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The Sharknado Of Real Estate: No One Saw It Coming, No One Believed It Was Happening, But We’re Never Going To See Numbers Like That Again

A report from CNBC. “Wells Fargo is stepping back from the multitrillion-dollar market for U.S. mortgages. As part of its retrenchment, Wells Fargo is also shuttering its correspondent business that buys loans made by third-party lenders and ‘significantly’ shrinking its mortgage-servicing portfolio through asset sales, said consumer lending chief Kleber Santos.”

From Basis Point. “When you see Wells saying (in the link below) that they’re exiting their correspondent business, it means they’re closing a division that buys loans from non-Wells Fargo mortgage banks. The way it works is a smaller local mortgage company can be your mortgage lender, but they might be selling your loan to Wells when they close it. But there is a critical niche Wells Fargo’s correspondent division filled in higher priced housing markets where the loans are bigger. They have been an outright leader in the lowest-rate jumbo mortgages for consumers since the post-2008 crisis years.”

“Consumers (and realtors referring consumers) in high priced markets who were used to getting competitive pricing from their local mortgage lender might notice pricing is way off starting now. This will be at least partly because of this Wells move. U.S. Bank made a similar move in December, closing a division that served local mortgage brokers in high priced markets with great jumbo rates. These two moves combined are a giant blow to nonbank loan officers who do lots of jumbo loans.”

Reverse Mortgage Daily. “Bankrupt Reverse Mortgage Funding, LLC (RMF), the nation’s fifth-largest reverse mortgage lender as of December, has accelerated the pace of layoffs in recent weeks. This occurred as RMF faced new bankruptcy complications, including the termination of Leadenhall Capital Partners as a debtor-in-possession (DIP) lender. Sources who spoke to RMD about the lender’s collapse attributed the rise in interest rates to heavy losses for both Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (HECM) and proprietary reverse mortgage volume.”

“The decline in volume had an impact on RMF’s HECM servicing business, which caused its loan-securitization outlets to freeze both private-label bonds and Ginnie Mae-guaranteed HECM-backed securities. These events triggered a cascade of defaults on RMF’s warehouse-lending lines, which provided the lifeblood cash flow for the lender.”

Go Banking Rates. “During the early part of the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a rush to buy homes — and many buyers paid premiums. However, some likely will begin to regret that decision, said Odest Riley Jr., CEO of WLM Realty and Co., based in Inglewood, California. ‘The biggest issue in 2023 will be buyers who overpaid in 2021 realizing they have no equity and are stuck with a property they may not have really wanted,’ he said. ‘These buyers will be forced to ride out the down market and get back in the game when the economy recovers.'”

The Guardian. “Here are a few things that I have Googled in the nine months or so since I bought a Victorian terrace home in Philadelphia: As you can probably tell, I am starting to have a few regrets about buying a house. I love my home but, bloody hell, is home ownership overrated. First of all, it’s not as though I even really own the thing, is it? I’m basically just renting it from the bank. And, unlike a landlord, the bank doesn’t come over to check on your possibly frozen pipes. I realise that complaining about home ownership, by the way, might be met with tiny violins from some quarters.”

KOIN in Oregon. “The Portland housing market is experiencing its steepest home sale price drop in years. The average sale price in the market has been declining since July 2022. The average sale price for a Portland-area home in December 2022 was $566,700 and the median sale price was $507,500. Both are the lowest they’ve been since April 2021. They continued to climb until May 2022, when the RMLS Market Action Report said the average sale price in the Portland area was $649,600 and the median sale price was $575,000. After that, prices started to slide. According to the RMLS, home sales are following a similar pattern in Southwest Washington and prices have been declining for months.”

KIRO in Washington. “Seattle and Tacoma are among the fastest-cooling housing markets in the nation. John L. Scott Real Estate agent Nelya Calev says rising interest rates have taken away buying power. According to Calev, interest rates fell as low as 3.5% last year, but today they’ve risen over 6%. Her hope for 2023 is that the federal government stops messing with the rate. ‘People get adjusted to the new rate, and then the market just starts moving slowly; buyers are like, okay, that’s the new interest rate, I can do this, and then bam, we get whacked again,’ said Calev.”

The Coeur d’Alene Press in Idaho. “While it seemed a house in the $500,000 range was considered a good deal not long ago, prices have edged down in light of interest rates. Jennifer Smock,managing broker with Windermere Coeur d’Alene Realty/Post Falls, said the first two quarters of 2022 were a sellers’ market with buyers competing for homes. But mid-year, with a dramatic rise in interest rates, the housing market ‘experienced a quick shift and a serious slowdown.’ ‘When interest rates jumped up close to 7% buyers found themselves unable to purchase at the current home price values,’ Smock wrote. ‘Sellers realized quickly that if they wanted to be successful, they would need to negotiate, give incentives and/or reduce their sales price.'”

Hawaii Business Magazine. “Fran Villarmia-Kahawai’s term as the 2023 president of the Honolulu Board of Realtors comes at a challenging time for the real estate industry. ‘The No. 1 challenge, I believe, is it’s changing. We had an uptick in membership from three years ago. We thought we would go down, but it went the other way. There’s a bunch of agents who don’t know that not every listing will have multiple offers.'”

The Dallas Morning News in Texas. “Dallas-Fort Worth home prices were down 10% in December from June’s peak as affordability challenges kept selling activity slow. Many potential buyers are hesitant because they are unsure of where prices could be going, said Lee Harbaugh, a real estate agent with Davey Goosmann Realty in Mansfield. ‘There’s a lot of feeling of uncertainty,’ he said. Harbaugh said he had a buyer lined up for one of his listings in Farmers Branch in the early fall, but because the home was part of a family estate, it took longer than expected to legally clear the home to sell. Now, as the seller is about ready to put the home back on the market, their buyer from the fall no longer qualifies.”

Bisnow New York. “The last quarter of 2022 brought significant decreases in both sales prices and volume in New York City commercial property sales, ending a year dominated by rising rates with a whimper. Multifamily was the top performer in the fourth quarter, with $1.4B of sales — a 23% decline on the average of the previous four quarters, per Avison Young. Avison Young Tri-State Investment Sales Group Head James Nelson said average cap rates have risen to 4.97% while the average price per SF on properties is $742, down 11%. ‘So that’s that inverse relationship,’ he said. ‘If investors are demanding a higher return, higher cap rate, that is going to push down pricing on a per-SF basis.'”

“Office took a more significant hit. For that asset class, the average price per SF was $495 in the fourth quarter, down 53% on the trailing four-quarter average. Nelson said that number is ‘totally misleading,’ as it doesn’t factor in the quality office buildings that traded.”

From Bloomberg. “Major US office markets were already struggling with empty buildings as flexible work becomes the norm. Now, mounting layoffs and corporate cost cuts threaten to worsen the glut, particularly in New York and San Francisco — two finance and tech hubs with economies that are heavily dependent on office workers. ‘It’s an extremely difficult time to be a landlord,’ said Ruth Colp-Haber, chief executive officer of brokerage firm Wharton Property Advisors. ‘All the costs of running their buildings are going up, the costs of construction and labor are going up. These are all their daily costs, just to open up their buildings for business. Then, on the income side, the rents are going down. This is a real witches brew.'”

Global News in Canada. “‘Our lows are getting back to normal for this area [and] we’re seeing some buyers and sellers starting to understand where the market is,’ said Adam Miller, 2023 president of LSTAR. ‘We’ve had a couple of months where it’s been consistent, smaller decreases, but [we’re heading] back to sort of the more conservative market that the London-St. Thomas is used to seeing.’ Miller said that ‘we’re sort of been caught up in what happened to the market in 2020 and 2021,’ but ‘that will never happen again.'”

“‘That was sort of the Sharknado of real estate,’ he said. ‘No one saw it coming when it happened, no one believed it was happening, but we’re never going to see numbers like that again.’ He advises prospective sellers to look closely at recent market trends, and that ‘the numbers that your neighbour got a year ago, you’re not going to get.’ ‘If you’re ready for it, a lot of things that sold 2018 and 2019 are going to sell in 2023,’ Miller said. ‘So, if you sort of delete those two crazy years, you’re probably going to have a great return.'”

