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The Distortion Is Deliberate

A weekend topic starting with the Globe and Mail. “A short three-hour flight from Vancouver, it’s possible to walk off the plane and glide into vacation mode within minutes. The B.C. connection with Palm Springs, Calif., is a long-standing one, especially for those who took advantage of the plunge in real estate prices during the economic downturn of 2008 and 2009. The survival of its large stock of one-level mid-century modern houses was largely a matter of disregard rather than any kind of preservation policy, says Vancouver’s former co-director of planning Larry Beasley, who’s owned a mid-century modern home here since 2011. The house had doubled in price since it was sold in 2020, which tells you something of the relatively recent demand for the mid-century modern gems. ‘People are acquiring real estate holdings the way you acquire works of art,’ says Vancouver realtor Trent Rodney, who took his cues from the Palm Springs modernism revival when he launched his West Coast Modern real estate company locally.”

“Real estate developer Olga Ilrich, former MLA and the founder of Suncor Developments, has owned a home in Palm Desert since 2016, in a gated community. She doesn’t rent her place out, but she considers it a sound investment and a convenient escape. Before that, she was renting places in Palm Springs, but she discovered that it’s cheaper to own. Also, because she thinks like a person who works in real estate, she might pay taxes, homeowners association fees, and other costs on the property, but when she sells, she knows she will get a return on her purchase.”

From ABC 10. “Winter or summer, a resort city tucked into the Sierra Nevada is a go-to destination for many Northern Californians and even people outside the state. Amelia Richmond is the co-founder of Locals for Affordable Housing, a group behind an initiative to get a vacancy tax on the November ballot. Owners of homes that are vacant for more than half of the year would pay a tax they could avoid if the home is occupied for six months out of the year. Richmond says the vacancy tax is a way for people to contribute to the community so it can continue being an incredible place and it’s not a punishment, but rather something to help solve the housing crisis.”

“‘This happens in destination towns where not only do people want to own second homes there because it’s a beautiful place to be, but also it’s a great investment and your property value goes up every year. There is no reason not to have a second home as a business investment that you can also use as you see fit. The question is what happens to the community when nearly half of homes sit vacant?’ Richmond said.”

WUSF on Florida. “Troy Bielicki has dreamed about owning a home since he was a teenager growing up in St. Petersburg. At 25, he’s achieved that dream. Though it looks different than he imagined. He started his search near St. Petersburg in 2022. His wife was pregnant with their first child, and they were looking for a place to raise a family. Their budget was $200,000. But the homes they were seeing were double that. Median home prices in Pinellas County had climbed to more than $400,000. That was up from an average price of around $250,000 in 2019.”

“Their household income is about $50,000, or nearly 80% of the area’s median income. ‘I had to consider other ZIP codes just because of the minimum price when you sort … on Zillow,’ he said. ‘So, we just had to keep moving further and further out.’ In Hillsborough County, it’s estimated that 8.5% of all homes are investor-owned. In Pasco County, the market share is 8%, and in Pinellas County it’s 6.5%, according to an analysis of 2023 data. Compared to owner-occupied homes, properties that are bought by investors often reappear on the market as single family rentals or are renovated and relisted at a higher sale price. In the Tampa metro, where wages have not kept up with housing inflation, many are buying homes farther away from the urban core. That means they could work in Tampa or St. Petersburg and live in Pasco, Polk or Hernando counties.”

“That was the case for Bielicki. His Pinellas County work truck is parked in the driveway of his west Pasco County home. ‘I feel like I’ve achieved the best thing I could for my family in the circumstances,’ he said. ‘And it takes a long time to realize a dream, so to speak.’ He bought much farther from where he wanted to raise his family in St. Petersburg, and the home he purchased needs a lot of work. Bielicki said he’s considering taking out a construction loan to finance the needed projects around his house. Still, Bielicki said he’s grateful he bought a home when he did. Sitting at his kitchen table, he pulls up a map of the available homes that he could afford today in Pinellas County. ‘Wow, there is not a single thing in that whole area where I was looking and that was only two years ago,’ he said. ‘This is kind of a shock looking at it now.'”

From Newsweek. “Home prices are being slashed by sellers in Florida at a much faster pace than in the rest of the country, according to Zillow. February data show that 33 percent of home listings in the Tampa metropolitan area had a price reduction in the same month—the highest number for a metropolitan area in the entire country and up 3.7 percent compared with a year before. At the national level, 20.1 percent of home listings had price cuts, up 2 percent from a year ago.”

“The other metropolitan areas that saw the highest price reductions in the country after Tampa were all in the South. Some 32 percent of home listings in Phoenix, Arizona, had price cuts in February, while San Antonio, Texas, had 27 percent. In Jacksonville, Florida, 26.8 percent of home listings had had a price reduction in the same month, according to Zillow. Nashville, Tennessee, followed with 26.5 percent. Some 28.9 percent of listings in Ocala had a price reduction in February; in Palm Bay, the number went up to 30.9 percent; in North Port, to 35.5 percent. Some 29.6 percent of listings had a price cut in Naples in February, while the figures were 29.1 percent in Port St. Lucie, 28.6 percent in Lakeland and 26.9 percent in Cape Coral. The figure for Orlando was 25.2 percent and in Miami 23.8 percent of listings had price cuts.”

“Orphe Divounguy, senior economist at Zillow, told MarketWatch that sellers were struggling to get the price of their homes right. ‘After a drought of activity in the housing market, nobody is quite sure how to price their home,’ he told the website. ‘Successful sellers are those who adopt [a home builder’s] strategy,’ cutting prices and making concessions.”

Curbed New York. “When Brooklyn Tower topped out in October 2021, Michael Stern threw a party. As sunset approached, staff herded guests milling around the lavishly ornamented rotunda of the Dime Savings Bank into construction elevators for a toast at the top of the 1,066-foot building that was now, officially, historically, the city’s only supertall outside of Manhattan. But two and half years later, the mood at Brooklyn Tower had dimmed. At the end of March, Larry Silverstein’s Silverstein Capital Partners, the mezzanine lender, which gave Stern a $240 million loan in 2019, moved to foreclose.”

“People in the real-estate industry have always talked about it for a different reason, with some speculating it was doomed from the start — its super tall, super skinny design better suited to Billionaires’ Row, the kind of rarified, globe-trotting enclave preferred by the people who could pay the kind of prices a project like this would need to break even. ‘It’s one thing to pay a premium to be 1,000 feet above Central Park,’ a source who works in development tells me, ‘but 1,000 feet above Trader Joe’s?'”

RE Journals on Texas. “Austin’s multifamily market is dealing with an oversupply of available units — a ‘too much of a good thing’ scenario. ALN Apartment Data indicated that this trend is likely to persist through at least 2024. Its data ranks Austin eighth in the country for cities with the most new units under construction. As of September, it recorded 63,882 units under preconstruction, 41,071 units under construction and 10,124 units under lease-up or being filled. Add to that another 17,364 units under construction/lease-up, and Austin’s apartment cup runneth over.”

“The Austin multifamily sector is currently grappling with an oversupply of units, largely driven by significant new construction in recent years,’ said Cheryl Higley, managing director of debt & equity for Northmarq’s Austin office, which offers comprehensive services in debt, equity, investment sales and loan servicing. ‘This oversupply has led to vacancy rates reaching a 20-year high. We need to be prepared for a higher-for-even-longer reality and a dim path for interest rate markets in the near future.'”

The Real Deal. “Former executives of CA Ventures are tussling over a nearly $6 million judgment against the Chicago-based developer, and their fight has held up big investment firms from taking over an industrial real estate platform caught in the middle. More legal problems have popped up for CA Ventures this year as the developer is hampered by the market slowdown for new construction and sliding property values for projects financed during the cheap debt era, before interest rate hikes starting in 2022.”

“An investor in a West Sacramento, California, multifamily building developed by CA Ventures and its partners also sued the company last month, alleging that it’s owed the more than $10.5 million it put into the project because the developer failed to come up with funding needed to complete the property that it agreed to contribute. CA Ventures didn’t notify the investor of financial hurdles the project encountered during its construction over the last several years, the lawsuit claimed.”

“‘The reality of the situation is the market has tanked,’ a CA Ventures executive who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive company matters said about the West Sacramento project. ‘Is there a surprise? The building was delivered, and the values aren’t there.’ Company leadership has previously said it’s working to reposition itself by getting rid of assets that aren’t performing as well as originally expected.”

The Vancouver Sun in Canada. “This week, the B.C. government introduced the legislation enacting what is officially known as the ‘residential property (short-term holding) profit tax act,’ but more commonly known as the flipping tax. The B.C. NDP has said the tax will target profiteers whose speculative real estate activity makes real estate less affordable and attainable for regular British Columbians looking for homes. Experts disagree on what impact the tax will have, and many owners — and potential sellers — of B.C. homes have questions. The tax can apply to any properties zoned for residential use, as well as on income derived from reselling purchase contracts, such as those for presale condos.”

“This isn’t a penalty that applies to all homes that are flipped quickly, but a tax specifically on profit generated by such sales. If a home is sold in less than two years at a loss or for no profit, the tax will not apply. Finance Minister Katrine Conroy has said the tax is ‘taking action against investors who use the housing market as a stock market,’ while Housing Minister Ravi Kahlon said: ‘Homes are meant to be lived in by people in our communities, not used for speculation.’ Condominium Homeowners Association of B.C. executive director Tony Gioventu, was quoted in the province’s news release saying it would ‘slow the speculator frenzy that happens when a flippable property is listed for sale frequently, resulting in unauthorized, unpermitted rushed alterations, leaving communities with a legacy of building failures and conflict.'”

From Mises.org. “In The Price of Time, Edward Chancellor has given us a colorful and provocative review of the history, theory, and the profound effects of interest rates, the price that links the present and the future, which he argues is ‘the most important price of all.’ As for the vast effects of interest rates, a central theme of the book is that in recent years interest rates were held too low for too long, being kept ‘negative in real terms for years on end,’ with resulting massive financial distortions for which central banks are culpable.”

