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Panicking Borrowers Screaming For Help

A report from the Dallas Morning News in Texas. “The median Plano home sale price dropped from $540,000 in March 2022 to $500,000 in March 2023, a 7% decrease in line with neighboring Collin County cities. Median home prices for Frisco, Allen, McKinney and Richardson decreased by 1%, 17%, 7% and 6%, respectively, according to a presentation given to the Plano City Council. In 2019, Plano entered into a Voluntary Collection Agreement with Airbnb and entered into the same agreement with HomeAway (VRBO) the following year. In February, when bullets from a shooting connected to a Plano property listed on Airbnb and VRBO entered a nearby home, the city received $52,963 from Airbnb and $1,986 from VRBO, according to the report.”

From WTOP News. “According to Maryland Realtors, the median selling price in Allegany County — that’s the Cumberland area — was just $127,450 in May. That’s down 3.7% from the median price in May last year. Somerset County — on the Chesapeake Bay — ranks as the second-most affordable area, with a median selling price in May of $162,000, down 25.7% from May of 2022, though that’s based on just 17 sales last month. Baltimore City ranks as the third-most affordable place in Maryland. In May, the median selling price was $225,000, down 6.3% from 2022. There were 6,657 home sales across the state of Maryland last month, down 24.2% from a year earlier.”

The Hartford Courant in Connecticut. “A sale of The Millenium apartment tower for delinquent property taxes has been averted just days before a planned auction, but the owner, downtown Hartford’s largest commercial real estate landlord, has a new problem: a move to foreclose on three, historic buildings planned for renovation. The lender on the purchase, the former owner of the buildings, is seeking to foreclose on the properties, arguing, in court papers filed May 26, that the loan matured in March. By not paying off the balance of the $3.6 million loan, Shelbourne is now in default, according to court documents.”

“Benjamin Schlossberg, Shelbourne’s managing member, said that decision came because Shelbourne had anticipated moving ahead much quicker with conversion of the upper floors of the buildings to. either apartments or commercial loft space. ‘This a foreclosure brought on by maturity,’ Schlossberg said.”

Bisnow New York. “A loan on a luxury apartment tower with views of Central Park has been transferred to special servicing ahead of a potential default despite record multifamily rents in Manhattan. A&R Kalimian Realty’s 43-story glassy residential tower The Aire, which sits close to Lincoln Center on Manhattan’s Upper West Side and features amenities like a private party deck and courtyard, has struggled to make its debt payments ahead of its CMBS loan’s maturity later this year. ‘Borrower indicated the residential rental market in New York has been decimated in relation to COVID-19, thus, they are offering rent reductions and free rent to retain tenants and rent vacancies,’ loan servicer commentary from April reads.”

The Boston Globe in Massachusetts. “To many here in Boston, San Francisco has long felt like a more sophisticated, successful West Coast cousin. As tech workers continue to work from home in droves, leaving office towers alarmingly empty, San Francisco’s commercial core has curdled, with major retailers departing almost daily from high-end corridors along Market Street and Union Square. In place of office workers and tourists, homeless people — many wrestling with addiction — have become even more of a presence. Street crime has soared, and according to city surveys, residents feel less safe than they have in decades.”

“As tech workers continue to work from home in droves, leaving office towers alarmingly empty, San Francisco’s commercial core has curdled, with major retailers departing almost daily from high-end corridors along Market Street and Union Square. In place of office workers and tourists, homeless people — many wrestling with addiction — have become even more of a presence. Street crime has soared, and according to city surveys, residents feel less safe than they have in decades.”

“Like the Bay Area, Greater Boston has experienced a net population loss as high housing prices and the rise in remote work have led people to flee for cheaper climes. Boston actually has vulnerabilities San Francisco does not: It is more reliant on suburban commuters for its workforce, and on commercial property taxes — largely propped up by leases on office towers — to fund its city budget, notes Tracy Hadden Loh, a fellow at the Brookings Institution. The troubled MBTA doesn’t help matters. Then there’s homelessness — that vivid symptom of economic distress. ‘Boston is flirting with the death spiral given all that’s going on,’ Loh said.”