From CNBC. “House prices in Sweden have risen fairly reliably over the last decade. This has been buoyed by ultra-low interest rates in a system where around half of people’s mortgages are financed with variable rates and many of the rest are on short-term fixed rates. But now property prices are tumbling. ‘As of November we are seeing prices nationally in Sweden fall 13% from the peak in February. That’s the largest downturn on the housing market since we had a big economic crisis in the nineties,’ Gustav Helgesson, an analyst at Nordea, told CNBC. Helgesson characterized the change as a correction, rather than a bursting bubble, ‘but it is a painful and very fast correction,’ he added.”

The Taipei Times on Taiwan. “Changes to the Equalization of Land Rights Act might trigger panic selling of presale house purchase agreements and weigh on overall property deals, real-estate analysts said yesterday. Evertrust Rehouse Co said the legislation in essence limits presale housing projects to buyers with real demand and puts an end to people profiting from reselling purchase agreements that cost relatively little.”

“H&B Realty Co said that the slowdown in the local housing market has to do with the amendments being proposed in July last year. Investors have since fled the market, although they were hoping the government might back off, H&B research manager Jessica Hsu said. ‘Panic selling looks inevitable and might cause a splash,’ Hsu said.”

The Associated Press. “The global economy will come ‘perilously close’ to a recession this year, led by weaker growth in all the world’s top economies — the United States, Europe and China — the World Bank warned Tuesday. The report follows a similarly gloomy forecast a week earlier from Kristina Georgieva, the head of the International Monetary Fund, the global lending agency. Georgieva estimated that one-third of the world will fall into recession this year. ‘For most of the world economy, this is going to be a tough year, tougher than the year we leave behind,’ Georgieva said. ‘Why? Because the three big economies — U.S., E.U., China — are all slowing down simultaneously.'”

From Reuters. “Dozens of Telsa owners protested at a delivery centre in Shanghai on Tuesday, vowing to raise pressure on the electric car maker after it declined to offer them rebates on price cuts the U.S. firm made last week and that they missed out on. Similar protests by Tesla owners have sprung up in cities including Henan, Wuxi and Hangzhou in recent days, according to owners and social media posts. Tesla has faced online backlash over previous price cuts in China before but nothing as widespread as the current spontaneous protests.”

“Several of the owners in Shanghai said they felt misled by Tesla sales staff who had urged them to close orders and told them that they would face higher prices in the new year. ‘I haven’t been able to eat or sleep,’ said another owner who only identified herself by her last name, Feng. She said bought her Model 3 in December after Tesla sales staff came to her house to finalize loan documents and had pressured her to close. ‘I cannot accept this.'”

The Associated Press. “The cryptocurrency exchange FTX was supposed to be the crown jewel of the Bahamian government’s push to be the global destination for all things crypto, after years of having an economy overly reliant on tourism and banking. Instead, FTX is bankrupt and Bahamians are trying to figure out what’s next for their country and whether their national crypto experiment has failed. Dressed in a canary blue suit on a warm December night, sweat dripping from his brow, Bishop Lawrence Rolle belts out the lyrics to his latest hit song for the hundreds of children and adults gathered to celebrate Christmas.”

“‘FTX!,’ he sings, bent over and shaking his head for emphasis. ‘The money is gone!’ ‘FTX!,’ his backup singer and audience scream back. ‘The money have done gone!'”

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This Post Has 162 Comments

  1. ‘These events triggered a cascade of defaults on RMF’s warehouse-lending lines, which provided the lifeblood cash flow for the lender’

    Probably nothing.

    ‘The biggest issue in 2023 will be buyers who overpaid in 2021 realizing they have no equity and are stuck with a property they may not have really wanted’

    Now that’s some red hotcakes Odest.

  2. ‘Nelson said average cap rates have risen to 4.97% while the average price per SF on properties is $742, down 11%. ‘So that’s that inverse relationship,’ he said. ‘If investors are demanding a higher return, higher cap rate, that is going to push down pricing on a per-SF basis’

    AKA catching a falling knife.

    ‘Office took a more significant hit. For that asset class, the average price per SF was $495 in the fourth quarter, down 53% on the trailing four-quarter average. Nelson said that number is ‘totally misleading,’ as it doesn’t factor in the quality office buildings that traded’

    It’s THE MIX!

  3. ‘As you can probably tell, I am starting to have a few regrets about buying a house. I love my home but, bloody hell, is home ownership overrated. First of all, it’s not as though I even really own the thing, is it? I’m basically just renting it from the bank. And, unlike a landlord, the bank doesn’t come over to check on your possibly frozen pipes. I realise that complaining about home ownership, by the way, might be met with tiny violins from some quarters’

    via GIPHY

    1. “…unlike a landlord, the bank doesn’t come over to check on your possibly frozen pipes….”

      Gosh, Golly, You mean holding costs?

      Surely your agent [“friend”] from the REIConplex reviewed in detail those costs before you signed on the dotted line.

      No worries. Plenty more are coming. (like literally the *more* than doubling of natural gas prices in just *one* month by SoCalGas here in Orange County (Ca),or ever increasing electricity rates by SoCalEdison.

    4. I mean fine, we all got a bit shocked when we bought our first home about the things that our parents didn’t bother to tell us. BUT. it’s not that bad IF YOU’RE NOT A CHILDLIKE IDIOT. Like the writer appears to be. I mean FFS c’mon, some of this is obvious. Yeah pipes freeze in teh cold, but it appears your house is really old which means both that it has survived before and things break. I don’t feel sorry for these people at all. I wonder how they breathe without instructions.

      1. And you’re not renting the house from the bank either (unless you have an I/O or neg-am mortgage). If you were renting, at the end you have to give the house back.

      2. “A CHILDLIKE IDIOT.”
        You would think past tragedies such as the 08′ financial meltdown taught people a lesson. Nope. Apparently, many “adults” (cough!) still do not know or want to know the key factor in making important decisions (especially those involving large amounts of money) is: understanding the critical importance of removing emotion and feelings from the decision making process.
        Greed, fear of missing out and/or irrational exuberance always have and always will result in ruinous decisions. Sad.

  4. “These two moves combined are a giant blow to nonbank loan officers who do lots of jumbo loans.”

    Good. Loan officers enabling outsized mortgages for FBs who manifestly can’t afford them have created huge systemic risks to the financial system. These clowns should’ve been reined in years ago.

  5. ‘Her hope for 2023 is that the federal government stops messing with the rate. ‘People get adjusted to the new rate, and then the market just starts moving slowly; buyers are like, okay, that’s the new interest rate, I can do this, and then bam, we get whacked again’

    I know Nelya, it’s like they’re breaking it off in yer a$$!

      1. My grandma used to say “If you hope in your left hand and poop in the right hand, the right hand will fill up first”.

  6. ‘He advises prospective sellers to look closely at recent market trends, and that ‘the numbers that your neighbour got a year ago, you’re not going to get.’ ‘If you’re ready for it, a lot of things that sold 2018 and 2019 are going to sell in 2023,’ Miller said. ‘So, if you sort of delete those two crazy years, you’re probably going to have a great return’

    Adam gets it. If we close our eyes and pretend the cray cray didn’t happen, we’re all good!

    1. I don’t know if cray cray denial will save them. History suggests that manias with extreme price blowouts are followed by crashes with downside overshooting, thanks to the ensuing massive, panicked race to the exits.

    2. This is like Grade-A stupid. It’s like saying, I made a ton of money in magic crypto beans until this year when it all went to zero. Minus that year returns were phenomenal!

  7. ‘they felt misled by Tesla sales staff who had urged them to close orders and told them that they would face higher prices in the new year. ‘I haven’t been able to eat or sleep’…She said bought her Model 3 in December after Tesla sales staff came to her house to finalize loan documents and had pressured her to close. ‘I cannot accept this’

    They say stamping yer little feet helps Feng.