“In Chancellor’s summary, ‘Locke was the first writer to consider at length the potential damage produced by taking interest rates below their natural level.’ Locke’s position in modern language includes these points: -Financiers would benefit at the expense of ‘widows and orphans’. -Wealth would be redistributed from savers to borrowers. -Too much borrowing would take place. -Asset price inflation would make the rich richer.”

“Just so, over our recent years of too low interest rates, ordinary people have had the purchasing power of their savings expropriated by central bank policy, and leveraged speculators of various stripes made large profits from overly cheap borrowing, while debt boomed and asset prices inflated into the Everything Bubble. The central bankers knew what they were doing with respect to asset prices. Chancellor quotes a remarkably candid statement in a Federal Open Market Committee meeting in 2004, in which, as a Federal Reserve Governor clearly put it: ‘[Our] policy accommodation—and the expectation that it will persist—is distorting asset prices. Most of the distortion is deliberate and a desirable effect if the stance of policy. We have attempted to lower interest rates below long-term equilibrium rates and to boost asset prices in order to stimulate demand.'”

“That boosting asset prices was ‘deliberate’ is correct; that is was ‘desirable’ seems mistaken to Chancellor and to me. ‘The records show that the Fed had used its considerable powers to boost the housing market,’ he writes (I prefer the phrase, ‘stoke the housing bubble’). What is worse, the Fed did it twice, and we had two housing bubbles in the brief 23 years of this century. In 2021, the Fed was inexcusably buying mortgage securities and suppressing mortgage rates while the country was experiencing a runaway house price inflation (now deflating).”

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This Post Has 89 Comments

  1. ‘Median home prices in Pinellas County had climbed to more than $400,000. That was up from an average price of around $250,000 in 2019’

    The globalist scum media still ignores this insanity but it can’t forever. These price explosions happened in every crummy sh$thole all over the US and much of the world. And it was everything: apartments, offices, self storage. People dived into any hairbrained scheme that justified speculation: short term rentals, old 1950’s shacks in Palm Springs that are supposedly ‘art’, etc. And it all got financed and appraised with nothing but air under it.

  3. “As of September, it recorded 63,882 units under preconstruction, 41,071 units under construction and 10,124 units under lease-up or being filled. Add to that another 17,364 units under construction/lease-up, and Austin’s apartment cup runneth over.”

    What happens when you make too many doughnuts? A lot of day old doughnuts. And what do they sell for? 50% off is a good guess.

    1. 50% off is a good start but there is point late in the day where the overstock becomes a liability, that is when they are ready to give things away.

  4. “Homes are meant to be lived in by people in our communities, not used for speculation.’’

    I disagree. I have no problem with speculation. What I do have a problem with is speculators being bailed out by policies that never allow them to feel the pain of stupid decisions. When you develop an environment where everyone thinks you can take on risk without the possibility of failure, that’s when you have a problem. Thank you central banks.

    1. It’s also because of the current environment that we have so many of the younger generations taking on insane amounts of debt. They’ve been taught to be Ive that they’ll never have to pay it back. The “bail-out mentality” has become firmly entrenched. To use an over worked expression, this isn’t going to end well.

    2. Palm Desert: but she discovered that it’s cheaper to own…. but when she sells, she knows she will get a return on her purchase.” and No. CA“‘This happens in destination towns where not only do people want to own second homes there because it’s a beautiful place to be, but also it’s a great investment and your property value goes up every year.

      Of course you buy RE in CA because it always goes up. See SF for proof! I hope the Fed doesn’t bail them out but..

    3. “Homes are meant to be lived in by people in our communities, not used for speculation.’’

      “I disagree. I have no problem with speculation.”

      \\

      – I (respectfully) disagree. Housing is shelter that’s now been turned into just another speculative asset class, as encouraged and enabled by guberments and their lapdog central banks via the financialization of everything.. This is global.

      – Young people / first time buyers are screwed. Artificially low mortgage interest rates, STRs, tax incentives for LL’s, cheap and easy $, mortgage and appraisal fraud did this, all by design. It’s policy.

      – The globalists stole your livelihood by shipping good jobs to the 3rd world so that they could save on labor, but destroyed the middle class and the U.S. mfg. base in the process. They gave you asset bubbles and huge steaming piles of debt instead. How is this better than productive investment and savings? Rhetorical. It’s not. Debt is not wealth. Asset bubbles always burst.

      – F’ the guberments, their central banks that did this, and the horse they rode in on. It was just a huge wealth transfer. The rich got richer the middle class got “the finger” via the Cantillion effect and asset price appreciation. Nice trade-off for the 1%. Not so much for the (remnants of) the middle class.

      – And yes, the stupid people that bought into the lie deserve no small part of the blame.

      \\

      https://twitter.com/DiMartinoBooth/status/1775926711994978306
      Danielle DiMartino Booth @DiMartinoBooth

      Remember when the roof over your head fulfilled a purpose? They call it a UTILITIES.

      After those academics & their sidekicks Yellen & Dudley had their way, a home was converted into a highly speculative asset class, relegating future generations to the rank of indentured servant

      10:41 AM · Apr 4, 2024 · 32.4K Views

      1. * The Cantillon Effect is a concept that describes the uneven effect of inflation on goods and assets in an economy. When new fiat money is injected into the economy at specific points, its effects are felt by different people and industries at different times. This distorts relative prices and benefits certain parties while disadvantaging others. The first recipient of the new supply of money has an arbitrage opportunity of being able to spend money before prices have increased.

    4. I have no problem with speculation. What I do have a problem with is speculators being bailed out by policies that never allow them to feel the pain of stupid decisions.

      +1. I would add that stock investments are almost pure speculation, yet somehow investing in stocks never gets tarred with the same brush as “speculating” in real estate. On the contrary, stock investors are constantly being bailed out via the Fed put and TBTF government interventions.

      And just as owner-occupiers have a harder time buying houses when forced to compete with corporate investors, small businesses and private enterprises have a harder time raising capital when competing with exchange listed companies, because of the endless obsession with rising stock market indexes.

  5. Propaganda and Lies.

    New York Times — The Economic Paradox of the Biden Presidency (4/6/2024):

    “One of the more puzzling aspects of the U.S. economy is that employers have been on an almost uninterrupted hiring spree since President Biden took office — and analysts see no signs that the trend will reverse any time soon.

    But the red-hot labor market could just as easily exacerbate two of Biden’s big vulnerabilities: inflation, with strong wages fueling a surge in spending that pushes up prices on everything from gasoline to concert tickets; and higher-for-longer interest rates to counteract those price rises. A growing chorus of Wall Street analysts were forecasting that the Fed would be in no rush to reduce borrowing costs after yesterday’s report.

    Biden’s polling numbers are hovering near those of many one-term presidents. Voters say they disapprove of his handling of the economy, even though he’s presiding over, according to many indicators, a worldbeater. “When it comes to the economy, the vibes are at war with the facts, and the vibes are winning,” The Wall Street Journal’s Greg Ip wrote this week.

    https://archive.is/viN43

    “the facts”

    Are you any better off now than you were in January 2021?

    1. “One of the more puzzling aspects of the U.S. economy is that employers have been on an almost uninterrupted hiring spree since President Biden took office — and analysts see no signs that the trend will reverse any time soon.”

      \\

      – If one looks only at the headline employment number, then “everything is awesome!”, However, digging a little deeper, the actual data says otherwise…

      – Jobs are increasing for foreign-born workers, which includes illegal aliens. Jobs are decreasing for native-born workers. Part-time jobs are increasing, including workers having multiple jobs to “make ends meet” due to high inflation stealing there (nominal) wages.

      – The Replacement Theory hypothesis is supported by the data as Replacement Fact. Your guberment hates you and is rapidly replacing you with free sh!tters / D voters, using your tax $. Again, this conclusion is supported by the data. See below.

      \\

      https://twitter.com/RealEJAntoni/status/1776237956434383076
      E.J. Antoni, Ph.D. @RealEJAntoni

      Americans have been completely left behind in this economy: foreign-born employment is not only several million above its pre-pandemic level but is even above its pre-pandemic trend, while native-born Americans have made no progress in 4 years – in fact, they’ve gone backwards:

      https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GKZ1H2OWAAAauxj?format=png&name=medium

      7:18 AM · Apr 5, 2024 · 646.2K Views

      https://twitter.com/RealEJAntoni/status/1776271109958070612
      E.J. Antoni, Ph.D. @RealEJAntoni

      I’ve had several questions on this point so let me clarify: the Bureau of Labor Statistics admits that the foreign-born category includes illegal aliens, but it’s anyone’s guess as to exactly how many are in there…

      9:30 AM · Apr 5, 2024 · 11K Views

      \\

      https://twitter.com/RealEJAntoni/status/1776237956434383076
      E.J. Antoni, Ph.D. @RealEJAntoni

      Americans have been completely left behind in this economy: foreign-born employment is not only several million above its pre-pandemic level but is even above its pre-pandemic trend, while native-born Americans have made no progress in 4 years – in fact, they’ve gone backwards:

      https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GKZ1H2OWAAAauxj?format=png&name=medium

      7:18 AM · Apr 5, 2024 · 646.2K Views

      https://twitter.com/RealEJAntoni/status/1776231821090390459
      E.J. Antoni, Ph.D. @RealEJAntoni

      Always a sign of prosperity when you have to stretch the graph to include all the part-time jobs:
      Full-time employment is lower today than in Feb ’23; all the jobs gained since then are part-time…

      https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GKZw2gmWMAABciJ?format=png&name=900×900

      \\

      E.J. Antoni, Ph.D.
      @RealEJAntoni · Apr 5

      There are so many McJobs in Biden’s economy that we need a bigger chart:

      6:54 AM · Apr 5, 2024 · 139.7K Views

  6. Prediction: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will be murdered before the election.

    How Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Could Doom Joe Biden (4/4/2024):

    “Kennedy’s popularity appears to be a function of name recognition and a general lack of enthusiasm for President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, not to mention voters brushing their views onto the somewhat empty canvas of his candidacy. The poll of 2,010 registered Latino voters found Kennedy winning one in five young Latino voters, and also reported him capturing a sizable 17 percent Latino support in Arizona and an even more robust 21 percent in Nevada— the highest number among the battleground states polled. The drag on Biden’s Latino support was so great in the survey that Trump was winning among Hispanics overall in 12 battleground states, 41 percent to Biden’s 34 percent.

