% in the second half of 2023. That’s in line with the Federal Reserve’s own projections that they’ve told the market:

      The S&P 500 Index now faces its fifth consecutive daily red candle and sits below some key technical areas that were holding as support.

      After months of compression, volatility is also on the move with the VIX starting to climb higher alongside higher 1-month realized volatility across bitcoin, equities and Treasury bond futures.

      As we head into another long holiday weekend, it’s been an eventful day in the market with weakness and increased selling pressure showing up in a number of asset classes. Some of the most important moves have been continued DXY strength as major market currencies continue to bleed against the U.S. dollar and the rise in sovereign debt yields with the U.S. 10-year over 3.25%. Yields across major European economies (Germany, Italy, Spain and Greece) are moving higher as well.

      The argument for “rates have peaked” has so far been a wrong or at least, early call, as the market has walked back their consensus expectations for a Federal Reserve pause or pivot timeframe into early 2023. The thesis of a deflationary bust and quick return to a 2% inflation target continues to look further away as many of the Federal Reserve board members are publicly emphasizing the need to stomp out inflation at all costs on a media show-like tour, acknowledging that core problems have not abated. Jerome Powell’s Jackson Hole speech and Neal Kashkari’s recent Oddlots appearance are clear examples of this.
      …
      https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/inflationary-bear-market-spells-trouble-for-investors

    3. U.S. News and World Report
      Analysis-Bond Bear Market: ‘Worst Year in History’ for Asset as Inflation Bites
      By Reuters
      Sept. 2, 2022
      U.S. News & World Report
      Reuters
      FILE PHOTO: U.S. One dollar banknotes are seen in front of displayed stock graph in this illustration taken, February 8, 2021. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/IllustrationReuters
      By David Randall

      NEW YORK (Reuters) – An accelerating decline in bond markets is bringing fresh pain for fixed income investors in a year when global bonds have already lost a fifth of their value.

      Yields on U.S. government bonds have surged since Fed Chairman Jerome Powell sent an unambiguously hawkish message to markets during August’s Jackson Hole symposium, with the ICE BoFA U.S. Treasury Index on track for its worst annual performance on record.

      Bonds in many European countries, meanwhile, marked their worst monthly performance in decades in August, helping send the closely watched Bloomberg Global Aggregate Bond Index down more than 20% from its peak for the first time ever.

      “This is the worst year in history by far for fixed income,” said Lawrence Gillum, fixed income strategist for LPL Financial. “If that’s not a bear market in bonds I don’t know what is.”

      The devastating sell-off in bonds had seen yields on the benchmark 10-year Treasury, which move inversely to prices, hit an 11-year high in June, rally along with stocks over the summer only to sell off again, sparking fears that new lows may be coming.

      While declines of more than 20% are typically called bear markets when they hit stocks, they are virtually unknown in bonds, an asset class that emphasizes stability and reliable returns. From 1990 to its peak in January 2021 – a period spanning much of a generation-long bull market in bonds – the global index had delivered an aggregate total return of nearly 470%.

      Many investors are betting the weakness in bonds will continue as central banks tighten monetary policy to bring down inflation in the United States and across the world.

      Investors broadly expect the Fed to raise rates by 75 basis points later this month, and some believe an equally large hike could be in store from the European Central Bank next week. A U.S. jobs report on Friday is also being closely watched by investors.

      Net bearish positioning among hedge funds and other speculative investors is up 30% since the end of July, according to Commodity Futures Trading Commission data.
      …
      https://www.usnews.com/news/top-news/articles/2022-09-02/analysis-bond-bear-market-worst-year-in-history-for-asset-as-inflation-bites

    4. It was in fact a tough day Bear, but I made more money buying WMT that day, than at any point in my career. I’m actually comfortably retired largely due to buys made that day

    1. This sudden shutdown happened just hours after the EU proclaimed that they wouldn’t pay Russia market prices for oil. Notice that there is no estimated “back to service” date like there was aa few months ago when actual maintenance was done on the pipeline.

      At first I thought the European leadership was clueless and incompetent. Demand oil at below market prices? From a country against whom you are waging economic warfare?

      But now I think this is on purpose. They want the European economy to completely collapse this winter, they want it to crater. They want social unrest. They want a desperate populace, one who will accept any terms that will keep the lights on and put food on the table.

      The Great Reset is coming.

      1. “They want a desperate populace, one who will accept any terms that will keep the lights on and put food on the table.”

        Indeed. But the low cost access to fire makes arson a readily available option for the disenchanted. A better option is cooperation.

    2. They voted for globalist Quislings, and now they’re getting what they voted for. Cry me a river, sheeple.

    3. “Europe On The Brink:” 70,000 Czech Protesters Flood Prague Over Energy Crisis

      https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/europe-brink-70000-czech-protesters-flood-prague-over-energy-crisis

      (snip snip. I suggest readers access the link and check out the photos of the crowd)

      BY TYLER DURDEN
      SATURDAY, SEP 03, 2022 – 11:00 AM

      More than 70,000 Czechs are protesting in Prague, the capital, demanding the ruling coalition take a neutral stance on the Ukraine war to ensure energy supplies from Russia aren’t cut off ahead of winter. Protesters are outraged at the European Union for sanctions against Russia that have sparked soaring electricity bills and triggered a cost-of-living crisis.