    ‘“‘FTX!,’ he sings, bent over and shaking his head for emphasis. ‘The money is gone!’ ‘FTX!,’ his backup singer and audience scream back. ‘The money have done gone!’

    We gotta get a copy of this tune.

        1. blew $54B

          $44B at $54.20/share because he loves marijuana references and got in a pi$$ing contest via text with Twitter’s CEO. Legal filings, like SEC filings, are very illuminating.

      2. Musk was dumping Tesla stock

        I’m sure he’s probably cashed out tens of billions to just stick in numerous accounts around the country and world so he’s set for life, regardless of what happens to Tesla, Twitter or whatever.

    2. You should have made “The money done gone” the blog entry title for today, Ben. 😂

      Has anyone else detected a new recent narrative that “Bitcoin isn’t crypto. It’s not like the others” ..? I believe this was something Saylor hinted at and now it’s being parroted by the bros. I guess they are trying to paint cold-wallet Bitcoin as a safe regulated financial instrument which is miles away from incestuous fraudster exchanges like FTX or Binance. I don’t think it’s going to get much traction.

      1. You’re onto it. Porcine beauticians in the mainstream financial press are trying to calve off to the crypto exchanges as “different” to avoid aknowledging that all cryptocurrencies are Ponzi sssets and the entire shitcart is going up in flames.

      2. I have a family member who handled crypto for a city government. He convinced us all to buy some and I have so many regrets.

      3. Great potential titles:

        ‘many buyers paid premiums. However, some likely will begin to regret that decision’

        ‘The biggest issue in 2023 will be buyers who overpaid in 2021 realizing they have no equity and are stuck with a property they may not have really wanted’

        ‘These buyers will be forced to ride out the down market’

    3. after Tesla sales staff came to her house to finalize loan documents and had pressured her to close

      Industry disruptor in action.

    1. ‘All Three Vaccines Are Breaking Through:’ Emails Show Discussion of Vaccine Failure Among Health Officials

      Officials in Washington state recorded jumps in post-vaccination infections, hospitalizations, and deaths in mid-2021, according to newly disclosed internal emails.

      Fifteen percent of COVID-19 cases and 25 percent of COVID-19 hospitalizations from July 1 to July 20, 2021, were vaccinated—up from 2 percent between February and June that year, Chris Spitters, the health officer for the Snohomish County Health District, wrote in one of the messages. A fifth of the deaths attributed to COVID-19 were vaccinated.

      Spitters also detailed a COVID-19 outbreak in a long-term care facility with over a dozen breakthrough, or post-vaccination, cases.

      Dr. Yuan-Po Tu, of The Everett Clinic, responded by saying that about 20 percent of people testing positive in the clinic were fully vaccinated. “ALL 3 vaccines are breaking through,” Tu wrote.

      Dr. James Cook, chief medical officer at the Providence Regional Medical Center Everett, told Spitters and Tu that some hospitalized patients were vaccinated and the majority of workers who were testing positive were fully vaccinated. “I don’t think any have been hospitalized but I’m not 100% sure,” Cook wrote.

      The emails, all sent on July 30, 2021, were obtained and published recently by Ari Hoffman, a 570 KVI radio host and an editor for The Post Millennial. They were reviewed by The Epoch Times, which confirmed their authenticity.

      The emails were sent after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a study showing that 74 percent of COVID-19 cases from an outbreak in Massachusetts occurred among fully vaccinated people, undercutting claims from top health officials that the vaccinated would not get infected. The outbreak investigation prompted the agency to recommend vaccinated people wear masks indoors, a reversal from about two months prior.

      Spitters said in his missive that the outbreak study provided “sobering news” and predicted a “rocky road ahead.”

      “We really need to reframe our public education approach to emphasizing vaccination along with the other prevention measures rather than the faded illusion of vaccination instead of other prevention measures. The stellar individual protection afforded by vaccination is no longer, nor is the dream of getting out from under COVID on July 1,” he said, referring to President Joe Biden declaring that COVID-19 “no longer controls our lives” and that the country had achieved “independence from COVID-19” thanks to vaccination.

      “Effectiveness is still good compared to many other vaccines and higher coverage would still do us a lot of good, but the vaccine effectiveness is clearly no longer what it was just a couple of months ago and folks should manage themselves accordingly,” Spitters added.

      Snohomish County officials had said in June 2021 that the county’s COVID-19 metrics were dropping “thanks in large part to the growing number of people getting vaccinated.” Spitters had said that “relief is on the horizon.”

      Just weeks later, with metrics rising, the county’s health agency acknowledged that people who were vaccinated could still become infected, but described breakthrough infections as “occasional” and the vaccinated as better off when it came to illness, hospitalization, and death.

      “Local public health officials were publicly discussing breakthrough infections in summer 2021, as were many healthcare professionals, researchers, and scientists. Throughout the COVID-19 response, local public health has consistently been in communication about the best disease prevention measures to keep our communities healthy,” Dr. Dennis Worsham and Dr. James Lewis, now the top two health officials in the country, told The Epoch Times via email in response to a query about the internal messages.

      “It is not a surprise to have breakthrough infections. Even vaccines that work very well are not a 100% guarantee against infection, and we don’t expect them to be. What we continue to see, though, is that fully vaccinated (and now boosted, particularly with the new bivalent booster) individuals are much less likely to require hospitalization or die of COVID-19 related complications,” they added.

      Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat, in August 2021 imposed COVID-19 vaccine mandates for public workers, healthcare workers, and teachers, claiming that the mandates would be crucial in “defeating this deadly disease.” When the vaccines first rolled out, experts hoped the shots would work well enough to drastically diminish or even eliminate the virus, or reach herd immunity. But by the end of 2021, with the vaccines performing worse than expected, they were acknowledging that may not be possible.

      In another jurisdiction in Washington state in July 2021, Lewis flagged the rising number of breakthrough infections in a separate email chain.

      Lewis, at the time an epidemiologist with Seattle and King County’s health department, told colleagues he’d been speaking with contact tracers who “are hearing stories all day from people who are vaccinated and getting COVID.”

      One example, he said, was a party to celebrate vaccination that forced attendees to provide proof of vaccination to enter.

      Tracers identified at least nine people who attended the party who had tested positive, Lewis said in an email.

      The Facebook listing for the event called it “Operation Inoculation: A Critical Community Vaccination Celebration” and said 258 people registered to go.

      “You did it! You’ve survived one of the worst pandemics and presidencies in U.S. History. There’s no question we’ve only yet begun to deal with the fallout, but thanks to all of you who have fulfilled your Civic Responsibility to get vaccinated, we’re on the road to recovery, and we think that’s something to celebrate. If you’ve had your shots, join us for a good old-fashioned, party-like-it’s-2016 Burner Party,” the listing stated.

      “Sorry for the bad news,” Lewis wrote, adding that the tracers wanted to know what guidance on masking and quarantining they should give to vaccinated people.

      Another set of messages released by Hoffman showed Worsham, at the time the interim director of the Seattle and King County Public Health, reporting a spike in metrics to then-Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan, who asked for more information on how many breakthrough cases were happening and what the severity of the disease was like in the vaccinated. Worsham asked health workers for information.

      “We do have information and are working on talking points for Jeff—should be ready tomorrow,” Sargis Pogosjans, one of the workers, wrote. “I think the context is extremely important—an increased proportion of fully vaccinated cases should be expected since the vaccine is not 100% effective against infection and now, the population of fully vaccinated residents outnumber unvaccinated residents.”

      “I agree with you Sargis—we are being clear in our conversations that we do expect people who are vaccinated to become infected with COVID,” Worsham replied. “As our population becomes more vaccinated—we do anticipate we will see more given that more people are vaccinated AND that vaccines are not 100% effective in protecting you from the virus.”

      The talking points were not included in the emails.