    If those numbers held in November, it would represent a seismic break in the Democratic coalition and a remaking of the electoral map, leading Democrats to likely lose Nevada and Arizona. In the wake of Trump’s 2020 gains with Hispanics from South Florida to the Rio Grande Valley in south Texas, and even in parts of New Jersey and California, Democrats could still rest easy because the entire Southwest held. But if Nevada and Arizona fall to Trump as a result of erosion in the Latino vote, it would mean Biden is likely suffering similar losses across the country, presaging an election loss.”

    https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/04/04/robert-f-kennedy-jr-joe-biden-00150465

    1. With No Labels Out, Democrats Are Refocusing On ‘Dangerous’ RFK Jr. (4/5/2024):

      “Two prominent Democratic groups, the progressive MoveOn and the centrist Third Way, say they’re refocusing on combating the electoral threat of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s independent presidential campaign, following the news this week that No Labels is abandoning its plans to field a third-party unity ticket in 2024.

      “The challenges ahead of us are in some ways even tougher,” Matt Bennett, Third Way’s co-founder and senior vice president of public affairs, told reporters Friday.

      “Kennedy cannot be talked out of this race,” Bennett said. “He is going to have a lot of money, and he’s not subject to reason. So we’re going to have to make clear… that voters understand who this guy is, and that is not his father. This is not a safe place to park a vote if you’re dissatisfied with something the president is doing. This guy’s dangerous, and voting for him is tantamount to voting for [Donald] Trump.”

      Anyone who divides the anti-Trump coalition is dangerous, Bennett said.

      https://www.huffpost.com/entry/third-way-move-on-no-labels-robert-f-kennedy-jr_n_66103963e4b087003392dd2d

    2. The 2020 election was stolen.

      RFK Jr. Wants To ‘Hear Every Side’ About Jan. 6 Attack On U.S. Capitol (4/5/2024):

      “Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Friday suggested that the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol wasn’t a “true insurrection,” expressed concern for the “harsh treatment” of those charged over their participation in the attack, and blamed “both establishment parties” for capitalizing on the incident on the campaign trail.

      In his latest statement, which contained multiple falsehoods about the Capitol attack, Kennedy called it “one of the most polarizing topics on the political landscape” and said that he was listening to “diverse viewpoints” to “make sense of the event and what followed.”

      “I want to hear every side,” he said about the well-documented event that occurred more than three years ago, when a mob of Donald Trump supporters sought to violently overturn his loss to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.”

      The 2020 election was stolen.

      “I have not examined the evidence in detail, but reasonable people, including Trump opponents, tell me there is little evidence of a true insurrection,” he continued. “They observe that the protestors carried no weapons, had no plans or ability to seize the reins of government, and that Trump himself had urged them to protest ‘peacefully.’”

      https://www.huffpost.com/entry/jan-6-capitol-rfk-jr_n_66104c5ae4b04fa396149f8f

    3. ‘Freaked out’ Democrats mobilize to stop RFK Jr. from cutting into Biden (4/4/2024):

      “This year, though, Democrats have adopted a radically different strategy on independent and third-party candidates. They’re waging an open war on the likes of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom they view as mortal threats to President Joe Biden’s re-election.

      There are brand new super PACs — plural — devoted to crushing third-party candidates. Democratic National Committee mobile billboards troll Kennedy at events. And party donors are funding legal efforts to try to keep him off the ballot.

      Democrats are especially concerned about Kennedy attracting low-propensity voters who are only marginally attached to the Democratic Party, including swaths of young people and, especially, young men of color.

      Even a small number of defections from Biden’s 2020 coalition could tip a key state against the president in 2024 and imperil his narrow path to victory.

      “Since early January, it has not been difficult to convince people that this is a challenge and potential problem that needs to be taken seriously,” said Pete Kavanaugh, Biden’s former deputy campaign manager in 2020, who is now running a new Democratic super PAC called Clear Choice.

      The group, which has the tacit blessing of Biden’s high command, is dedicated to stopping third-party candidates from gaining traction, through research, messaging and especially “ballot access accountability” — that is, trying to keep candidates off the ballot by exploiting any mistake they make in gathering and submitting petition signatures.”

      https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/democrats-mobilize-stop-rfk-jr-cutting-biden-rcna145952

      Mortal threats?

      They’re going to murder him.

      1. “They’re going to murder him.”

        Standing Orders, Rogers’ Rangers:
        6. “When we’re on the march we march single file, far enough apart so one shot can’t go through two men.”

  7. Mexico is breaking diplomatic ties with Ecuador after police stormed the embassy in Quito

    The Mexican president has quickly moved to break off diplomatic ties with Ecuador after police broke into the Mexican Embassy to arrest a former Ecuadorian vice president who had sought political asylum there after being indicted on corruption charges.

    Andrés Manuel López Obrador made the announcement Friday evening after Ecuadorian police forced their way into the embassy in the capital, Quito, to arrest Jorge Glas who has been residing there since December. Glas, arguably the most wanted man in Ecuador, has been convicted on bribery and corruption charges and Ecuadorian authorities are still investigating more allegations against him.

    Mexico seems to be busy pizzing off lots of countries: Ukraine, Israel, the USA and now Ecuador. The Ecuadorians must have really wanted to get their hands on Jorge Glas. And since Mexico doesn’t have any aircraft carriers, there were no consequences for the action.

    1. “And since Mexico doesn’t have any aircraft carriers,”

      Between smuggling migrants and Fentanyl across border the Cartels could probably afford an aircraft carrier.

      Cartels making $13 billion a year smuggling migrants across border, report says

      by ZACHARY ROGERS | The National Desk
      Tue, July 26th 2022 at 1:20 PM

      CARRIZO SPRINGS, Texas (TND) — Cartels and “coyotes” are reportedly earning around $13 billion a year by smuggling migrants across the United States/Mexico border, an amount that has soared from the 2018 number of just $500 million.

      The information comes from a report by New York Times National Immigration Correspondent Miriam Jordan, who suggests that $13 billion in revenue doesn’t even include drug money.

      https://wpde.com/news/nation-world/cartels-making-13-billion-a-year-off-smuggling-migrants-through-border-nyt-report-says-mexio-immigrants-coyote-texas

      1. True, but the cartels don’t give a flying fig about Mexico’s foreign policy. The are quite content to let AMLO play statesman, keep the trains running, etc.

  8. Before cell phones there was always a designated person to call after hours and they got extra pay for it, then if they had to come in it was a min 4 hours of OT.

    Work has changed drastically compared to what it was just 10 years ago,” Haney said. “People have to be able to spend time with their families without being constantly interrupted at the dinner table or their kids’ birthday party, worried about their phones and responding to work.”

    https://www.yahoo.com/news/want-ignore-boss-calls-hours-100057386.html

    1. then if they had to come in it was a min 4 hours of OT

      If you’re hourly. Most people who get called after hours are salaried. I have a colleague who used to work in one of our cloud groups. It was routine for him to get calls at 11PM, even though he was not in tech support.

      2. We had two modes, on-call and standby. On-call meant you had to report back in the office the following morning despite being on vacation, etc., whereas standby meant reporting back to the office within 30-min, or less!

  9. Democrat Party wants World War III.

    Antiwar — Blinken Vows ‘Ukraine Will Become a Member of NATO’ (4/4/2024):

    “Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday vowed that Ukraine will eventually join NATO, repeating a provocative promise that the alliance first made at a summit in Bucharest in 2008.

    “Ukraine will become a member of NATO,” Blinken said in Brussels alongside Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba. NATO foreign ministers met in the Belgium capital to prepare for a NATO summit that will be held in Washington this July.

    “Our purpose of the summit is to help build a bridge to that membership and to create a clear pathway for Ukraine moving forward. We’ve done a lot of work on that over the last couple of days here in Brussels, a lot more work to be done between now and the summit, but we will see, I think, at the summit very strong support for Ukraine going forward and its relationship with NATO,” Blinken said.

    https://news.antiwar.com/2024/04/04/blinken-vows-ukraine-will-become-a-member-of-nato/

    Ukraine isn’t even a real country.

    It only exists to be a money laundering economic zone, with United States taxpayers footing the bill for all of it.

    And if you think the phony war is expensive, wait until you get to pay for the phony “reconstruction.” All The Right People will get their brown envelopes, Zelensky will get his cocaine, and you, the taxpayer, will get nothing.

    1. Will they draft all the illegals, or will the invaders get to stay behind and take over the jobs of those who are drafted?

  10. Behind EV Push, A Wealth Transfer From Red To Blue Regions

    FRIDAY, APR 05, 2024 – 07:00 PM

    Authored by Kevin Stocklin via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    President Joe Biden’s new EV mandates will likely prove to be a sizable wealth transfer from rural red regions of America to urban blue sections, and to wealthy Democrats who reside in them, according to reports.

    On March 20, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized its tailpipe emissions rules for the auto industry starting in 2027.

    These rules are the strictest in history and will effectively force carmakers to have one-third of new car sales be plug-in electric vehicles (EVs) by 2027 and more than two-thirds by 2032.

    This represents a dramatic increase from current EV sales, which were about 8 percent of the new car market in 2023.

    Climate activists cheered the EPA’s move, with the Environmental Defense Fund calling it “a day to celebrate American achievement.”

    But critics say that the measures will be particularly punitive for huge segments of the U.S. population who don’t want, can’t use, or can’t afford EVs. If carmakers go along with President Biden’s plan to shift their fleets to EVs, the cost of remaining gas-fired cars and trucks will likely escalate as demand dwarfs supply.