      “The aim of our demonstration is to demand change, mainly in solving the issue of energy prices, especially electricity and gas, which will destroy our economy this autumn,” event organizer Jiri Havel told local news iDNES and quoted by Reuters.

      The protest, held at Wenceslas Square in the heart of the capital, comes one day after the Czech government survived a no-confidence vote over opposition claims of inaction to protect citizens against energy hyperinflation.

      1. The protest, held at Wenceslas Square in the heart of the capital, comes one day after the Czech government survived a no-confidence vote over opposition claims of inaction to protect citizens against energy hyperinflation.

        One of my Czech colleagues told me that Czechia should make no deals with Russia (unlike what Hungary did) and that there really wasn’t an energy crisis. Perhaps when he gets his next bill he might change his tune.

        I also have colleagues in Ireland who also insist there is no energy crisis in Ireland, even though their media says there is. From the Irish Times:

        IT Sunday: Ireland is sleepwalking into a social disaster as energy poverty rises

  31. ‘Homes are being priced closer to what is fair-market value.’”

    Youre a realtor. You have no idea, nor do most others, know what those words mean. If they did, they, like you and the rest of the know nothing realtor crowd, wouldn’t be guessing.

  32. “Always Be Closing” gets a lot more problematic with headlines like this.

    Australia’s house prices take biggest dive in 40 years

    https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2022/9/1/australian-home-prices-took-their-biggest-spill-in-40-years-in-au

    Property prices drop 1.6 percent in August in sharpest fall since 1983.

    Australian home prices took their biggest dive in 40 years in August as rising interest rates and cost-of-living pressures slashed demand, threatening to undermine household wealth and confidence.

    Figures from property consultant CoreLogic out on Thursday showed prices nationally sank 1.6 percent in August from July, when they fell 1.3 percent. It was the largest monthly drop since 1983 and dragged annual price growth down to 4.7 percent, compared with a peak above 21 percent late last year.

    1. This is at best housing bubble 3.0 and a case can be made for 4.0.

      For what it’s worth, the massive wave of illegals is ensuring the next one occurs right on schedule too.

  35. The Biden regime and DNC must be green with envy at their CCP ideological mentors’ power to impose arbitrary, capricious “public health” lockdowns.

    New ‘Zero Covid’ lockdown in China sparks panic-buying as terrified Chengdu residents frantically scramble to stock up on food – after shutdown was imposed on 21 MILLION people following just 157 new cases

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11176559/New-Zero-Covid-lockdown-China-sparks-panic-buying-Chengdu-residents-scramble-stock-up.html

    Panicked Chinese residents have been swarming supermarkets and stuffing their cars full of food as yet another city enters a strict Covid lockdown.

    Shocking images and videos show people in the city of Chengdu, the capital of southwestern China’s Sichuan province, clambering over each other at supermarket counters and stripping shelves bare amid fears that lockdown could result in food shortages.

    Chengdu became the latest Chinese city to be locked down on Thursday when 21million people were ordered to stay at home from 6pm local time after just 157 new infections were recorded.

  37. Anyone operating a business in a Democrat-Bolshevik malgoverned municipality needs their head examined.

    Jackson, Mississippi’s Water Crisis Is Pushing Local Businesses to the Brink

    https://dnyuz.com/2022/09/02/jackson-mississippis-water-crisis-is-pushing-local-businesses-to-the-brink/

    For the past five weeks, Jeff Good has operated his three restaurants in Jackson, Mississippi under a boil water notice–that’s if he’s lucky enough to have water at all. On Monday, the faucets went dry and forced him to close for four days. On Friday morning, the water pressure returned and they were able to open in time for breakfast and lunch, but the headache is far from over.

    The city of 150,000 people, a quarter of whom are below the poverty line, is still under a boil water advisory. That means his 210 employees cannot safely use the restaurants’ soda guns, commercial coffee makers, or ice machines. Workers have to rely on bottled water, canned soft drinks, a Mr. Coffee, and bags of ice, which are stacked to the ceiling in the walk-in freezers. Even baking bread requires bottled water. These measures cost each location an additional $200 to $500 a day. At the same time, sales are down 20 percent.

    1. A comment:

      Those who have been doing this with other nations, finally the same thing has started with them at home now. After the Arab Spring, there is the Europe Spring.

  39. More proof people are crazy:

    The desire to buy burned land full of debris wasn’t there back in February when lots burned by the Marshall Fire were put on the market.

    But a lot has changed in eight months.

    “It’s wonderful to see the healing process of the land and of the people that lived on it,” Compass REALTOR Jennifer Eiss said.