The Los Angeles Times in California. “For decades the Los Angeles financial district was the beating heart of downtown, the corporate muscle that gave the city of sprawl a soaring glass skyline. But the pandemic and the wave of remote work hollowed out its skyscrapers and helped shutter many restaurants and businesses that relied on crowds of workers. While the neighborhood shows signs of recovery, few expect it to return to being the bustling hive of suits and ties that it was.”

“Owners of buildings facing foreclosure sometimes don’t have enough money to build out new tenants’ offices, as is customary, which hinders strapped landlords from recovering financially. Commercial landlords are getting hit on multiple fronts, said Jessica Lall, managing director of the downtown office of CBRE. ‘What we’re seeing is a perfect storm when it comes to the office distress in downtown L.A.,’ she said. Those issues are compounded by ‘the general perception around downtown being unsafe,’ she said. ‘All urban centers are grappling with that issue right now.'”

The Mercury News in California. “Facing a colossal backlog of complaints in the thousands from residents about graffiti, unkept lawns and trash, San Jose is set to adopt a pilot program that would result in fines to scofflaws and give more power to code enforcement officers to reduce the blight that is making downtown an eye-sore. Just two doors down from the blighted hookah shop on 398 East Santa Clara Street where the mayor spoke sits Tofoo Com Chay Vegetarian Cuisine. Its co-owner, Kim Le, said that the closure of the hookah shop last year had a big impact on her business. ‘There’s always graffiti,’ she said. ‘And smashed windows. I think people are afraid to go on this block because the scene is abandoned.'”

Fromm Storeys. “Last month, economists at the Bank of Montreal released a report on Canada’s ‘affordability conundrum’ that delivered some sobering news for anyone paying attention. Instead of asking when we might see market housing become affordable again, is it time to ask — at least in certain urban markets — if it’s time to accept high prices as the new normal? After all, even when we do see price drops in Vancouver and Toronto, they are negligible, not near enough to resume the affordability of a decade ago.”

“Mortgage payments as a percentage of income in Vancouver are at 95% and 83% in Toronto, far above the historic average for those cities. Clay Jarvis, mortgage and real estate expert for NerdWallet, says the country has painted itself into a corner where home prices are concerned. ‘We’re dependent on real estate for driving both GDP and personal wealth in this country, so if some silver bullet policy magically brought home values back to where they were in 2013, we’d be looking at pure economic carnage,’ he says.”

The Globe and Mail. “Owners of multiple properties are dominating the condo investing market in smaller cities in Ontario and B.C., new data suggest. New data prepared for The Globe and Mail from the Canadian Housing Statistics Program shows that the majority of condos that are used as an investment property in those two provinces were owned by individuals and businesses who hold a minimum of three condos. It shows that the bulk of investment condos are owned by investors who are slightly bigger fish as opposed to individuals making a one-off purchase, such as parents buying a condo for their children. It also shows that these larger-scale investors dominate smaller cities where property prices are cheaper than Toronto and Vancouver.”

“In Windsor, Belleville, Sudbury and St. Catharines-Niagara in Ontario, more than 80 per cent of the condos used as an investment property were owned by an individual or business with a minimum of three condos, the data show. In Hamilton, Kingston, Kitchener-Waterloo region and Thunder Bay, more than 70 per cent of condos used as an investment property were owned by these larger-scale investors. In Toronto, the second priciest real estate market in the country, the proportion was 46.7 per cent. It was a similar situation in British Columbia: In Abbotsford, the share was nearly 70 per cent, whereas in Vancouver, the country’s most expensive housing market, the percentage was 45.6 per cent.”

“‘The numbers indicate that there are a lot of people buying multiple condos,’ said Brian Doucet, an associate professor at the University of Waterloo’s school of planning, whose research includes gentrification, housing and neighbourhoods. Mr. Doucet said he has heard anecdotes of individual investors coming into a new building and saying, ‘I will take this whole floor.'”

From I News. “Shortly after 7am, the phones of mortgage brokers across Britain started buzzing at rapid speed with messages from ‘panicked’ borrowers. When news of inflation remaining at 8.7 per cent was announced by the Office for National Statistics on Wednesday morning, an immediate reaction followed. Housebuilders, mortgage brokers and those trapped in houses they can’t afford are now bracing for an even higher interest rate rise from the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee tomorrow.”