      Dr. Jeff Duchin, the health officer for Seattle and King County, told The Epoch Times via email that breakthrough infections were discussed nationally in the summer of 2021 and that the county communicated publicly about the trend.

      “The fact that breakthrough infections occur does not mean vaccines do not work or provide important protection against serious COVID-19 infections. Vaccines provide substantial protection against serious COVID-19 even though protection against transmission is lower, and vaccination plus other layered protections are most effective at preventing transmission,” Duchin said, pointing to studies from the CDC and a study from Nature that estimated vaccines reduce transmission.

      Clinical trials have not shown that vaccines reduce transmission and a Pfizer executive recently acknowledged that was not studied.

      The papers from the CDC and other researchers have also shown that the vaccines provide little protection—the effectiveness even turns negative after time—against infection, and worse shielding against severe illness, since the Omicron variant emerged in late 2021. Observational data indicate the latest boosters, authorized and recommended in late 2022, protect poorly against infection and solidly against hospitalization.

      https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_app/health/all-three-vaccines-are-breaking-through-emails-show-discussion-of-vaccine-failure-among-health-officials_4974246.html

      1. ‘“Sorry for the bad news,” Lewis wrote, adding that the tracers wanted to know what guidance on masking and quarantining they should give to vaccinated people’

        Jim, tell them to put on their mouth hankey, put the good old HBB in their wills, put their head between their knees and kiss their a$$ goodbye!

        1. the latest boosters, authorized and recommended in late 2022, protect poorly against infection and solidly against hospitalization.

          85% of Americans refused the latest booster shot and there was no spike. Spin that.

        1. Alternatively, one could have simply deduced “If .gov wants me to do it then it’s a bad idea”.

          Even a knucklehead like me done figgered that out.

  10. These events triggered a cascade of defaults on RMF’s warehouse-lending lines, which provided the lifeblood cash flow for the lender.”

    Cascading defaults? This sounds like another “Oh dear!” moment in time.

    1. All that the White House has said is that there is no evidence of a cyber attack ‘at this point‘

      Hmmm … the system has worked well for years, then suddenly crashed during the wee hours of the morning, when the stress level was likely very low.

      I’m gonna go with cyber-attack, probably by the ChiComs in retaliation for the Covid travel restrictions on Chinese nationals.

    2. Hard to upgrade your software when you send all your money to Zelensky and family (less 10% for the BG).

  13. “The Sharknado Of Real Estate”

    – More like RE jumped the shark in 2020-2022. Nowhere to go but down from here.

  17. A reader sent these in:

    Liz Ann Sonders

    Perhaps no surprise but % of homes selling above their list price (as of November 2022) has fallen to 30%, which is way below peak of 53% in March 2022

    https://twitter.com/LizAnnSonders/status/1612791745359527937

    Real Estate Agents Right Now 🔥 🔥 🔥

    https://twitter.com/WallStreetSilv/status/1613039455753105408

    Bottom-Fishers Beware

    https://twitter.com/jessefelder/status/1612925121643294721

    “See, we here at the Federal Reserve want to discourage ewe from borrowing and consuming… so we’re raising interest rates on ewe”

    https://twitter.com/profplum99/status/1612887453786071041

    Ron Butler
    @ronmortgageguy
    OSFI Considers More Restrictions on Bank Mortgage Lending = Study Of Open Barn Door & Absent Horse
    The Bank Regulator: the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions will embark on a study of the safety of Bank Mortgage Lending immediately says Peter Routledge

    https://twitter.com/ronmortgageguy/status/1612810187198316545

    Tesla is a case study in investor denial and delusion. Elon Musk has been selling all the way down. His cult believes in the stock more than he does.

    https://twitter.com/SuburbanDrone/status/1612996753761992705

    Musk has made the Tesla brand so toxic, used $TSLA values are plummeting across the globe. In the UK 🇬🇧, Model 3 and Y are the worst depreciating EVs, having lost a staggering 22%+ of their value over the last year. Expect this to decimate $TSLA stock…

    https://twitter.com/Factschaser/status/1612594626413883393

    “Nationwide, 17.1% of offices were empty as 2.1 million square feet (195,000 square meters) of space failed to find a tenant, according to a fourth-quarter report by CBRE Group Inc…”

    https://twitter.com/GoldTelegraph_/status/1612920476627775490

    CBC Toronto

    BREAKING: Toronto residents could be in for a 5.5 per cent property tax increase as the city unveiled its 2023 budget Tuesday morning.

    https://twitter.com/CBCToronto/status/1612837475235266561

    I’m sure that the worlds largest banks that have access to billions of historic and real time consumer spending data points via credit card data and mortgage/credit data, have no idea what’s about to happen to the housing market right?…. right?

    https://twitter.com/MacroOunce/status/1612936297357746179

    THIS IS SAN FRANCISCO: It’s come down to this. Society is crumbling, especially on the West Coast. #Homeless #Homelessness #Fentanyl #Crisis

    https://twitter.com/choeshow/status/1612925519997317120

    Where did all your PPP taxpayer funded dollars go? Luxury items

    https://twitter.com/GRomePow/status/1612953856815812608

    Higher interest rates for longer? Last week Jim Bullard suggested the Fed Funds Rate could rise as high as 7%. Today, JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon gives a 50% probability that it will go higher than 5%. Sure seems they’re trying to manage our expectations…

    https://twitter.com/menlobear/status/1612978526503993346

    THE VACANCY RATE AT CANADIAN OFFICE BUILDINGS REACHED A RECORD HIGH AT THE END OF LAST YEAR. Canadian real estate… will be an interesting 2023.

    https://twitter.com/GoldTelegraph_/status/1612918896386011137

    New filings show New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft and hedge fund billionaire Paul Tudor Jones invested in FTX. Who did SBF not fool?

    https://twitter.com/GRDecter/status/1612915746086219776

    Source without paywall:

    https://twitter.com/WallStreetSilv/status/1612928771769638912

    Lance Lambert

    #NEW Goldman Sachs once again downgrades its housing outlook. The investment bank projects that U.S. home prices, as measured by Case-Shiller, will fall -7.5% in 2023 and another -2.2% in 2024. Then national house prices will begin to rebound (+3.8%) in 2025.

    https://twitter.com/NewsLambert/status/1612893376256348162

    Neel Kashkari, on investors’ expectations of rate cuts: “I’ve spent enough time around Wall Street to know that they are culturally, institutionally, optimistic.” Is it a game of chicken? Kashkari laughs: “They are going to lose the game of chicken.”

    https://twitter.com/NickTimiraos/status/1612871674495488000

    Wow…US commercial bank interest rates on credit card plans

    https://twitter.com/chigrl/status/1612768822544719872

    Absolute bloodbath in bonds

    https://twitter.com/Mayhem4Markets/status/1612857816145956871

    Fed governor Miki Bowman: “We’ve seen a decline in some measures of inflation but we have a lot more work to do, so I expect the FOMC will continue raising interest rates to tighten monetary policy”

    https://twitter.com/NickTimiraos/status/1612858753153474565

    CarDealershipGuy

    Used car prices fell 14.9% year-over-year in December. By FAR the largest decline ever recorded. Here’s what to expect in 2023:

    https://twitter.com/GuyDealership/status/1612814732179771392

    Lance Lambert

    During an inflationary run it’s incredibly challenging to predict future fluctuations in mortgage rates. With that in mind, here are 7 mortgage rate outlooks 🏡👇

    https://twitter.com/NewsLambert/status/1612813804672368647

    Today we thank baby xenu for another housing supply miracle in 🇨🇦. Dentist, and a few people get arrested for laundering, yada yada yada… … 4 houses will be back on the market if police are correct.

    https://twitter.com/StephenPunwasi/status/1612810901190766594

    Six of the 10 slowest price growth markets are seeing price declines.