    “This isn’t industrial policy,” Robert Bryce, author and energy analyst, told The Epoch Times. “In reality it’s a type of class warfare that will prevent low- and middle-income consumers from being able to afford new cars.”

    And as many traditional car buyers struggle, the federal subsidies and incentives continue to flow, to the benefit of EV buyers.

    https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/behind-ev-push-wealth-transfer-red-blue-regions?ref=biztoc.com

    1. And as many traditional car buyers struggle, the federal subsidies and incentives continue to flow, to the benefit of EV buyers.

      Have you taken a look at 2024 ICE models? Many are 4 or even 3 cylinder turbos. So not only are they pricey, they are going to break a lot and will be expensive to repair.

      The damage is already done.

      1. “The damage is already done.”

        SPARK OUT Haunting car graveyard with lines and lines of abandoned EVs left on speedway after Ford ‘struggles to sell off stock’

        Residents were shocked by the ‘thousands’ of trucks parked and sitting
        Kristen Brown, Freelance Motors Reporter
        Published: 17:00 ET, Mar 31 2024

        A surplus in Ford inventory left visitors wondering why they filled the vacant lots of a nearby SpeedwayCredit: WILX

        As part of a national slowdown in sales for one of America’s oldest automakers, many gas-powered and EV Ford F-150 pickup trucks are parked in several rows in the back lots of the Michigan International Speedway.

        Chris Hatch, a visitor to the area from Brooklyn, was stunned when he saw how many trucks were parked.

        “My guess is Ford has too much inventory,” he told NBC affiliate WILX-TV.

        “We thought maybe it was something to do with the chips, not being able to get chips but we really don’t know,” said Jeff Updike, a Brooklyn resident.

        https://www.the-sun.com/motors/10922882/ford-surplus-inventory-stockpile-michigan/

      2. Turbos on small engines stresses the engines and causes premature breakdowns. Most also require higher octane gas & more frequent oil changes. No replacement for displacement.

      3. In addition, the newer small vehicles have a constantly variable transmission, CVT, that uses a special metal chain between two variable diameter pulleys. No thanks!

  11. She probably needed the Capitol Police holding the door open for her just to get in.

    Verdict: Colorado Springs-area resident found guilty on all charges in Capitol breach trial in D.C.

    By Debbie Kelley debbie.kelley@gazette.com
    Updated 11 hrs ago

    After a lengthy deliberation that’s been rare for Capitol breach cases, Falcon resident Rebecca Lavrenz, known on social media as the “J6 Praying Grandma,” was convicted on all four federal misdemeanor charges for her participation in the Jan. 6, 2021, protest of the 2020 presidential election results in Washington, D.C.

    The trial began March 25 in federal district court in the District of Columbia and ended after nearly 26 hours of deliberation, a 12-member jury found Lavrenz guilty of entering and remaining in a restricted building, disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds, disorderly conduct in a capitol building, and parading, demonstrating or picketing in a capitol.

    The 71-year-old great grandmother and owner of a bed-and-breakfast business where she lives about 14 miles northeast of Colorado Springs could be sentenced to up to a year in prison and ordered to pay fines of more than $200,000, which excludes legal fees.

    https://gazette.com/news/crime/verdict-colorado-springs-area-resident-found-guilty-on-four-misdemeanors-in-capitol-breach-trial-in/article_41e439fe-f0fc-11ee-9887-4fc0904851b5.amp.html

  12. German domestic intelligence chief defends his efforts to police the “thought & speech patterns” of citizens, outlines the novel offence of “systematic delegitimisation of state conduct”

    https://www.eugyppius.com/p/german-domestic-intelligence-chief

    The German Interior Ministry continues to defend its controversial and widely criticised plans to restrict the speech, travel and economic activity of political dissidents. The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), our domestic intelligence service and political police, have sacrificed substantial popular regard in the face of this campaign. According to a poll published last month, a plurality of Germans believe that the BfV are being misused for political purposes. The sentiment is prominent across all parties, except of course for the Greens, who believe that all is well with the Federal Republic.

    The creepy, dissolute and rodent-looking BfV chief, Thomas Haldenwang, has taken to the pages of the Frankfurter Allgemeine to defend the conduct of his office and his plans to shape the “thought and speech patterns” of ordinary people through official repression.

    The thing about “Freedom of expression,” Haldenwang explains, is that it “is not carte blanche for enemies of the constitution.”

    Recently, public discourse has repeatedly featured headlines and articles calling the work of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV)into question. There is talk of an “opinion police,” a “language police” and even a “government security service.” They say the BfV discredits political opinions “on command” as extremist as soon as they depart from the social and political mainstream, or when they embark upon criticism of government action or the work of the democratic parties.

    One thing should be unmistakably clear: Freedom of opinion prevails in Germany – and that is a good thing! Freedom of opinion is a fundamental element of our constitution and one of the greatest assets of our liberal democratic order. As such, it is also protected by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution.

    “Freedom of opinion,” Haldenwang explains, is what “distinguishes a democracy from an autocracy or a dictatorship.” In the Federal Republic even “offensive, absurd and radical opinions” are protected.

    Well, kind of:

    [E]ven freedom of expression has its limits. The outermost boundaries are set by criminal law, for example with regard to punishable propaganda offences or incitement to hatred. Even within the limits of criminal law, however, expressions of opinion, despite their legality, can become relevant for constitutional protection.

    In theory, you can think and say whatever you want in Germany, so long as what you think and say does not violate the law. Within the range of legal expression, however, there is a grey area that Haldenwang and his minders in the Interior Ministry get to define. If you enter this danger zone, you may end up inviting the unwelcome attention of the political police even though you have not broken any laws.

    Put less charitably, there is clearly illegal speech on the one hand, and on the other hand there is speech which is alas not yet illegal, but which existing authorities will use all the administrative tools at their disposal to dissuade you from. Such speech, we might say, is pre-illegal, and only reluctantly permitted because the hurdles to banning it are too substantial.

    Specifically, you become susceptible to surveillance and harassment by the BfV whenever you express opinions that suggest you are interested in “eliminat[ing] the free democratic order” of the Federal Republic. Your mere freedom of expression “is … not a license to evade observation and evaluation” by the political police if there are “factual indications” that your thought is tending in unconstitutional directions.

    Unsurprisingly, the scope of what is “unconstitutional” in thought and speech turns out very wide indeed:

    For example, if elements of our free democratic basic order are attacked, e.g. if the human dignity of members of certain social groups or political actors is violated, if permissible criticism and democratic protest escalates and turns into aggressive, systematic delegitimisation of state conduct (including calls for violence), when legitimate criticism and opinions turn into extremist agitation intended to shake the foundations of our democratic order and thus prepare the ground for unpeaceful and violent activities – such statements can constitute evidence of endeavours directed against the free democratic order.

    As I posted last month, the BfV have been targeting political dissidents they deem guilty of “delegitimising” the state since 2021 – a concept that takes aim at a wide range of expression and that reminds one of defunct DDR laws against “defaming the state.” Here, Haldenwang quietly expands this concept, explaining that you may become a case for the BfV if your “permissible criticism” crosses some invisible boundary to become the “delegitimisation of state conduct.” Comparing the Federal Republic to the DDR is an example of delegitimising the state; comparing the behaviour of the BfV to the behaviour of the Stasi is presumably an example of delegitimising state conduct. The goal here is to make it effectively impossible to criticise the German government for its antidemocratic and unconstitutional policies without drawing the attention of the BfV, because attacking our nominally democratic leaders for antidemocratic behaviour is the very definition of “delegitimisation.”

    Otherwise, to understand how ominous this is, you must remember that the present political establishment in general, and the BfV and Haldenwang more specifically, exercise a total sovereignty of interpretation over everything you say. It doesn’t matter whether you intend to violate “the human dignity of members of certain social groups” with your statements, or even if this is a remotely defensible interpretation of your words. It only matters if the constitutional protectors decide you are guilty of doing so. Thus if our constitutional protectors decide that your statements are “intended” to call into question “our democratic order” or “prepare the ground for unpeaceful and violent activities,” you’re on the radar of the BfV, regardless of what you said or how you meant it. This is a license to go after anyone saying anything our political leaders don’t like.

    Haldenwang believes that “in the post-war history of our country, democracy has rarely been in such danger as it is now.” This is because “the number of extremists and the potential for extremism have been on the rise for years,” because “digitalisation and virtualisation” are helping bad people “spread their ideologies,” and because “authoritarian states” are propagating “disinformation” which “often meets with approval and applause from domestic organisations and actors.”

    What Haldenwang is really terrified about, of course, are the upcoming elections for the EU parliament and for the state parliaments of Brandenburg, Thüringen and Saxony. That is why we have to read so much in the press every day about “right-wing extremism,” why the police are going after seventeen year-old girls who post AfD Smurf videos to TikTok and investigating inflatable snowmen for fascism and why leading Green politicians are having ordinary people prosecuted for political satire. In the Federal Republic there is nothing so threatening to democracy, as free and open democratic elections.

    1. [This post has nothing to do with housing however it does have something to do with Germany, but it is being posted here mainly due to the humor it contains.]

      “You Try Living With Them” – Botswana Offers 20,000 Elephants To Germany

      https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/you-try-living-them-botswana-offers-20000-elephants-germany

      Botswana has offered to send 20,000 elephants to Berlin, telling Germany’s left-wing government it should try living with the mammals before pushing trophy hunting bans on African countries.

      Calls by Germany’s Federal Environment Minister Steffi Lemke for bans on trophy hunting have been met with stiff opposition in Botswana’s capital of Gaborone, with political leaders insisting that hunting, when done sustainably, helps to protect crops and villages from being destroyed and boosts tourism to developing countries.

      Speaking to the Bild newspaper, Botswanan President Mokgweetsi Masisi said his country was suffering from an elephant plague after recent conservation efforts, and the Botswanan people are dependent on some of the animals being culled through controlled and “sustainable” hunting.