“For some in the mortgage industry, the pain of those being hit by rates is unavoidable. Justin Moy, managing director of Essex Home Finance, said that his email inbox was full of ‘panicking borrowers screaming for help.’ ‘I would say the current environment doesn’t allow us to do our job properly. We’re becoming Del Boy mortgages – if we don’t sell them by tonight, they’re gone as the rates are completely different tomorrow. We’ve got to a stage where anything I tell my customers at 9, 10am are gone by 2pm, because the banks will change the rates. It’s soul destroying that we’re working in this environment.'”

“Gareth Davies, director of South Coast Mortgage services , said that he felt he was becoming the ‘grim reaper,’ having to inform clients of debts jumping by hundreds of pounds a month. Mr Moy told ithat if the situation didn’t improve soon, a cold winter was in store for those with mortgages. ‘This is a ticking time bomb – nearly 2 and a half million are coming off fixed rates between now and the end of next year, and they’ve never seen a rate higher than one point something,’ he said. ‘Those people who bought in Covid, they bought with cheap rates and they bought a little bit over the odds for the property – things looked cheap, but now they might have caught the cold twice with rates shock and initial price shock. Interest rates of 5.5 per cent become a massive problem. If we haven’t got inflation under control by then, we have a serious problem. In October, November, December, there will be about a million people coming off fixed rates and they’ll be losing £500 a month, right before Christmas.'”

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This Post Has 70 Comments

    1. From a CNN article:

      We know this is hard — many people with mortgages or loans will be understandably worried about what this means for them.

      It means some serious belt tightening, possibly a second job. No trips to Spain or France. No new clothes or shoes. No eating out or a pint at the pub, less meat on the dinner plate. etc.

      This should make warmists very happy.

    3. “Those agonized squeals you hear…”

      Attaboy limey, take one for Charles and the Square Mile boys!

    4. It is amusing watching them squirm as they hope inflation will be rapidly contained. According to Hussman, the historical data says otherwise:

      “It’s important to understand that much of what investors believe about the relationship between recessions, inflation, and bond yields is not actually supported by the data. In particular, it’s worth reiterating that core inflation typically does not retreat materially during the first year of a recession. We may see a larger retreat in the event of credit strains, but the median decline in core inflation during the first year of a recession is less than 1%.”

      Oof.

  2. Median home prices for Frisco, Allen, McKinney and Richardson decreased by 1%, 17%, 7% and 6%, respectively, according to a presentation given to the Plano City Council.

    Gosh, this “stablization” doesn’t seem to have bottomed out yet.

  4. ‘Boston is flirting with the death spiral given all that’s going on’

    Many years ago I posted articles about mothers pushing strollers stepping over needles and bum poop in this big sh$thole. Sure does seem like all these larger sh$tholes shot themselves in the fook with the CCP virus.

    ‘issues are compounded by ‘the general perception around downtown being unsafe,’ she said. ‘All urban centers are grappling with that issue right now’

    ‘‘There’s always graffiti,’ she said. ‘And smashed windows. I think people are afraid to go on this block because the scene is abandoned’

    Look on the bright side Kim, at least it’s cheap to live in yer sh$thole.

    Wait…

  5. ‘This a foreclosure brought on by maturity,’ Schlossberg said.”

    You keep repeating that falsehood, Schlossberg, as you board the bullet train to Schlongville.

      1. “I was a victim of FOMO. Free will played no part in my decision to massively overpay during the insane housing bubble blown by the Fed.”

  6. ‘he has heard anecdotes of individual investors coming into a new building and saying, ‘I will take this whole floor’

    That’s been going on for over 15 years Brian. I’m sure there’s no money laundering involved – not in K-da!

    1. Married ladies out there — how important is “the dress?” Are younger women still into lavish weddings with all the traditional trappings, or are they opting for the bare-foot-on-the-beach experiences?

      1. Hubby and I married were at Hans Fahden Vineyard using Enchanting Elopements. I wore an ivory bridesmaid dress. My mother was not pleased.