    https://twitter.com/HousingRalph/status/1612855278235684866

    InMortgageFinance

    Rate locks for purchase mortgages declined by nearly 20% on a monthly basis in December

    https://twitter.com/IMFpubs/status/1612861577446789138

    Residential housing domino #1 has arrived in DFW

    https://twitter.com/texasrunnerDFW/status/1612829892097486849

    Where rent prices have fallen. #smallerpockets

    https://twitter.com/GRomePow/status/1612591095053156353

    Phoenix area condo prices have fallen 15%+++ so far

    https://twitter.com/GRomePow/status/1612720131788136448

    Sugar Hill Capital Partners is in default on a MF $4.9 million loan after failing to make payments since July.

    https://twitter.com/TonyPeric/status/1612796114960543749

    Good morning! This is your friendly reminder that used car prices just posted their biggest year over year DROP in history, yet they are still WAY overpriced.

    https://twitter.com/shefska/status/1612796106466889730

    The average price of a used Tesla has hit an 18-month low, down over $15k from its peak last July.

    https://twitter.com/charliebilello/status/1612807718196203520

    One of the biggest signs you will ever see that we are entering a huge housing decline. Wells Fargo sees it coming and they are dramatically reducing their exposure and preparing to ride out the storm. Bag holders for bad debt in mortgage bonds? The Fed owns a few trillion $$$.

    https://twitter.com/WallStreetSilv/status/1612933953366679553

    1. “Bag holders for bad debt in mortgage bonds? The Fed owns a few trillion $$$.”

      How does it trickle down to Joe Sixpack if the Fed loses a bundle on its overbought MBS portfolio?

      1. Should the Fed start selling its mortgage holdings at a loss to fortify its inflation fight?
        Last Updated: June 27, 2022 at 11:53 a.m. ET
        First Published: June 24, 2022 at 5:05 p.m. ET
        By Joy Wiltermuth
        The Federal Reserve sits on estimated $500 billion loss for its mortgage holdings, one lawmaker asserts
        Fed Chairman Jerome Powell fielded questions about the central bank’s potential losses on its mortgage holdings this week in Capitol Hill testimony. AFP/Getty Images

        Surging mortgage rates and sky-high home prices have splashed cold water on the roaring U.S. housing market.

        Yet a big question still facing investors, lenders and anyone trying to navigate the still-hot housing market is whether the Federal Reserve will start selling its trove of mortgage holdings to fortify its inflation fight. The central bank is so far trying to counter inflation by more traditional means: raising benchmark interest rates.

        No doubt, housing data has been volatile recently, skewed by evolving Fed policy and a dearth of homes to buy. But with 20% annual home price gains, the central bank must weigh concerns about a potentially dangerous bubble forming in housing.

        “If they really want to sound like they are committed to price stability, selling MBS could be something to explore,” said Priya Misra, head of global rates strategy at TD Securities, by phone, about the Fed’s $2.7 trillion holdings of mortgage-backed securities.

        “But I don’t think they will,” she added.

        Instead, Misra expects the Fed to first use higher rates and a smaller balance sheet to keep a lid on the housing market, avoiding a potential bubble burst, specifically by more aggressively raising its policy rate from its current range of 1.50%-1.75%.
        …
        https://www.marketwatch.com/story/should-the-fed-start-selling-its-mortgage-holdings-at-a-loss-to-fortify-its-inflation-fight-11656104724

      2. The Mortgage-Backed Securities
        Market Faces New Challenges
        December 26, 2022

        AT A GLANCE
        – After adding $1.3 trillion in MBS over the last five years, banks slashed their holdings by roughly $100 billion as of November 2022
        – New TBA futures help market participants manage MBS exposure, and lower margin requirements.

        Mortgage rates in the United States have soared in 2022, helping to cool housing demand from home buyers. However, new risks are facing mortgage-backed securities (MBS) holders as well.

        The vast majority of residential mortgages in the U.S. are securitized through the agency MBS market, which is the second-largest debt market in the U.S. behind U.S. Treasuries. The total MBS market rose to more than $12 trillion in 2021. Banks alone have added $1.3 trillion in MBS over the last five years.

        Today the MBS market is facing a few serious headwinds, including regulatory changes requiring increased trading margin, a widening mortgage/treasury basis and a Federal Reserve unwinding its balance sheet.

        Banks Cut MBS Holdings

        According to BMO Capital Markets, total sales of fixed-rate mortgage bonds by government-baked entities like Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae will nearly halve in 2023 to around $300 billion from an estimated $550 billion in 2022.

        This will hurt the value of MBS, bundles of mortgage loans which value largely depends on the housing market’s performance.

        Banks typically sell MBS to investors in the secondary market, taking a slice or “discount” as a profit margin. Amid rising risks in the past year, they have cut their MBS exposure.

        Specifically, they have slashed their holdings by roughly $100 billion to $2.8 trillion as of November 2022, according to Ethan Heisler, strategic advisor at bond rating agency KBRA.

        As the Fed continues to raise interest rates, prices in the $8.7 trillion agency or government-backed MBS market could fall further, prompting financial institutions to trim their balance sheet to stem losses, analysts said.

        Historic Volatility

        The market is grappling with historic uncertainty surrounding Fed rates, but also about the extent to which the Fed will continue to unwind its $2 trillion fixed-income balance sheet. Currently, $35 billion of MBS is scheduled to roll off the balance sheet each month.

        “There is a lot of uncertainty about the Fed,” said Heisler. “I started my career in 1981, when Chairman Volcker was in office, and rates were 20%. There was a lot of volatility surrounding Fed policy. We are back to those days.”

        Moreover, “No one really knows what will happen with inflation, how high rates will have to go up before the economy starts showing signs of strain,” he added.
        …
        https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/b1h7ld8s7ldou8/The-Mortgage-Backed-Securities-Market-Faces-New-Challenges

      3. Wells Fargo is stepping back from mortgages after the Fed’s rate hikes helped crater the US housing market
        George Glover
        Jan 11, 2023, 8:30 AM
        Exterior view of house with for sale sign.
        Rising interest rates have hammered the US housing market this year.
        Getty Images

        – Wells Fargo is retreating from its mortgage business as rising borrowing costs hammer housing demand.
        – The bank will now only offer home loans to existing customers and families from minority communities.
        – The Federal Reserve’s big interest rate hikes are a factor in US mortgage rates soaring above 6.5%.
        …
        https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/housing-market-crash-wells-fargo-mortgages-federal-reserve-rate-hikes-2023-1

    2. “Used car prices fell 14.9% year-over-year in December. By FAR the largest decline ever recorded. Here’s what to expect in 2023:”

      CarMax Stock Downgraded As Used Car Market Deteriorates
      FacebookTwitterLinkedIn
      KIT NORTON 09:52 AM ET 01/11/2023

      CarMax (KMX) stock was handed another in a string of downgrades Wednesday as analysts expect continued pain in the used car market throughout 2023.
      …
      https://www.investors.com/news/carmax-stock-downgraded-as-used-car-market-deteriorates/

      1. “Musk has made the Tesla brand so toxic,…Model 3 and Y … lost a staggering 22%+ of their value over the last year. E”

        Another Musk-hater. News flash: If #CarDealership Guy is to be believed,14% of that 22% depreciation is just used cars in general. The remainder of the depreciation is people figuring out that the batteries have less range in cold weather and need expensive replacement. This will happen to ANY electric car. “Toxic” has nothing to do with it.

          1. No, I’m not the one who liked censorship at Twitter. I was trying to say that there are other reasons to cause depreciation in Teslas, even if Musk never bought Twitter and was a really nice guy at Tesla.

            Then again, it’s possible that the cancel-culture NPCs are venting their anger about Twitter by abandoning Tesla, causing higher-than-usual depreciation. Well, never mind. If Tesla is half the car that the Tesla fans brag it is, then anyone buying a used Tesla at the over-depreciated prices is getting a bargain.

        2. “Toxic” has nothing to do with it.

          Plenty of evidence to the contrary available on Twitter.

          3. evidence

            There’s traditionally kinds of evidence not considered reliably useful; hearsay, gossip and the like.