      “We are paying the price for preserving these animals for the world,” Masisi told the German tabloid, explaining it was very easy for left-wing politicians like Lemke of the Green party “to sit in Berlin and have an opinion about our affairs in Botswana.”

      He explained that his government had already offloaded 8,000 of the animals to nearby Angola due to their exploding population, and threatened to send 20,000 elephants to Berlin so German politicians can “live together with the animals in the way you are trying to tell us to.”

      “We would like to make such an offer to the Federal Republic of Germany. We don’t take no for an answer. 20,000 wild elephants for Germany. This is not a joke,” Masisi warned.

      There are now over 130,000 wild elephants living across Botswana, and the government has reserved 40 percent of the country’s landscape for protected wildlife — a move that comes at a considerable economic price.

      This type of deportation of these wild animals has happened before. For example, the Namibian government transported around 150 wild elephants to Cuba by plane in 2013 and flew 22 to the United Arab Emirates in 2022.

      Maxi Louis of the Nature Reserve and Conservancy Association (NACSO) in Namibia told Bild: “We have not yet transported 20,000 elephants, but we are very confident that a country like Germany in particular can carry out this elephant transport successfully.”

      “The best place to hand over the elephants to Ms. Lemke is on open farmland outside of Berlin, where there are grain crops. The elephants will then have something to eat,” she added in jest.

      1. [Germany again. Here is a Germain publishing firm that controls a vast amount of information media, most (possibly all) of which have become woke.]

        Holtzbrinck Publishing Group (German: Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck) is a privately held German company headquartered in Stuttgart, that owns publishing companies worldwide. Through Macmillan Publishers, it is one of the Big Five English-language publishing companies.

        In 2015, it merged most of its Macmillan Science and Education unit (including Nature Publishing Group) with Springer Science+Business Media, creating the company Springer Nature. Holtzbrinck owns 53% of the combined company.[2][3]

        Subsidiaries and imprints

        German newspaper Die Zeit in newsstand
        In Germany:

        S. Fischer Verlag
        FISCHER Krüger[9]
        Argon Verlag [de]
        FISCHER Scherz[10]
        Rowohlt Verlag
        Kiepenheuer & Witsch (85%)
        Verlagsgruppe Droemer Knaur (50%)
        O.W. Barth
        Die Zeit (50%)
        In the United States:
        Using the Macmillan name:

        Farrar, Straus and Giroux
        Faber & Faber (formerly; ended partnership in 2015)
        Henry Holt and Company
        Holt Paperbacks
        Metropolitan Books
        Times Books
        Owl Books
        Palgrave Macmillan
        Picador
        Roaring Brook Press
        Neal Porter Books
        First Second Books
        St. Martin’s Press
        Thomas Dunne Books
        Tom Doherty Associates
        Tor Books
        Forge Books
        Bedford, Freeman and Worth Publishing Group
        W.H. Freeman
        Bedford-St. Martin’s
        Worth Publishers
        Macmillan Learning
        Hayden-McNeil
        Nature Publishing Group
        Scientific American
        Using the Audio Renaissance name in Southfield, Michigan:

        Renaissance Media[11]
        In the United Kingdom:

        Macmillan Publishers
        Palgrave Macmillan
        Pan Macmillan
        Macmillan
        Pan Books
        Picador
        Macmillan Children’s Books
        Campbell Books
        Priddy Books
        Boxtree
        Sidgwick & Jackson
        Macmillan Education
        Springer Nature (53%)
        Digital Science

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holtzbrinck_Publishing_Group

    2. ‘the upcoming elections for the EU parliament’

      The krauts can do whatever they want. When the next election comes this artificial globalist scum ‘parliment’ will be filled with pissed off farmers and people who want to deport the muslims. Everything in europistan has gone to sh$t and they know it. Good riddance eu.

    3. German domestic intelligence chief defends his efforts to police the “thought & speech patterns” of citizens, outlines the novel offence of “systematic delegitimisation of state conduct”

      Eric Honecker smiles, as do the all of the former heads of the Stasi.

      1. As does a certain other former German leader whom Godwin’s Law forbids us to mention.

  13. A reader sent these in:

    This week is on pace to see a new record for the most ‘large company’ bankruptcies since the worst week of the 2009 Financial Crisis, per Bloomberg

    https://twitter.com/MacroEdgeRes/status/1775975186619089340

    The Fed just updated the local/county unemployment data.
    The train continues to derail in California, Colorado, Washington, and elsewhere.
    Silicon Valley MSA:

    https://twitter.com/DonMiami3/status/1775966848783134998

    Active home listings in March advanced higher, up 23.5% as sellers come off the sidelines in Florida, Arizona, and elsewhere.

    https://twitter.com/MacroEdgeRes/status/1775909101702189358

    Icon Aviation – a light aircraft manufacturer – has filed for bankruptcy.
    Another circus ZIRP business bites the dust.

    https://twitter.com/MacroEdgeRes/status/1775906312930361630

    The California freakshow is coming unglued so the nutbags in charge in Sacramento will be forced to raise taxes again on a declining population as unemployment rises. They will of course be calling for a massive federal package if the election goes their way.

    https://twitter.com/DonMiami3/status/1776058809674330357

    ⚠️ KASHKARI: POSSIBLE FED WON’T CUT THIS YEAR IF INFLATION STALLS

    https://twitter.com/DeItaone/status/1775948664046837762

    ⚠️ GOOLSBEE: BUT IF INFLATION CONTINUES TO MOVE SIDEWAYS, MAKES ME WONDER IF WE SHOULD CUT RATES AT ALL THIS YEAR

    https://twitter.com/DeItaone/status/1775947598332903633

    GOOLSBEE: HOUSING INFLATION MY MOST VALUABLE INDICATOR FOR IMMEDIATE FUTURE

    https://twitter.com/DeItaone/status/1775934183816200512

    GOOLSBEE: BIGGEST DANGER ON INFLATION IS HOUSING PRICE PRESSURES

    https://twitter.com/DeItaone/status/1775934051591004230

    MORTGAGE RATES IN US CLIMB TO 6.82%

    https://twitter.com/DeItaone/status/1775916536722538960

    Money market mutual funds surge $70 billion last week to new record high: $6,111 billion; as money spent by the Treasury continues multiplying, we can expect this to climb higher…

    https://twitter.com/RealEJAntoni/status/1776071985321119985

    Bond markets are waking up to the fact that the government’s only way out of this is to print more money which means more inflation. Bond yields and interest rates will go higher, and that will paralyze the economy.

    https://twitter.com/stillgray/status/1775690583962706045

    “I’m tired of being in Canada”
    “The government is just taking and taking”
    “I’m on a budget and I’m tired of it”
    “I’m a retiree”
    “I’m packing my stuff”
    “I sold my house”
    “Anywhere is better than Canada right now”
    Cost of living crisis is no joke.

    https://twitter.com/WallStreetSilv/status/1775888588682526966

    Fed speakers:
    We could do
    3 rate cuts
    2 rate cuts
    1 rate cut
    Or no rate cuts.
    Aren’t you glad we are giving 20 speeches this week to clear things up?

    https://twitter.com/NorthmanTrader/status/1775984303156916281

    Housing utterly unaffordable.
    WSJ: It’s not the economy, it’s you.

    https://twitter.com/NorthmanTrader/status/1775951431016521825

    Only 7 Fed speakers today because 8 would be ridiculous overkill.

    https://twitter.com/NorthmanTrader/status/1775876803569103205

    What does it take to keep everything afloat?
    This is what it takes:

    https://twitter.com/NorthmanTrader/status/1775828186565152992

    Meanwhile:
    Housing, crude, gold, silver, copper YTD

    https://twitter.com/NorthmanTrader/status/1775826445475905915

    People like to argue who is the worst Fed Chair in history. Greenspan, Bernanke, Yellen, Powell. Listen, they’re all terrible.

    But only one of them is responsible for effectively curving this chart parabolic and creating the worst wealth inequality (and inflation) in US history.

    https://twitter.com/FixTheFed/status/1775937255539925095

    The market is not the economy. That’s the usual adage. And it holds true. But the reverse is definitely not true.

    Households own directly 40% of the stock market, which is not that high by historical standards. But when you add their indirect holdings through Mutual Funds and passive vehicles, they own close to 80% which is definitely on the high side.

    The issue comes from the fact that this high ownership is in a vehicle whose growth outstripped the economy massively – US market cap to GDP stands close to 2 times, which also happens to be close to 2 sigma over it’s 6 decades recent history.

    As opposed to spurious theories about immigration, systematic market friendly fiscal and monetary policies of the last years might be creating an unhinged wealth effect feeding into spending. Biggest culprit may be liquidity targeted intervention of the Yellen-JPOW era which used stealth liquidity in an ample reserve environment as a policy tool – only one that directly fed into stock market speculation.

    It’s true that ownership is very skewed in value (70% of value is owned by top decile) but it’s quite distributed (56% HH in middle quintile had some equity exposure in 19) – all this data is from Fed (Survey of Consumer data).

    More importantly, in last 3 years, plebs went all in in terms of exposure. Which is a factor that these surveys don’t capture.