      2. beach weddings what a challenge to DJ…….. first you need a very very long extention cords sometimes over 250 feet, ify ou can find and outlet, then if the wind is in your face the sound travels backward so it has to be turned up louder to compensate which mean more power draw which means maybe the powered speakers will overheat or worse the voltage drops so low it shuts itself off as protection. now ifs its only say 30 people there are battery powered speakers that will last 5 hours today, back in the day i did see one use a car battery and it worked.

  9. CNBC (6/21/2023):

    “the “starter home” — typically, a modestly priced two-bedroom home with fewer amenities, such as less storage space or no backyard — has become exceedingly rare, except in a handful of markets.

    “The idea of a ‘starter home’ has become more of a fairy tale,” says Denis Smykalov, a Florida-based real estate broker at Wolsen Real Estate.”

    https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/21/3-creative-ways-americans-are-buying-property-amid-higher-costs.html

    This is the future that young people have to look forward to?

    1. This is the future that young people have to look forward to?

      And if the young complain, they are ridiculed for thinking maybe a different system would have better outcomes. Environmental stimuli matter.

  10. The bit about mortgages being around 90% income but bringing prices back 2013 levels would be apocalyptic is hilarious. As if 90% DTI isn’t already apocalyptic. And unless you find a way to double, even triple, peoples incomes overnight you’re not gonna need a “magic bullet policy” to collapse housing prices. It’ll just happen.

    1. Financial Times
      Opinion Technology
      Crypto shows we shouldn’t venerate ‘innovation’ for its own sake
      Just because something is new doesn’t mean it is valuable or should avoid scrutiny
      Jemima Kelly
      Illustration of a broken light bulb
      © Ben Hickey
      Jemima Kelly yesterday

      Big Crypto is in the midst of a big reckoning. Following a series of spectacular crashes and implosions last year, two of the most powerful and profitable crypto companies still standing — Coinbase and Binance — were hit by lawsuits from US regulators on successive days this month. A third, Ripple Labs, is still fighting a case brought against it in 2020, having spent more than $100mn in legal bills so far.

      It is not the most overt scam artists and conmen in cryptoland that are being targeted here (there are many of those around, but they tend to be relatively small fry). It is the companies that have done their utmost to look like legitimate businesses; the ones that have tried to make themselves palatable to regulators, Silicon Valley and politicians alike.

      These are the suited-and-booted types who have dinner with presidents and who cosy up to Tory MPs-cum-Z-list celebrities in the House of Commons. The types who boast of “great meetings” with the economic secretary to the Treasury and who write altruistically about their desire for the UK to “be a big part of [crypto’s] success” and their belief that Britain must “put Web3 and blockchain at the heart of government” (groan).

      This “sensible crypto” crowd has relentlessly pushed crypto by framing it not as a miraculous way to make obscene amounts of money out of thin air, but as a crucial “innovation” that countries must embrace if they do not want to be left behind. Now, they and their backers are trying to fight back against the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s crackdown with the same rhetorical argument: any move to regulate or punish the Wild West of crypto will stifle said “innovation”.

      “The SEC is looking to kill crypto innovation in the United States,” Ripple chief executive Brad Garlinghouse said in a video posted to social media last week, after the release of some documents pertaining to the SEC’s case against his company. “The SEC is creating a regulatory environment that is hostile to innovation,” Tim Draper — venture capitalist and friend of another famous innovator, the incarcerated fraudster Elizabeth Holmes — told Fox Business last week.

      So prevalent is this charge that the SEC has even had to explicitly deny it: “We are not here to stifle innovation, we are here to stifle fraud,” the SEC’s director of enforcement said last week.

      But what do we even mean by “innovation”? The Cambridge Dictionary defines it as “a new idea or method”, or “the creating and use of new ideas or methods”. Yet the way it tends to be used is more along the lines of “a tech-y thing that nobody quite understands but that might one day be useful and could definitely make some money at some point”.

      “It works very well for the industry to frame every technology that they put out into the world — whether it’s crypto or generative AI, or whatever else — as an innovation that we must pursue,” Paris Marx, host of the Tech Won’t Save Us podcast, tells me. “But Silicon Valley and venture capitalists are not actually interested in developing technology for the betterment of society . . . What they’re interested in is making money off of whatever hype cycle they are going to gin up next.”
      …

      1. “…the ones that have tried to make themselves palatable to regulators, Silicon Valley and politicians alike.”