          4. I’m not speaking of evidence in a legal sense. I do know the difference. Would you both prefer I use “examples” instead? There are plenty of examples on Twitter contradicting oxide’s conclusion.

          5. contradicting oxide’s conclusion.

            Forgive me. I didn’t realize that was the thing. God bless her, but she’s been our poster girl for wrong conclusions for at least a decade. Freezing bottles of water to save energy, buying a house with debt to get rich, taping the chin diaper to her face and other things. Mostly just glossed over these days.

            The main attraction is on now. Focus.

          6. “Freezing bottles of water to save energy,”

            🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣I’m @#$ing dying laughing here.

          7. she’s been our poster girl for wrong conclusions for at least a decade

            I used to think HBBers were too hard on her. She proved me wrong.

    3. “The investment bank projects that U.S. home prices, as measured by Case-Shiller, will fall -7.5% in 2023 and another -2.2% in 2024.”

      LOL! Now you can see where my annualized rate calculations come in handy. Their predictions look quite benign compared to recent evidence in market transactions data.

    4. Musk has made the Tesla brand so toxic, used $TSLA values are plummeting across the globe.

      Tesla’s problem is that legacy automakers, who are better at building cars, are now selling EV’s of their own, which don’t fall apart the way Teslas do.

      1. I know three people who own and drive a Tesla, one of which is my son who bought one of the first batch out the door. None of the three have indicated any falling apart. All are happy with them.

    5. I’m sure that the worlds largest banks that have access to billions of historic and real time consumer spending data points via credit card data and mortgage/credit data, have no idea what’s about to happen to the housing market right?…. right?

      Linking to the following tweet:

      *WELLS FARGO, ONCE THE NO. 1 PLAYER IN MORTGAGES, IS STEPPING BACK FROM THE HOUSING MARKET: CNBC

      $WFC

  19. R u running with the bulls in the latest bear market rally?

    Don’t forget to offload before the next bounce down the long staircase to the basement floor.

    1. MoneyWise
      ‘Get out of these distorted markets’: Mohamed El-Erian issues a dire warning to stock and bond investors — but also offered 1 shockproof asset for safety
      Jing Pan
      Tue, January 10, 2023 at 4:00 AM PST·4 min read

      Due to rampant inflation, holding cash may not be a wise move. (Higher and higher price levels erode the purchasing power of cash savings.)

      That’s one of the reasons many investors have been holding stocks and bonds instead. But according to Mohamed El-Erian — president of Queens’ College, Cambridge University, and chief economic advisor at Allianz SE — it might be time to switch gears.

      “We need to get out of these distorted markets that have created a lot of damage,” the famed economist tells CNBC.
      …
      https://finance.yahoo.com/news/distorted-markets-mohamed-el-erian-120000134.html

      1. The “shockproof” asset is either cash or short-term income instruments, and lists three handy ETFs. Looks like another infomercial from our friends at the MSM.

    2. The Financial Times
      Asset allocation
      Battered 60-40 portfolios face another challenging year
      Investors using the traditional equity-bond allocations took a 17 per cent hit last year
      The inverse correlation between bonds and equities broke down last year
      Adrienne Klasa yesterday

      Tough macroeconomic conditions will continue to put pressure on traditional equity-bond portfolios this year, some investors have warned, after last year’s gruelling market ride in which both asset classes plunged in tandem.

      Portfolios which comprise 60 per cent stocks and 40 per cent bonds lost 17 per cent in 2022, according to BlackRock, their worst performance since at least 1999. That undermined a formula at the cornerstone of asset allocation for more than 30 years.

      The inverse correlation between bonds and equities — the assumption that when the price of one rises the other falls — has helped balance portfolios since the 1980s. Investors have used the 60/40 split as a guide through decades of low volatility known as the Great Moderation. Returns for 60/40 portfolios averaged around 7 per cent between 1999 and 2022, according to BlackRock.

      But that relationship broke down last year as surging inflation and rising interest rates hit bonds and equities alike. Some 58 per cent of institutional investors surveyed by Amundi and consultancy Create Research believe last year’s pattern will not disappear anytime soon.
      …

    3. “R u running with the bulls in the latest bear market rally?”

      – Don’t get gored.
      – Similar to running with scissors or catching a falling knife.
      – No good outcomes from here as The Everything Bubble bursts.
      – Enjoyed the boom? Now enjoy the bust.

    4. THE EXCHANGE
      Kelly Evans: Here comes the headfake
      PUBLISHED WED, JAN 11 2023 11:07 AM EST
      Kelly Evans
      Scott Mlyn | CNBC
      Have you noticed the markets seem pretty risk-on lately?

      It’s not just that the Nasdaq, the worst of the major indexes last year, is on track for a four-day win streak. You’ve also got copper–a leading global indicator–back to its highest levels since last June. Oil has rebounded to over $75 a barrel. The “FANG+” proxy, the FDN ETF, is up for the eighth time in the last nine trading days. Even crypto and meme stocks are flying!

      So we can chuck all that recession talk, right? I wish. Instead, it’s going to be a long year of bracing for a bigger macro downturn–which may not even fully hit until 2024–while wondering whether to pile into some of these last-gasp trades. Could you even have positive risk-asset returns going into a recession? Sure! Would I want to play that timing game? No, thank you.
      …
      https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/11/kelly-evans-here-comes-the-headfake.html?recirc=taboolainternal

    5. The Financial Times
      BlackRock Inc
      BlackRock plans to cut 500 jobs worldwide following 2022 sell-off
      World’s largest asset manager to shed staff as industry braces for tough 2023
      The BlackRock logo outside of its offices in New York
      BlackRock’s global workforce has swelled by more than 20% since the end of 2019
      Adrienne Klasa in London and Madison Darbyshire in New York
      11 hours ago

      BlackRock plans to cut 500 employees from its global workforce as the world’s biggest asset manager grapples with the fallout from last year’s market sell-off.

      The job cuts at the nearly $8tn fund management group would be equivalent to a reduction of about 2.5 per cent of its total workforce of almost 20,000 people, about a third of whom are in the US.

      The headcount reductions were announced in an internal memo from chief executive Larry Fink and president Rob Kapito, according to people familiar with it.

      BlackRock declined to comment. The job cuts were first reported by Business Insider.

      The move reflects the period of reckoning that 2023 could represent for many global asset managers, which are being forced to cut costs and make hard decisions about where to invest for growth. Some financial services sector companies, including Goldman Sachs, are already embarking on cost-cutting drives and plans to lay off staff.

      Headcount at BlackRock has risen significantly since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. It had 19,990 employees as of September 30, according to its most recent 10-Q filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. That represents an 8.2 per cent increase over the first nine months of 2022 and a 23 per cent jump in headcount since the end of 2019.

      BlackRock said in October it would pause discretionary hiring when it reported a drop in profits and assets under management in its fiscal third quarter.

      It had $7.96tn under management in the three months to the end of September, its most recent quarter, a fall of 16 per cent from a year earlier. However, it reported net inflows of $17bn for that quarter.
      …

    1. “…and their identity made public,…”

      In case that requirement is waived, is there a process for getting one’s name anomynously included on the creditor’s list?

      1. let’s hope not, Like any creditor you have to prove your investment and losses why should crypto be any different?

        Think of the moral hazard if they just sent millions to an anonymous LLC in the Canary islands without disclosing the owners.

          1. From Tom Brady to Kevin O’Leary, here are 12 famous backers of FTX set to be wiped out in the exchange’s stunning collapse
            Matthew Fox
            Jan 11, 2023, 7:30 AM
            – The fall of FTX has led to billions of dollars in losses for both its investors and customers.
            – As FTX goes through the bankruptcy process, details are starting to emerge about who its investors were.
            – From Tom Brady to Kevin O’Leary, here are 12 famous backers facing a wipeout in the dramatic collapse.

            The spectacular downfall of FTX last year has cost investors and customers of the cryptocurrency exchange billions of dollars.