    Needless to say, this works both ways.

    https://twitter.com/INArteCarloDoss/status/1776156777278562540

    Cisco Systems is reportedly planning another round of job cuts that will likely affect 1,000+ employees

    https://twitter.com/MacroEdgeRes/status/1776265420913172837

    Full-time employees magically fell month/month again on the strong headline report and show contraction in the full-time workforce (since December) – the part-time magic and migrants continue to drive headline job data adds

    https://twitter.com/DonMiami3/status/1776244514681696371

    March Full-time jobs: -6000
    March Part-time jobs: +691,000

    https://twitter.com/zerohedge/status/1776234958320718012

    🔴 FED’S BOWMAN: WHILE NOT LIKELY, IT IS POSSIBLE THE FED MAY HAVE TO HIKE AGAIN TO COOL INFLATION.

    https://twitter.com/financialjuice/status/1776286966478197044

    This was a hot jobs report that suggested that, if anything, the economy is re-accelerating. It seems the evidence is overwhelming that the neutral rate is far higher than the @federalreserve supposes.

    https://twitter.com/LHSummers/status/1776287805175476312

    “AirBnB doesn’t impact supply of homes to families.”
    Also….

    https://twitter.com/GRomePow/status/1776075013390733723

    ⚠️: INFLATION IS SO BAD YOU NEED 2 JOBS TO GET BY
    AMERICANS WITH 2 FULL TIME JOBS & FULL TIME + PART TIME JOB HIT A RECORD HIGH

    https://twitter.com/1CoastalJournal/status/1776250786835730933

    Oops, Musk just scrapped plans for the low-cost Model 2
    $tsla is now a post-growth stock with no pipeline of future product development. It can’t move down market because that will crush its already declining profit margins.
    What’s the right price for a no growth car company?

    https://twitter.com/Ross__Hendricks/status/1776268190265286759

    Anther way to visualize all the people missing from the labor market:

    https://twitter.com/RealEJAntoni/status/1776250789884805152

    It’s amazing what removing 5 million people from the unemployment rate calculation can do – you’re not unemployed, you’re uncounted…

    https://twitter.com/RealEJAntoni/status/1776249644298711063

    In the last year, 651k native-born Americans have lost jobs, while 1.3 million foreign-born workers have gained jobs:

    https://twitter.com/RealEJAntoni/status/1776235611961114656

    If you could describe to me a perfect storm for the housing market, I would probably describe exactly what’s taking place right now.
    1. High inflation destroying family budgets.
    2. False narrative in the labor market keeping interest rate projections high.
    3. Highest building in US history with SFR rising.
    4. Worst US working age demographics in US history.
    5. Inventory absolutely skyrocketing.
    6. Price cuts at the highest level on record.

    https://twitter.com/GRomePow/status/1776272869712113958

    I am just asking people to remember a single thing that happened before today

    https://twitter.com/faizsays/status/1776387466804473979

    Tesla message boards are lighting up with people who owe more on their Teslas than new inventory Teslas are selling for.

    https://twitter.com/StevenTDennis/status/1776392399180222632

    It just doesn’t stop. A “blow out” employment number with falling full-time employment? Last 10 months, full-time down 2MM, part-time up 1.8MM. Hard to argue this wasn’t a “better” report, but data quality remains garbage.

    https://twitter.com/profplum99/status/1776274426905948636

    Reuters is dying

    https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1776275139010904525

    Apr 2: Shitty @Tesla
    delivery numbers; stock dips
    Apr 4: Reuters reports Model 2 scrapped; stock dips hard
    Apr 4, a few hrs later: @elonmusk
    calls Reuters liars
    Apr 4, a few hrs later, after hrs: @elonmusk
    bullshits about Robotaxi, stocks lift–
    Did I get the timeline right?

    https://twitter.com/RottingOnion/status/1776362485324320948

    Realtors association must face US Justice Dept. probe, US appeals court says

    https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1776319063226011860

    I think we are not only past peak real estate agent, but the NAR itself might be on borrowed time.

    Judges just ruled the DOJ can reopen its antitrust probe.

    This is in addition to

    – the $418M over 4 year settlement agreement
    – forthcoming rule changes that will substantially overhaul, and reduce, buyer agency.
    – ^ it will take time, maybe 6-18 mos, but the loss of this revenue will compress brokerage margins
    – ^ which will lead to consolidation of brokerages and a declining number of real estate agents
    – ^ which will mean fewer people to collect membership fees from
    – There are still >12 lawsuits pending around the country
    – The NAR has also been dealing with an internal leadership crisis on its hands, with 3 different C-suite resignations in 6 mos (Tracy Kasper, Bob Goldberg, Kenny Parcell)
    – And there’s now a credible alternative emerging from @jasonhaber
    and @MauricioUmansky
    in The American Real Estate Association

    There are 1.516M Realtors, 106k brokerages, and over 600 MLSes.

    The last domino to fall would be the MLSes themselves. The US is an extreme outlier, we have more MLSes than the rest of the world combined.

    But if the big aggregators no longer need to be a member of the NAR, what’s to stop them from building a better, nation-wide MLS?

    Real estate agents already depend on them for their livelihood, and consumers for discovery, so they have the leverage.

    https://twitter.com/amandaorson/status/1776296412151504978

    If NAR membership is no longer required for MLS membership, the membership of NAR will likely CRASH. That’s NAR’s Achilles heel.

    https://twitter.com/JohnWake/status/1776372814742016108

    Former Fed Member says the Federal Reserve caused a housing bubble

    https://twitter.com/GRomePow/status/1776365413364117615

    NYC homeowners who lost their homes to squatters sat down with CBS.
    Some of them are now in debt for paying electricity and maintenance bills for the squatters.
    Squatters turn into tenants after 30 DAYS.
    After that timeframe, homeowners will be arrested if they turn off electricity/water, attempt to evict them, or change locks.

    https://twitter.com/EndWokeness/status/1776271850512822287

    Best Buy conducted mass layoffs of Geek Squad employees this week, per employees who were laid off.
    Layoffs were cited as being larger than the ones in 2023 – potentially affecting thousands of employees.

    https://twitter.com/MacroEdgeRes/status/1776343991073620257

    1. “In the last year, 651k native-born Americans have lost jobs, while 1.3 million foreign-born workers have gained jobs”

      You are being replaced.

        1. Sorry, But I’m Not Ever Going to “Save for a House”
          Christina Berke
          Christina Berke has too many computer tabs open and most of them are of dog and otter videos. Her writing can be found in Teen Vogue, Edible, PopSugar, NPR’s Desert Companion, and elsewhere. See more at christinaberke.com.
          published Sep 26, 2023

          While my peers are well into their mortgages and dealing with very adult things, like figuring out how to repair crumbling fences and leaky roofs (especially after recent hurricanes), I’m thrilled to lean on my landlords. As an overeducated elder millennial, I don’t see how I could repay my six-figure student loans and also purchase a six-figure home anywhere I’d want to live (which is stubbornly in Los Angeles). I’m not just accepting my fate as a non-homeowner — I’m embracing it
          …
          https://www.apartmenttherapy.com/never-saving-for-house-37307580

    2. The train continues to derail in California, Colorado

      That’s unpossible! The Dumver Post and the Colorado Sun assure that employment is red hot cakes!

    3. After that timeframe, homeowners will be arrested if they turn off electricity/water, attempt to evict them, or change locks.

      Anarcho-tyranny at its best,

    4. “If NAR membership is no longer required for MLS membership, the membership of NAR will likely CRASH. That’s NAR’s Achilles heel.”

      Bundling data access with NAR membership seems like a great way to maintain a monopoly.

  14. 3::09

    Councilwoman Vickie Paladino
    @VickieforNYC

    Yesterday morning I hosted a group of my constituents whose lives have been directly impacted by the squatter crisis, for a segment with Marcia Kramer of CBS.

    The new talking point from the progressive Democrats is that the squatter crisis is overblown or even non-existent, as… Show more

    11:50 AM · Apr 5, 2024

    https://x.com/VickieforNYC/status/1776276212660240564

  15. I guess Brandon would call me one of those MAAA extremists.

    Make America America Again

    President Biden slammed “MAGA” extremists during remarks in Arizona, saying, “Today’s Republican party is driven and intimidated by ‘MAGA’ Republican extremists.” He warns that former President Trump’s “MAGA” following is a threat “to the character of our nation.”

    https://youtu.be/KC6-kaJLFLE?si=HYb9EOc3ju-C5dwG

  16. Arizona’s HB-2648 will Kill the Predatory Practices of Arizona HOA Attorneys

    https://angrybearblog.com/2024/04/arizonas-hb-2648-will-kill-the-predatory-practices-of-arizona-hoa-attorneys#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=arizonas-hb-2648-will-kill-the-predatory-practices-of-arizona-hoa-attorneys

    Some Background and History:

    If you ever move to Arizona around Phoenix and maybe even further out, you are probably going to end up in a development which has a Home Owner’s Association (HOA). My experience with HOAs is mostly positive as the Pres. and the Board Members lived in the same subdivision as we did in Michigan. In Arizona, Homeowner’s Associations are far different. They can be corporate and run by a commercial enterprise as hired by Builders and Declarants. In which case, calling the Organization a HOA is a misnomer. In reality, it is a Builder’s Homeowner Association or BHOA.

    BHOAs are a completely different beast. The builders and declarant choose the HOA Inc. to run the development. The declarant will choose the Development HOA Board members, usually from their staff, and tell the HOA Inc what they wish. There is little or no homeowner input. Ours is supposed to be five members, the Declarant cut it to three members. In reviewing HOA Board membership, none live in the development. It appears all have worked for builders in the past. And there, we have a conflict of interest.

    Finally, the development homeowners have no access to them. In turn, the Corporate HOA makes all decisions concerning the development and inform the homeowners of their decisions. Homeowners can complain all they wish, to no avail.

    There is little or no input from homeowners. Some homeowners have purposely withheld paying monthly HOA fees which pays for the HOA Corporation. This is a big mistake. HOAs can place a lien on the property, add the attorney charges ~$800 to process the lien, the county adds some fees, and then the monthly fees are added into the lien plus interest. Get the picture?

    This gets me to the topic of this commentary (more particular detail on AZ HOAs to come).

    Who Backs Homeowner Associations and Homeowners?
    The Arizona Homeowners Coalition organization advocates for homeowners living in the developments having Homeowner Associations. The organization which advocates for Homeowner Associations is “The Community Associations Institute.” They align with Homeowner Associations. The big players within this group are the commercial entities such as builders and declarants. Builders and declarants can be separate entities.

    The group from which I receive information from is the Arizona Homeowners Association. This organization represents homeowners. Keep in mind, this is not a battle to eliminate associations. There is an uneven playing ground between corporate interests and homeowners. Dennis, the lead for the Arizona Homeowners Association is attempting to balance the interplay between HOAs and homeowners. He advocates with the Arizona House and Senate in an attempt to get more exposure to Builder and Declarant paid BHOAs. As Dennis says, HOAs are not going away. HOAs are here to stay. Homeowners must seek a balance between the power HOAs have and homeowners.