        This strategy didn’t work out too well for SBF. Maybe his fellow CryptoBois will have better luck?

        1. This strategy didn’t work out too well for SBF.
          He seems to be enjoying life in a his parents mini-mansion.
          I m beginning to wonder if his charges will be massively reduced.

          2. The charges were not “reduced,” not yet.

            1. Prosecutors levied 8 fraud charges against SBF.
            2. 5 new charges were added, including bribing a foreign official
            3. SBF lawyers argued that the 5 new charges are invalid because they were not part of the extradition agreement with the Bahamas.
            4. Bahamas asked to review the charges
            5. Prosecutors allowed the review, main to avoid p-o’ing the Bahamas.
            6. Prosecutors split the trial into two trials. One trial for the 8 fraud counts in will be held in October. The other five charges were “punted” to an additional trial in 2024, should the charges withstand scrutiny.

            https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/15/us-withdraws-new-charges-in-sam-bankman-fried-case-punts-them-to-2024.html

            IMO the original 8 fraud charges are more important. The other 5 feel like add-ons.

  12. Wall Street Journal — U.S.-Funded Scientist Among Three Chinese Researchers Who Fell Ill Amid Early Covid-19 Outbreak (6/20/2023):

    “Ben Hu, a scientist at the Wuhan Institute of Virology who had done extensive laboratory research on how coronaviruses infect humans, was identified in U.S. intelligence reports as one of the researchers who became ill in November 2019 with symptoms that American officials said were consistent with either Covid-19 or a seasonal illness. None of the researchers died.

    The initial hypothesis that the virus arose naturally has been challenged as a host animal has never been confirmed. The scientific community is divided over the possibility that the virus emerged from a lab leak or was transmitted to humans from an infected animal, as is the U.S. intelligence community.

    The Federal Bureau of Investigation has assessed with moderate confidence that a lab leak was the most likely origin of the virus and the Energy Department came to a similar conclusion with low confidence. Four other U.S. intelligence agencies assess with low confidence that the virus arose naturally, while the Central Intelligence Agency has been agnostic.

    November 2019 is roughly when many epidemiologists and virologists think SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind the Covid-19 pandemic, first began circulating around Wuhan, a city in central China. China has said that the first confirmed case was a man who fell ill on Dec. 8, 2019.

    Hu is a leading researcher on coronaviruses who worked closely with Shi Zhengli, the leading expert on bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Much of Hu’s research focused on modifying coronaviruses so they could bind to human cells.

    The stated purpose of the research was to identify viruses that could lead to a pandemic and facilitate the development of a vaccine.”

    https://archive.is/JQUAd

    Nuremberg Trials v2.0

    1. Related article.

      Authors of Cleveland Clinic’s Groundbreaking Study Release Another Finding Which Contradicts CDC Narrative: “Those Not ‘Up-to-Date’ on COVID-19 Vaccination Had a Lower Risk of COVID-19 than Those ‘Up-to-Date’” (6/22/2023):

      “The study can be found now in the June 2023 edition of Open Forum Infectious Diseases, Volume 10, Issue 6. The study is published at Open Forum Infectious Diseases (OFID), wherein the studies are fully peer-reviewed.

      The research was conducted with a large sample size within the Cleveland Clinic healthcare system.

      Participants in the trial were all Cleveland Clinic Health System employees working at any Cleveland Clinic facility in Ohio on September 12, 2022, the first day the bivalent vaccine was first made accessible to staff and lasted over 180 days.

      From the study: “The risk of COVID-19 also varied by the number of COVID-19 vaccine doses previously received. The higher the number of vaccines previously received, the higher the risk of contracting COVID-19.”

      https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/06/authors-cleveland-clinics-groundbreaking-study-release-another-finding/

      100% safe and effective?

      Remember who threatened to have you FIRED FROM YOUR JOB for not getting injected witht this mRNA poison?

    2. One more choice excerpt from 2021:

      “A New York Times reporter is being slammed by critics after opining that former President Barack Obama’s birthday party was a low COVID-19 risk due to the “sophisticated, vaccinated” guest list.”