            As the company goes through the bankruptcy process, more details are starting to emerge about who exactly were the equity investors in FTX. At its peak, the company reached a valuation of $32 billion. FTX is essentially worthless today and its new CEO, John Ray III, is solely focused on recovering as much as possible to pay back its creditors and customers.

            “At the end of the day, we’re not going to be able to recover all of the losses here,” Ray said last month. 

            During typical bankruptcy proceedings, bond holders and other debt investors are often able to recoup some of their losses, while equity investors are usually wiped out entirely.
            …
            https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/currencies/ftx-bankruptcy-top-investors-list-tom-brady-kevin-oleary-sbf-2023-1

          2. (sarc) in todays gov bailout environment ya neva knoe they will scream my privacy my privacy i want my money

  21. 𝗕𝗿𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗹, 𝗧𝗡 𝗛𝗼𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗣𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗲𝘀 𝗖𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝟮𝟴% 𝗬𝗢𝗬 𝗔𝘀 𝗥𝘂𝗿𝗮𝗹 𝗛𝗼𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗔𝗻𝗱 𝗟𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗣𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗲𝘀 𝗣𝗹𝘂𝗺𝗺𝗲𝘁

    https://www.movoto.com/bristol-tn/market-trends/

    𝘈𝘴 𝘢 𝘮𝘢𝘫𝘰𝘳 𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘣𝘳𝘰𝘬𝘦𝘳 𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘤𝘭𝘰𝘴𝘦𝘥, “𝘐𝘧 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘱𝘢𝘪𝘥 𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘯 $500 𝘢𝘯 𝘢𝘤𝘳𝘦 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘢𝘯𝘺𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦, 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘨𝘰𝘵 𝘳𝘪𝘱𝘱𝘦𝘥 𝘰𝘧𝘧.”

  22. The Swiss town of Davos will host 52 heads of state and government and nearly 600 CEOs as the World Economic Forum hosts its annual meeting in the Alps next week, organizers said Tuesday.

    So the 52 puppets will be taking their annual orders from Klaus and his 600 billionaire cronies. I wonder what horrors they are planning for us this time? Escalating the war in Ukraine, with a draft to fill the ranks? Global famine? Another scamdemic with mandatory experimental medical procedures and lockdowns? More wholesale migration from the 3rd world? Crashing the global economy so they can snap up assets for pennies on the dollar? Or do they something new planned for us?

    1. I’m seeing chatter of another pandemic originating in Brazil or a cyber attack. Is the FAA outage a trial run?

      1. Is the FAA outage a trial run?

        I am unfortunately planning on flying this summer. Last year the experience was underwhelming. But now I have to go into it knowing that possibly another travel disaster that could leave me stranded could happen. I suppose that is still better than airplanes falling out of the sky.

        Speaking of the business, another anecdote: A young man who played youth soccer with my son has been promoted to Captain at DHL. He is in his late 20’s. He was attending engineering school and wasn’t doing well. His dad is also a DHL pilot. So he dropped out of college, got his private pilot’s licence, then trained to fly jets, got enough hours under his belt to be hired by DHL and is now a captain.

        I have read a lot of press on how hard it is to become a commercial pilot, yet in less than 8 years this kid went from college dropout to Captain.

        1. got his private pilot’s licence, then trained to fly jets,

          That’s quite a leap. Last I knew you needed 1500 flight hours to get an Airline Transport Pilot certificate, with single engine Cessnas starting at around $100 per hour. Then of course you need instructor time, multi engine time, probably simulator time, and enough time in jets to get type ratings. He must have had quite a lot of help from his Dad. Maybe he was able to fly right seat with him to get some of the necessary experience.

          1. I know a guy who flies for FedEx. He’s ex military, and makes $135 per hour. I’m pretty sure that “hourly” rate is actually salaried and 40 hours per week. He can then earn more for taking on extra flights or going to different places than he normally would ie. not going home to the family for a while. Whatever it is, the guy makes absolute bank.

          2. Whatever it is, the guy makes absolute bank.

            I looked on glassdoor. First officers (copilots) at DHL start at 70K and average about $120K. I couldn’t find pay for Captains, but I assume it’s more.

          3. Last you knew must have been a while ago! You can’t get a SE Cessna for $100 an hour. It’s more like double that number.

            I just spent the day doing instrument training with a guy in a late model SR22 and the plane alone is $400/hr. That’s without fuel. Then I’m charging $85/hr. It’s gotta be north of $600/hr all-in, and we flew 4.4 hrs today.

            I got my private in the late 90’s for $4,000. That same certificate at the same school in the same airplane will now run you $25,000. Oh, you want to be a professional? Don’t forget to add on the cost of the instrument rating, the multi-engine rating, the commercial certificate, and more. I added rotorcraft, seaplane, glider, and other such sundries. It can get a bit pricey.

            And that’s why there’s a pilot shortage.

        3. It’s entirely possible to do that in 8 years. If you’re really working at it hard, you could be at 5,000 hrs total time by the 8 year mark. That’s enough to get hired by a major airline these days. Although I despise airlines personally. I’ve never understood why anyone would want to work for them. I don’t even like riding on the airlines. The terminals are crowded and dirty. The taxiways are parking lots. The passengers are inconsiderate. And you can’t even go to the lav without the consent and cooperation of a FA.

          Fedex/UPS isn’t much better. I used to fly with a guy who was a freight hauler, and I asked him if he ever really got used to the steady diet of night flights. He said, “Nope. You can always feel it sucking the life out of you.”

          Pass.

  23. It’s been over two months since the FTX collapse. Is it safe to assume the pain is over at this point?

    1. Joel Khalili
      Business
      Jan 6, 2023 1:19 PM
      No One Will Escape the FTX Fallout
      Try as they might, crypto companies pressured by the trading platform’s collapse are failing to bail themselves out.

      Genesis Global Trading, one of crypto’s oldest and most storied institutions, is in dire straits. In November, in the wake of the implosion of the crypto exchange FTX, the company’s lending unit was forced to freeze customer withdrawals—never a good sign. Almost two months later, Genesis is reportedly on the brink of bankruptcy.

      Although Genesis has not said publicly that bankruptcy is imminent (Derar Islim, interim CEO, says he remains “focused on finding a solution”), the firm is reported to have laid off 30 percent of its workforce this week—the latest sign of its financial ill-health.

      Founded in 2013, Genesis has become central to the crypto industry’s day-to-day operations. In 2021 alone, the company issued $131 billion in loans and set up $116.5 billion in trades. To fund these loans, Genesis borrows from individuals and institutions that own large quantities of coins, also known as whales, who receive a cut of profits in return.

      While the crypto hype train barreled on unchecked, Genesis was on a hot streak—but its luck ran out in 2022. The lender has been in trouble since July, when hedge fund Three Arrows Capital collapsed, taking with it $1.2 billion of the $2.36 billion it had borrowed from the firm. Genesis again found itself on the wrong side of a collapse in the autumn; when FTX filed for bankruptcy on November 11, the firm lost $175 million stored with the exchange.

      Digital Currency Group (DCG), parent company of Genesis, swooped in with bailouts on both occasions. Despite the assistance, the “unprecedented market turmoil” created by the FTX situation forced Genesis to freeze withdrawals and begin to hunt for emergency funding. But just like FTX, a rescue package for Genesis has not materialized.

      The frothiness of the crypto market in 2021 spread fear of missing out among investors that attracted huge sums of money. But that FOMO is now long gone, replaced by a suspicion of both the promises and accounting practices of large crypto companies in light of the allegations of fraud at FTX.
      …
      https://www.wired.com/story/no-one-will-escape-the-ftx-fallout/

      1. Since when is anything in crypto an “old and most storied institution?” Even Bitcoin might barely survive 15 years before it’s either a dead currency or an unstable semi-stock which is no better than, say, GE.

    2. Another round of Coinbase job cuts, 20% of workforce let go
      By MICHELLE CHAPMAN
      yesterday

      NEW YORK (AP) — Cryptocurrency trading platform Coinbase is cutting approximately 20% of its workforce, or about 950 jobs, in a second round of layoffs in less than a year.