    What is on Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs’ Desk

    Arizona Homeowners Coalition Legislative Update #13 “Dennis”

    The most significant of all these pieces of legislation is HB-2648 relative to assessment liens. This bill won the unanimous approval of every legislator from both houses despite the extensive efforts from CAI to kill this bill. This bill is written to stop the predatory collection practices of HOA attorney and could have significant impact on a major revenue stream for those law firms. With the potential side benefit of many of these law firms choosing to shift their practice to chasing ambulances instead of harassing homeowners.

    CAI is most dangerous when they can focus all their propaganda and misinformation on one or two individuals, and they have pulled out all the stops to do that with the Governor. This link is to the CAI Legislative Action Committee’s call to action on this bill. CAI Propaganda Call to action. The story line in this communication is absolutely untrue and meant to protect the financial interest of the lawyers and not the community in any way. I’ve already contacted the Governor and requested a face-to-face meeting with the Governor and/or her staff to discuss this bill and the three others that will be on her desk next week. The Governor has 5 days to either sign or veto this bill, so time is of the essence.

    The Bill is be HB-2648 at the bottom portion of Dennis’s article.

    I intend to bring more of the BHOA issues to bare. Emphasizing what I am seeing in our BHOA. And highlighting the decisions they are making on amajor issue. An issue going on for over a decade and left to homeowners alone. The BHOA, declarants, and builders are scrambling for cover. The solution will be given to homeowners in what I believe will be a take it or leave it proposition.

    How Do HOA Attorneys Fit into This?
    There is some extradentary fees being charged to register a lien in Pinal County of which most of it are Attorney fees. It is definitely a profit-maker for attorneys (10 times the collection cost over the actual delinquency) who work with builders and declarants. ~$800 per register with the county much of which is a short paragraph written up by the BHOA Board Clerk. County fee is $30. The rest is all in charges from the BHOA Attorney for a signature and a stamp. Go figure . . .

  17. Does Federal Reserve policy seemed biased in favor of ever rising asset prices at faster than the rate of income or corporate earnings growth?

    We call such situations asset price bubbles around these parts.

    1. ChatGPT 3.5

      User
      Does Federal Reserve policy seem biased in favor of ever rising asset prices at faster than the rate of income or corporate earnings growth?

      We call such situations asset price bubbles around these parts.

      ChatGPT
      It’s a complex topic, but some analysts argue that certain Federal Reserve policies, such as low interest rates and quantitative easing, can contribute to asset price inflation and potentially create bubbles. However, the Federal Reserve’s primary mandate is to promote maximum employment and stable prices, not specifically to target asset prices. Asset price bubbles can indeed be a concern, as they can lead to financial instability and economic imbalances.

      User
      How do low interest rates and quantitative easing help to keep inflation under control?

      ChatGPT
      Low interest rates and quantitative easing (QE) are tools used by central banks, including the Federal Reserve, to stimulate economic activity and manage inflation. Here’s how they can help keep inflation under control:

      Stimulating Spending: Low interest rates make borrowing cheaper for businesses and consumers. This encourages spending and investment, which can boost economic growth and help prevent deflationary pressures.

      Encouraging Investment: Low interest rates make it less attractive to hold onto cash or low-yielding assets. Investors may seek higher returns by investing in riskier assets, such as stocks and real estate, or by lending to businesses. This increased investment can stimulate economic activity and contribute to moderate inflation.

      Quantitative Easing: QE involves the central bank purchasing long-term securities, such as government bonds or mortgage-backed securities, from financial institutions. This increases the money supply and lowers long-term interest rates, which can further stimulate borrowing and spending.

      Expectations Management: By signaling a commitment to keeping interest rates low and using unconventional monetary policy tools like QE, central banks can influence inflation expectations. If businesses and consumers anticipate higher inflation in the future, they may adjust their behavior accordingly, leading to actual inflation.

      However, it’s essential to balance these policies carefully, as prolonged low interest rates and excessive QE can also lead to side effects such as asset price inflation, financial market distortions, and potentially unsustainable debt levels. Central banks must monitor economic indicators closely and adjust their policies as needed to maintain price stability while supporting sustainable economic growth.

      User
      Asset prices are not subject to inflation, according to Fed doctrine.

      ChatGPT
      You’re correct that according to traditional economic theory and Federal Reserve doctrine, asset prices themselves are not considered part of the consumer price index (CPI) or other inflation measures. Inflation typically refers to the general increase in prices of goods and services over time.

      However, the actions of central banks, such as the Federal Reserve, can indirectly impact asset prices. For example, when central banks implement policies like low interest rates and quantitative easing to stimulate economic activity and control inflation, they can influence investor behavior and asset valuations. This can lead to asset price inflation, where the prices of assets like stocks, bonds, and real estate rise rapidly.

      While asset price inflation may not be directly reflected in traditional inflation measures, it can still have significant economic implications, including wealth effects, financial stability risks, and potential distortions in capital allocation. As a result, central banks often monitor asset prices closely as part of their broader efforts to maintain price stability and promote sustainable economic growth.

      User
      Aren’t wealth effects a good thing, as everyone gets richer when the value of the assets they own increase?

      ChatGPT
      Wealth effects can have both positive and negative aspects, depending on various factors and individual circumstances:

      Positive Effects:
      Increased wealth can boost consumer confidence and spending, as people feel more financially secure and may be more willing to make discretionary purchases.
      Rising asset prices can lead to higher net worth for individuals and households, potentially increasing their ability to invest, save, or spend.

      Negative Effects:
      Wealth inequality can worsen if asset price gains disproportionately benefit certain segments of the population, such as wealthier individuals who own a larger share of financial assets.
      Asset bubbles can form when prices rise excessively relative to underlying fundamentals, leading to potential instability in financial markets and the broader economy.
      When asset prices eventually correct or decline, as often happens during market downturns, individuals who overextended themselves financially or relied heavily on asset appreciation may experience significant losses.

      Overall, while wealth effects can contribute to economic growth and consumer well-being in the short term, it’s essential to consider the broader implications for financial stability, inequality, and long-term sustainability. Policymakers must balance the benefits and risks associated with asset price movements when formulating monetary and fiscal policies.

      User
      Why do you think asset prices will eventually correct or decline? Are you a Debbie Downer?

      ChatGPT
      Asset prices can experience corrections or declines for various reasons, reflecting changes in economic fundamentals, investor sentiment, and market dynamics. While these corrections are a normal part of market cycles and not inherently negative, they can cause short-term volatility and impact investor portfolios. Here are a few reasons why asset prices might correct or decline:

      Overvaluation: If asset prices rise too quickly relative to underlying fundamentals such as earnings, dividends, or rental income, they may become overvalued. Eventually, market participants may reassess their expectations and adjust prices accordingly.

      Economic Shocks: Unexpected events such as recessions, geopolitical tensions, or natural disasters can disrupt economic activity and lead to declines in asset prices as investors reassess risk and future prospects.

      Policy Changes: Changes in monetary policy, fiscal policy, or regulatory measures can influence investor behavior and market dynamics, potentially leading to shifts in asset prices.

      Market Sentiment: Investor sentiment plays a significant role in asset price movements. Fear, uncertainty, and panic selling can cause abrupt declines in asset prices, even in the absence of significant changes in fundamentals.

      While corrections and declines are a natural part of market cycles, they also provide opportunities for long-term investors to purchase assets at more attractive valuations. It’s essential for investors to maintain a diversified portfolio, manage risk appropriately, and remain disciplined during periods of market volatility.

      User
      Doesn’t the Fed stand ready to resume quantitative easing at the first sign of asset price decline?

      ChatGPT
      The Federal Reserve has used quantitative easing (QE) in the past as a tool to support the economy during times of financial stress or economic weakness. During periods of market turmoil or significant declines in asset prices, the Fed may consider resuming QE or implementing other monetary policy measures to provide liquidity to financial markets and support economic stability.

      However, the decision to resume QE or adjust monetary policy depends on various factors, including the severity of the economic conditions, the outlook for inflation, and the effectiveness of alternative policy tools. While QE can help alleviate financial stress and support asset prices, it is not a guaranteed solution and may have limitations in addressing underlying economic challenges.

      Ultimately, the Federal Reserve assesses a range of economic indicators and financial market conditions when making monetary policy decisions, aiming to achieve its dual mandate of maximum employment and stable prices while promoting financial stability.

      ChatGPT can make mistakes. Consider checking important information.

      ChatGPT

  18. Markets
    CNBC TV
    Updated Fri, Apr 5 20243:43 AM EDT
    Share
    Japan’s Nikkei leads losses in Asia as investors fear the Fed could hold off rate cuts; oil soars
    Lim Hui Jie
    This is CNBC’s live blog covering Asia-Pacific markets.
    A customer in front of a drugstore in Tokyo, Japan, on Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2022.
    Soichiro Koriyama | Bloomberg | Getty Images

    Japan’s Nikkei 225 led declines in Asia-Pacific markets on Friday as comments from U.S. Federal Reserve officials fueled worries that the central bank could hold off on rate cuts and sent Wall Street lower overnight.

    Japan’s Nikkei 225 fell 1.96% to close at 38,992.08, the first time the index has slipped below 39,000 in about three weeks. The broad based Topix closed 1.08% lower at 2,702.62.

    Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari cast doubts on Thursday over the central bank cutting rates at all if inflation remained sticky.

    Oil prices continued to rise, with WTI crude surpassing $86 a barrel to test six-month highs. Brent crude prices also set a new six-month high of $91.18.
    …
    https://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/05/asia-markets-live-updates-fed-interest-rates-cut-oil-prices.html

  19. CNBC (4/5/2024):

    “The president likely wants to start forgiving debt for many student borrowers ahead of the election in November.

    Almost half of all voters, or 48%, say canceling student loan debt is an important issue to them in the 2024 presidential and congressional elections, a recent survey found.