      1. The Science tells me that noxious vapors off-gassed by the peasantry would corrode the divine protection conferred on the elites by St. Greta.

    3. U.S.-Funded Scientist Among Three Chinese Researchers Who Fell Ill Amid Early Covid-19 Outbreak

      His own employees were patient zero, and when he saw this Fauci quickly mounted an anti-lab leak conspiracy.

  13. Does the Bank of England’s jumbo rate hike tempt you to dump your stock, real estate, and other risk asset HODLings, before it’s too late?

    1. Intake of breath as Bank of England delivers jumbo rate hike
      By Amanda Cooper and Marc Jones
      June 22, 20235:37 AM PDTUpdated 2 hours ago
      A man shelters under an umbrella as he walks past the London Stock Exchange in London, Britain, August 24, 2015.
      REUTERS/Suzanne Plunkett/File Photo

      Summary
      – Bank of England stuns markets with half-point rate hike to 5%
      – Shares fall after Powell comments, HK and China closed
      – Dollar steady, euro falls vs Norway crown

      LONDON, June 22 (Reuters) – The financial markets took a sharp intake of breath on Thursday as the Bank of England lobbed an interest rate “grenade” at Britain’s inflation problem with a big rate hike after Fed chief Jerome Powell had also backed more U.S. rate increases.

      There were falls on the FTSE, other European bourses and Wall Street futures while even the pound initially lost ground as the surprise half-point hike from the BoE to 5% revived recession angst.

      “There has been significant upside news in recent data that indicates more persistence in the inflation process,” the Bank of England said after the move, warning of “second round effects” too.

      Neil Birrell, Chief Investment Officer at Premier Miton Investors, said: “The Bank of England has opted to aggressively tighten policy and launched a rate grenade at the spectre of ongoing inflation.”

      With bond market borrowing costs going up again “the fear is that this could rapidly tip the economy into a recession”.
      …
      https://www.reuters.com/markets/global-markets-wrapup-1-2023-06-22/

  14. “Somerset County — on the Chesapeake Bay — ranks as the second-most affordable area, with a median selling price in May of $162,000, down 25.7% from May of 2022, though that’s based on just 17 sales last month.”

    That’s excellent. I look forward to more reports of similar affordability improvements in the coming years.

    1. Probably a drop-off in second home sales. There is almost no reason to have a primary home there, unless you’re into crab fishing, you want a bug-out bunker, or you work at Perdue HQ 🍗🐔 in nearby Salisbury.

  15. Report: Joe Biden Spills ‘Sensitive’ Intelligence about Chinese Spy Balloon to Campaign Donors

    KRISTINA WONG
    21 Jun 2023

    The New York Times reported that at the fundraiser, Biden “set off into what appeared to be an unplanned riff” about the spy balloon incident, “revealing what United States intelligence agencies had learned about the internal confusion in Beijing during the incident.”

    According to the Times, Biden told about 130 guests in attendance at the fundraiser: “The reason why Xi Jinping got very upset in terms of when I shot that balloon down with two boxcars full of spy equipment in it is he didn’t know it was there.”

    “No, I’m serious. That’s what’s a great embarrassment for dictators, when they didn’t know what happened,” Biden said.

    Biden also discussed other U.S. government assessments of China.

    He said Chinese President Xi Jinping was “really upset” by the Quad, a coalition including the U.S., Japan, Australia, and India:

    What he was really upset about was that I insisted that we reunite the so-called Quad. He called me and told me not to do that because it was putting him in a bind. I said, “All we’re doing — we’re not trying to surround you, we’re just trying to make sure the international rules with air and sea lanes remain open.” And we’re not going to yield to that — on that.

    Not only did Biden share U.S. intelligence with political donors, but he also likely derailed his own diplomatic outreach to China to smooth tensions.

    https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2023/06/21/report-joe-biden-spills-sensitive-intelligence-about-chinese-spy-balloon-to-campaign-donors/

    1. “No, I’m serious. That’s what’s a great embarrassment for dictators, when they didn’t know what happened,” Biden said.