      The company cited adverse economic conditions and disruptions within cryptocurrency markets.

      Bitcoin has plunged almost 60% over the past year and a volatile year got worse in late 2022 with the collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX which filed for bankruptcy protection in November after experiencing the equivalent of a bank run. Customers tried to withdraw billions of dollars from the exchange after its financial stability came into question.
      …
      https://apnews.com/article/cryptocurrency-technology-business-89fecc513188b68edeb172a5d85e3b39

        1. Florida most likely.

          BTW TY for fixing my error re: $44B. Unfortunately, I never will learn the YouTube start video where you want trick! 😊

  25. American homeowners have nothing to fear.

    What happens in Sweden, stays in Sweden, and could never happen here.

    1. EUROPE ECONOMY
      Sweden is facing its ‘day of reckoning’ as house prices plummet
      PUBLISHED WED, JAN 11 2023 1:13 AM EST
      UPDATED WED, JAN 11 2023 2:33 AM EST
      Hannah Ward-Glenton

      KEY POINTS
      – House prices in Sweden have risen fairly reliably over the last decade, but now they are tumbling.
      – The fall in property prices is not surprising given the “dysfunctional” nature of the market, according to Stefan Ingves, the former governor of the central bank Riksbank.
      – Some economists anticipate a 20% downturn in property prices from peak to trough.
      …
      https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/11/sweden-is-facing-its-day-of-reckoning-as-house-prices-plummet.html

  26. 𝗦𝗮𝗻 𝗗𝗶𝗲𝗴𝗼, 𝗖𝗔 𝗛𝗼𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗣𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗲𝘀 𝗖𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝟮𝟲% 𝗬𝗢𝗬 𝗢𝗻 𝗦𝗼𝗮𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗜𝗻𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆 𝗔𝗻𝗱 𝗣𝗹𝘂𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗥𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗹 𝗥𝗮𝘁𝗲𝘀

    https://www.movoto.com/san-diego-ca/market-trends/

    𝘈𝘴 𝘰𝘯𝘦 𝘚𝘢𝘯 𝘋𝘪𝘦𝘨𝘰 𝘣𝘳𝘰𝘬𝘦𝘳 𝘢𝘥𝘷𝘪𝘴𝘦𝘥, “𝘎𝘦𝘵 𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘯𝘰𝘸 𝘣𝘦𝘤𝘢𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘱𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘧𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘣𝘺 𝘥𝘰𝘶𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘥𝘪𝘨𝘪𝘵𝘴.”

    1. “On average, homes in San Diego, CA sell after 687 days on the market compared to 354 days last year.”

      That’s a very interesting statistic! How can you know at this point in early 2023 if it is going to take nearly two years to sell a place, when it took less than a year to sell last year (in 2022)?

      I’d love to know how estimates like this are cooked up.

    2. “2623 homes were sold in San Diego, CA in December 2022, up from 195 last year.”

      Both numbers seem abysmally low for a metro of 3 million or so people. But the increased rate of sales is noteworthy:

      2623/195 = 13.5 X year-on-year increase in the rate of sales.

      Could this herald the long-anticipated race to the exits by investors?

  28. Dumb question of the day:

    Given that California is in a perpetual state of extreme permadrought, did anyone see this winter’s inundation coming?

    3. Calif. storm triggers more floods, tornado warnings as death toll climbs
      By Matthew Cappucci, 
      Andrew Jeong, 
      Scott Dance
      and Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff
      Updated January 10, 2023 at 9:12 p.m. EST|Published January 10, 2023 at 3:36 a.m. EST

      SACRAMENTO — Heavy rain continued to drench California on Tuesday as an ongoing parade of storms left much of the state in disarray, with power outages, collapsed roadways, mud and landslides, and treacherous floodwaters widespread across nearly the length of the state.

      Authorities have attributed at least 17 fatalities to the onslaught of storms that began in late December. The California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services confirmed 15 deaths in nine counties as of Tuesday morning, including five in the Sacramento region. Early Tuesday, another two people died in a crash on Highway 99 near Visalia, between Fresno and Bakersfield, when a tree fell on the road, the California Highway Patrol said.

      About 210,000 customers had no power across the state Tuesday as gusty showers and storms swept ashore. One midday storm brought downpours and unusual lightning, thunder and hail to San Francisco.

      In Santa Barbara, a government official told the National Weather Service that more than 100 vehicles were underwater and that first responders had made some 40 rescues. In nearby Montecito, where authorities ordered all residents to evacuate Monday, a road stretching across foothill communities was “destroyed,” the Weather Service reported.

      The Weather Service office in Los Angeles wrote that this was the “most impressive” storm to hit the region since January 2005.
      …
      https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/01/10/california-storms-flooding-evacuation-montecito/

      1. Given the immense surface area, I’m guessing that’s a lot of acre-feet increase in water volume over a very short time interval.

      1. That’s the #1 rule for living anywhere. There are plenty of dams back East creating artificial lakes and reservoirs. A friend told me there were no natural lakes in Maryland at all, just dammed rivers. I’m sure they’re not as extreme as Lake Mead, but there are flood plains everywhere.

    6. ‘A very significant emergency’: California’s deadly, record-setting storms are about to get an encore
      By Nouran Salahieh, Holly Yan and Monica Garrett, CNN
      Updated 10:46 PM EST, Wed January 11, 2023

      (CNN) The historic storms devastating much of California have turned entire neighborhoods into lakes, unleashed sewage into floodwater and killed at least 18 people.

      And there’s more to come. About 5 million people were under flood watches Wednesday as yet another atmospheric river is bringing more rain to California.
      …
      https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/11/weather/california-flooding-atmospheric-river-wednesday/index.html

  29. Goodness, Pedo Joe has classified docs comin’ out of his asz at this point.

    More Biden documents marked classified found in at least one other location

    White House avoids questions on Biden classified documents

  30. You reap what you sow. Hopefully this is the beginning of a decades long investigation into not only the Biden Crime Family, but the entire Democratic Party.

    GOP opens long-promised investigation into Biden family

    1. Coinbase Lays Off 20% Of Workforce
      Coinbase Strikes a Massive Blow to Bankman-Fried and FTX
      Cryptocurrency exchange CEO Brian Armstrong delivers a scathing critique of his rival.
      Luc Olinga
      10 hours ago
      Coinbase Chief Executive Brian Armstrong does not mince words. 

      Nearly two months after rival Sam Bankman-Fried’s empire went bankrupt, he’s just delivered a massive blow to what until recently was the institutional face of crypto.

      Bankman-Fried’s empire consisted of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange. Before its rout, it was the third largest cryptocurrency exchange based on volume after Binance and Coinbase. FTX last February was valued at around $32 billion.
      …
      https://www.thestreet.com/investing/cryptocurrency/coinbase-strikes-a-massive-blow-to-bankman-fried-and-ftx

    2. Do cryptobois believe their own hype?

      Or is it a deliberate scam to suck unwitting investors into signing up for membership in their Ponzi asset investment club?

      1. Short answer: the guys in charge know what’s up, but they use crypto hype to spin up the true believer boi’s into doing their bidding.

  32. How a Janitor Built an $8 Million Fortune Without Touching Cryptos, Stock Options or Leverage
    William Dahl
    Wed, January 11, 2023 at 10:52 AM PST·3 min read

    Ronald Reid was the last person you would expect to be a millionaire.

    He used safety pins to hold his old coats together and cut his own firewood well into his 90s.

    He drove a second-hand Toyota Yaris and resisted new purchases.

    To stay updated with top startup investments, sign up for Benzinga’s Startup Investing & Equity Crowdfunding Newsletter

    His only real indulgence may have been his daily English muffin and a cup of coffee at the Brattleboro Memorial Hospital in Vermont, where a friend remembered him sitting at the exact same stool every morning.
    …
    https://finance.yahoo.com/news/janitor-built-8-million-fortune-185251227.html

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