    Now that burn debris has been cleared, the soil tested, and flowers are blooming, Eiss says the lots are selling, and they’re going for quite a bit.

    “We have had a closed lot in this neighborhood at 1.375 million cash,” said Eiss, standing in the Spanish Hills neighborhood.

    That’s the most a burned lot has sold for, and Eiss said the lowest sale closed in the Sagamore Subdivision at $257K.

    Eiss listed a lot on Paragon Drive at $1.99 million. The owners bought it in 2015 with a home for $935K.

    “We have actually had 22 sales of lots that were burned by the Marshall Fire, and we have people starting to break ground on their new homes,” Eiss said.

    She added there are 14 lots under contract and 57 lots currently on the market.

    “Most real estate agents here if you were selling a lot it would be maybe an old rundown home,” she said. “We did not have a lot of raw land available so that wasn’t really a common sale here unless you were working with a big new home subdivision.”

  40. This is tinfoil hat territory, but I’m starting to think that the weather service is lying about the local temps, fabricating them higher in hindsight. I have been suspecting this for months. Why? Because every time I have pulled up historical data, it has increased versus the real time data I logged for that day.

    Yesterday, per my own thermometer, we hit 89 degrees. I was refreshing Accuweather every half hour during the hottest part of the day. I never saw it say more than 88 degrees. Guess what their published high was for yesterday? 94. And they’ve been doing this all summer. It was not 94 degrees yesterday. Nope.

    I’m starting to think that this is a concerted effort to try to lie about high temperatures to bolster their “climate change” agenda and force in all sorts of new, nasty sh!t. I have completely lost trust in the USA. 100%.

    1. It’s a great way to gaslight people. Who keeps weather logs? Yes, it’s very easy for them to falsify data and use it to scare people. The scamdemic was but a dress rehearsal for this.

    2. “but I’m starting to think that the weather service is lying about the local temps, fabricating them higher in hindsight. I have been suspecting this for months.”

      IMHO they are.

      1. where they record the temperature?

        Most likely at the airport, surrounded by thousands of square yards of asphalt.

        1. Our city doesn’t have an airport, but they certainly aren’t recording the temperature in my front or back yard.

          1. The temperatures reported in real time on Accuweather are from the same station which reports the daily highs. If their real time daily high only reached 88, why does it show 94 the following day? Something is not jiving. And while I am 7 miles away, the temps don’t vary that much.

    4. “To understand climate on larger scales, climatologists average data from individual stations with data from other stations in the area. When combining observations, the values for each station are mathematically weighted to account for the fraction of the averaging area they represent. This keeps areas with many weather stations from being overrepresented compared to areas with fewer stations.” —NOAA

      Instantaneous observations are provisional data. Corrected (averaged, weighted) data are what make it into official records.

      1. Apparently there is some mysterious place hidden locally, a much, much hotter place, which skews the data higher on a daily basis – much higher.

        1. A bar and whisker plot of scaled data from a product like Matlab would likely satisfy your curiosity. Scientific measurement philosophy is a real thing.

  41. The Rolling Stones – Sympathy For The Devil (Official Lyric Video)

    https://youtu.be/GgnClrx8N2k

    Sympathy For The Biden

    Please allow me to introduce myself
    I’m a man of wealth and taste
    I’ve been around for a long, long year
    Stole many a mans soul and faith

    I was round when Corn Pop
    Had his moment of doubt and pain
    Made damn sure the children
    Rubbed the hair that was on my legs

    Pleased to meet you
    Hope you guess my name
    But what’s puzzling you
    Is the nature of my game

    I stuck around Delaware
    When I saw it was a time for a change
    Took the job I was offered
    As Hillary screamed in vain

    I rode a tank
    In Obama’s rank
    My sons business raged
    And he filled my bank

    Pleased to meet you
    Hope you guess my name, oh yeah
    Ah, what’s puzzling you
    Is the nature of my game, oh yeah

    I watched with glee
    While your kings and queens
    Fought for ten decades
    For the laws they made

    I shouted out,
    Who elected Donald Trump?
    When after all
    It was you and me

    Let me please introduce myself
    I’m a man of wealth and taste
    And I laid traps for his protesters
    Who got jailed when we opened gates

    Pleased to meet you
    Hope you guessed my name, oh yeah
    But what’s puzzling you
    Is the nature of my game, oh yeah, get down, baby

    Just as every cop is a criminal
    And all the sinners saints
    As heads is tails
    Just call me The Big Guy
    Cause I’m in need of some restraint

    So if you meet me
    Have some courtesy
    Have some sympathy, and some taste
    Use all your well-learned politesse
    Cause I laid your vote to waste, um yeah

    Pleased to meet you
    Hope you guessed my name, um yeah
    But what’s puzzling you
    Is the nature of my game, um mean it, get down

    Woo, who
    Oh yeah, get on down

    Oh yeah
    Oh yeah!
    Tell me baby, what’s my name
    Tell me honey, can ya guess my name

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