      Is this a gaffe, or done intentionally just days after pictures were taken of Secretary of State Blinken shaking hands with Party Chairman Xi in the PRC?

      The PRC doesn’t like bad optics.

      1. Democrats will never go along with invoking Article 25, no matter how far gone Pedo Joe is.

    3. So, we are to believe the Times when “sources” state Biden spoke in full sentences and did not mention ice cream, the Queen, or President Kamala? 🤨

    2. They all had a choice Kait.

      Kait Gardner
      @TheKaitster
      ·
      21h
      If any of you are hyper-fixating on OceanGate’s Titan disappearance, I encourage you to read up about the horrific capsizing of a refugee ship that recently killed an esti
      mated 450-750 people. Join me (if you can) in donating to
      @RESCUEorg
      .

      1. hyper-fixating on OceanGate’s Titan disappearance

        Shiny object chasers. I stumbled on the Twitter thread looking at GRomePow’s Twitter account.

        Via ZH: Distraction? Questions Swirl Over Timing Of Sub Story As Biden Bombshells Hit Target

        1. Also via ZH: IRS Whistleblowers Release New Bombshell Evidence Against Bidens, DOJ And AG Garland

          Oh, and Cuban Missile Crisis 2.0 is unfolding.

    1. I saw that this morning. I read it was mucho apartments. As the UHS says, this the third unfinished shack/airbox fire.

    1. They think this is a crisis? In the ’80’s interest rates in the UK were much, much higher.

  22. Financial Times
    Opinion Unhedged
    The housing market ain’t that good
    Plus, another Google antitrust suit
    Robert Armstrong
    A montage of a row of homes and the US Federal Reserve seal
    Robert Armstrong and Ethan Wu yesterday

    Good morning. Jay Powell sounded mildly hawkish in his appearance before the House yesterday, and tech stocks wobbled a bit. More importantly, the Federal Reserve chair testified that he has been a fan of the Grateful Dead for 50 years. So: which Dead song best describes the Powell era in monetary policy? Right now, “Don’t Ease Me In” seems about right.

    That whopping housing starts number

    It is now something of a Wall Street cliché to say that the business cycle is driven by housing. It wasn’t always so. This bit of received wisdom was crystallised by Edward Leamer’s funny and well-argued 2007 paper, “Housing IS the Business Cycle”.

    Leamer argued that “housing starts and the change in housing starts . . . together form the best forward-looking indicator of the cycle”. While residential investment (and the durable goods spending that follows in its wake) are not usually a large contributor to GDP growth, they are a very big contributor to the sharp changes in growth that occur during recessions and recoveries. This is especially true in the slowdown period preceding outright recession. The reason is that (as we have been reminded lately) house prices are very sticky:

    Our market system relies on price flexibility to assure that labour and capital are productively employed, but house prices are very inflexible downward, and when demand softens . . . we get very little price adjustment but a huge volume drop. For GDP and for employment, it’s the volume that matters

    It has been argued that housing is less important to the cycle than it was when Leamer wrote, but the basic point still holds. So there was some excitement when housing starts rose by a whopping 22 per cent between April and May.

    The big bounce was cited prominently in this week’s round of arguments that the Fed will or should keep on increasing rates.

    To the degree that the surge reflects homebuilders’ confidence in demand (an impression reinforced by strong recent readings from homebuilder surveys), it’s a poor fit with our recent argument that home prices are experiencing a “false spring”. But it is important to keep in mind the distinction between the new-house market and the housing market generally.
    …

    1. “…when demand softens . . . we get very little price adjustment but a huge volume drop.”

      That explains market behaviour at the onset of a turning point.

      The CR8Ring process is when the big price drops occur, and generally happens over the following six years.

  23. “I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled,” the screen capture shows. “Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand, and now means tonight.”

    Hunter Biden Demanded Payment from Chinese Businessman — with Joe in the Room

    WENDELL HUSEBØ
    22 Jun 2023

    Hunter Biden demanded in 2017 to be paid by CCP-linked Chinese businessman Henry Zhao while President Joe Biden was “sitting” next to him, according to a screenshot of a WhatsApp message from an IRS whistleblower.