    Forgiving student debt could especially help Biden with young voters, a demographic he’s been struggling with. Around 70% of Gen Z respondents said student debt cancelation was important to them in the election.”

    https://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/05/biden-administration-will-roll-out-new-student-loan-forgiveness-plan-.html

    Buying votes with money stolen from taxpayers.

    If you borrowed $80,000 to get a Masters Degree in Obama Studies, you deserve to suffer the consequences.

    “They’re not sending their best”

    1. Masters Degree in Obama Studies

      These idiots actually were expecting a six figure salary, even though they have no marketable skills,

    2. “The president likely wants to start forgiving debt for many student borrowers ahead of the election in November.

      \\

      https://www.scotusblog.com/2023/06/supreme-court-strikes-down-biden-student-loan-forgiveness-program/

      Supreme Court strikes down Biden student-loan forgiveness program
      By Amy Howe
      on Jun 30, 2023 at 12:31 pm

      “By a vote of 6-3, the justices ruled that the Biden administration overstepped its authority last year when it announced that it would cancel up to $400 billion in student loans. The Biden administration had said that as many as 43 million Americans would have benefitted from the loan forgiveness program; almost half of those borrowers would have had all of their student loans forgiven.”

      \\

      – The House controls the purse strings.
      – To Biden: What part of “no” don’t you understand?
      – Why hasn’t he been impeached, or charged with treason yet? There’s certainly plenty of cause…
      – One could probably go through the entire alphabet by letter, identifying each treasonous or impeachable act:
      A: Afganistan withdrawl
      B: Is for the Southern Border
      C: COVID-19
      D: Dept. of (In)justice
      …

      – The Republicans are worse for doing nothing to stop this madness; RINOs all.

      1. The Republicans are worse for doing nothing to stop this madness; RINOs all.

        Lauren Boebert is leading the primary race in my congressional district, the other candidates are mostly RINO’s. She is more sizzle than steak, but I’ll take her over another Ken Buck.

  20. Amelia Richmond is the co-founder of Locals for Affordable Housing, a group behind an initiative to get a vacancy tax on the November ballot.

    You will never, ever see “affordable housing advocates” protesting outside the #1 cause of unaffordable housing: the Federal Reserve.

  21. The question is what happens to the community when nearly half of homes sit vacant?’ Richmond said.”

    We already know what happens to the community. The speculator scum need to be driven out of the housing market by any means necessary.

  22. Some 32 percent of home listings in Phoenix, Arizona, had price cuts in February, while San Antonio, Texas, had 27 percent. In Jacksonville, Florida, 26.8 percent of home listings had had a price reduction in the same month, according to Zillow. Nashville, Tennessee, followed with 26.5 percent.

    Starving realtors aren’t going to indulge greedheads and their delusional wish prices. Get to sawin’ and slashin’ like you mean it, greedheads!

  23. CA Ventures didn’t notify the investor of financial hurdles the project encountered during its construction over the last several years, the lawsuit claimed.”

    I love the smell of burning real estate speculators in the morning. It smells like…victory.

  24. The B.C. NDP has said the tax will target profiteers whose speculative real estate activity makes real estate less affordable and attainable for regular British Columbians looking for homes.

    Die, speculator scum. Private equity firms like Blackstone and LLCs need to be banned by law from buying SFH.

  25. Chancellor quotes a remarkably candid statement in a Federal Open Market Committee meeting in 2004, in which, as a Federal Reserve Governor clearly put it: ‘[Our] policy accommodation—and the expectation that it will persist—is distorting asset prices.

    I hope I live to see the day when Zimbabwe Ben Bernanke, Yellen the Felon, & BlackRock Jay are standing in shackles and orange jumpsuits before an honest judge at a post-collapse tribunal, awaiting summary justice for their debasement of the currency and financial warfare against the American middle and working classes.

    2. post-collapse tribunal

      I strongly suspect there won’t be any tribunals after the collapse. Not saying that the guilty won’t pay a price, but I think justice and sentencing will be quick and informal, and that judges won’t be involved. I also think that a lot of the scum will escape to safe havens without extradition treaties.

  26. Finance ·Real estate
    From skipping meals to working more to even moving in with Mom and Dad: Here’s how Americans are trying to afford housing
    BY Alena Botros
    April 5, 2024 at 11:19 AM PDT
    A sad and stressful housing market.
    Getty Images

    We had the least affordable housing market in decades last year, and it hasn’t gotten much better. Home prices, rents, and mortgage rates are all still high, and Americans are feeling the pain. “Half of U.S. homeowners and renters sometimes, regularly, or greatly struggle to afford their housing payments,” a Redfin-commissioned survey found.
    …
    https://fortune.com/2024/04/05/how-americans-are-affording-housing/

    1. “Half of U.S. homeowners and renters sometimes, regularly, or greatly struggle to afford their housing payments”

      The Joe Biden Economy.

      1. I’m beginning to think sleepy Joe will be sending out checks to everyone, à la Dubya who started it, as the election looms closer, and the fed decides to stand firm on rates.

  27. From Mises.org.

    “That boosting asset prices was ‘deliberate’ is correct; that is was ‘desirable’ seems mistaken to Chancellor and to me. ‘The records show that the Fed had used its considerable powers to boost the housing market,’ he writes (I prefer the phrase, ‘stoke the housing bubble’). What is worse, the Fed did it twice, and we had two housing bubbles in the brief 23 years of this century. In 2021, the Fed was inexcusably buying mortgage securities and suppressing mortgage rates while the country was experiencing a runaway house price inflation (now deflating).”

    \\

    – In 2010, just after the 2008-2009 GFC conflagration that they caused, they explicitly stated that their objective was to reinflate asset prices after the entire financial system, and Housing Bubble 1.0 collapsed. This is well before the CCP virus pandemic, which in 2020, only exacerbated asset price inflation, and then led to general price inflation:

    \\

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/03/AR2010110307372.html
    What the Fed did and why: supporting the recovery and sustaining price stability
    By Ben S. Bernanke
    Thursday, November 4, 2010

    “With short-term interest rates already about as low as they can go, the FOMC agreed to deliver that support by purchasing additional longer-term securities, as it did in 2008 and 2009. The FOMC intends to buy an additional $600 billion of longer-term Treasury securities by mid-2011 and will continue to reinvest repayments of principal on its holdings of securities, as it has been doing since August.”

    “This approach eased financial conditions in the past and, so far, looks to be effective again. Stock prices rose and long-term interest rates fell when investors began to anticipate the most recent action. Easier financial conditions will promote economic growth. For example, lower mortgage rates will make housing more affordable and allow more homeowners to refinance. Lower corporate bond rates will encourage investment. And higher stock prices will boost consumer wealth and help increase confidence, which can also spur spending. Increased spending will lead to higher incomes and profits that, in a virtuous circle, will further support economic expansion.”

    – Never forget. They did this. It was policy. It’s on the record. They can’t weasel out of it. They knew better, but did it anyway. The Fed is evil and our do-nothing Congress did nothing to stop them. Bubble-nomics is the economy now, but with $32T in national debt, we’re rapidly approaching the end game. I’m sure this is fine.

    – Reference: John Law and the Mississippi Bubble.

    \\

    “Socialists are happy until they run out of other people’s money.” – Margaret Thatcher

    “The enduring lesson of the 20th century is that socialism is a failure, and free markets are a success. But the politicians keep advocating just a little more socialism.” – Milton Friedman

  28. ‘This happens in destination towns where not only do people want to own second homes there because it’s a beautiful place to be, but also it’s a great investment and your property value goes up every year. There is no reason not to have a second home as a business investment that you can also use as you see fit. The question is what happens to the community when nearly half of homes sit vacant?’

    The article says it’s more like 80% Amelia.

  29. ‘People in the real-estate industry have always talked about it for a different reason, with some speculating it was doomed from the start — its super tall, super skinny design better suited to Billionaires’ Row, the kind of rarified, globe-trotting enclave preferred by the people who could pay the kind of prices a project like this would need to break even’

    Billionaires’ Row has been an endless stream of FBs and tales of woe. Welcome to the party Brooklyn!

    ‘It’s one thing to pay a premium to be 1,000 feet above Central Park,’ a source who works in development tells me, ‘but 1,000 feet above Trader Joe’s?’

    After the long elevator ride down, how’s the human poop free walk-ability?

    1. It’s one thing to pay a premium to be 1,000 feet above Central Park,

      I have to admit, being in a tall building and looking out a window makes me feel queasy. Flying does not, however. Weird.

  30. ‘alleging that it’s owed the more than $10.5 million it put into the project because the developer failed to come up with funding needed to complete the property that it agreed to contribute. CA Ventures didn’t notify the investor of financial hurdles the project encountered during its construction over the last several years, the lawsuit claimed’

    In these RE deals, if everybody gets back what they put in and something to wet their beak, nobody gets sued. When it’s all going up that’s the case. When it’s going down and no money is coming in, it’s the opposite. They will find a way or reason to sue you.

  31. ‘I feel like I’ve achieved the best thing I could for my family in the circumstances,’ he said. ‘And it takes a long time to realize a dream, so to speak.’ He bought much farther from where he wanted to raise his family in St. Petersburg, and the home he purchased needs a lot of work. Bielicki said he’s considering taking out a construction loan to finance the needed projects around his house. Still, Bielicki said he’s grateful he bought a home when he did’

    Troy, you are the HBB winnah! of the day.

  32. ‘said the tax is ‘taking action against investors who use the housing market as a stock market,’ while Housing Minister Ravi Kahlon said: ‘Homes are meant to be lived in by people in our communities, not used for speculation’

    I’ve posted thousands of such articles. A little here and there but all these years later these guys are talking about Vancouver. No city has passed more anti-foreign buyer, anti-speculation laws than them and the are still more or less in the same boat. Have any of these thousands of laws ever worked? Not really. So the problem is universal and not within local igloo council control.

    3. This song reminds me of finishing smoking a joint in the car before walking into High School.

      Good song, good memories.

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