    Henry Zhao was influential in forming Harvest Fund Management. “He was elected the chairman of the board in November 2017. Under his leadership, Harvest has become one of China’s leading asset management companies serving more than 100 million investors,” Harvest Advisors’ website reads.

    A newly released screen capture from July 30, 2017 of a WhatsApp message from Hunter Biden to Henry Zhao shows Hunter Biden putting pressure on Zhao for payment using the influence of his father, Joe Biden, who was in the room.

    “I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled,” the screen capture shows. “Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand, and now means tonight.” The captured transcript of the call continues:

    https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2023/06/22/hunter-biden-demanded-payment-from-chinese-businessman-henry-zhao-i-am-sitting-here-with-my-father/

    1. US home prices fall by largest amount annually since December 2011
      By Alicia Wallace, CNN Business
      Updated 10:39 AM EDT, Thu June 22, 2023

      Minneapolis CNN —

      US home prices fell in May at the largest annual rate in more than a decade, according to a National Association of Realtors report released Thursday.

      The median existing home price was $396,100 last month, down 3.1% from a year ago, marking the largest year-over-year price reduction since December 2011.

      Sales of existing homes — which include single-family homes, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops — rose 0.2% from April to May. Annually, sales were down 20.4% from a year ago, and the seasonally adjusted annualized sales pace dropped from 5.4 million units a year ago to 4.3 million in May.

      Mortgage rates remain volatile — so far this year, average rates have ranged from 6.09% to 6.79%, but were fairly steady in April when some of the homes closed in May would have gone under contract.

      “Mortgage rates heavily influence the direction of home sales,” said Lawrence Yun, NAR chief economist. “Relatively steady rates have led to several consecutive months of consistent home sales.”
      …
      https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/22/homes/existing-home-sales-may/index.html

  25. Financial Times
    Global inflation
    Central banks’ battle with inflation enters a new phase of ‘pain’
    Economists warn that recession will be the price of hitting 2% goals
    From left, US Federal Reserve chair Jay Powell, Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey and European Central Bank president Christine Lagarde © FT Montage: Alamy/Bloomberg/Reuters
    Chris Giles in London, Colby Smith in Washington and Martin Arnold in Frankfurt 4 hours ago

    Global central banks are entering a new phase in their battle with inflation as economists warn that recessions will be the price of achieving shared 2 per cent goals.

    Headline rates of inflation across most of the world’s economies have fallen back sharply since the autumn but core rates — which exclude volatile categories such as energy and food — remain at or close to multi-decade highs.

    These rates, seen as a better gauge of underlying price pressures, have sparked concern that central banks will struggle to hit their targets without wiping out growth.

    “The next leg of the improvement in the inflation numbers is going to be harder,” said Carl Riccadonna, chief US economist at BNP Paribas. “It requires more pain, and that pain likely involves a recession in the back half of the year.”

    Torsten Slok, chief economist at Apollo Global Management, added: “The only way to get inflation down to 2 per cent is to crush demand and slow down the economy in a more substantial way.”
    …

  27. Hoping and praying for the death spiral in Boston.

    Eli Lilly is opening a new “genetic medicines institute” (focusing on YAY! – mRNA) in the Seaport district. Awesome, more experimental pharmaceuticals! Hopefully in injectable form! Come east, young true believers, we got oodles of Pharma jobs that pay big salaries! Cambridge across the river is Pharma Central and folks there just LOVE all things mRNA!!! We want everyone sick and on several prescription medications and 2-3x yearly “vaccines” so they can be patients for life! Think of the money we can all make!

    Way too many nice (brainwashed) folks (zombies) here wearing blue surgical masks outside on sunny days, and YES, at the grocery store. Counting the days until they can get their next booster! Love those attractive, gaping masks, they work sooo well at preventing infection with mutating respiratory viruses!

    Sigh. Due to “low inventory”, homes still moving at inflated prices. Friends just sold their 1780 sq ft SFH built in 1915 in a week for over 1K. Friend on Cape Cod says his neighbor’s house sold in two weeks for over 1K, an 89% increase in six years since purchase. Reportedly the median price for a Greater Boston SHF hit an all time high of $900K, condos record high of $726K.

    Onwards and upwards (or downwards, please!)

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