We Effectively Capitalised Zero Interest Rates Into House Prices During The Boom
A weekend topic starting with KRDO in Colorado. “The Pikes Peak Regional Building Department is showing hope, with a 33% increase in building permits issued since the beginning of the year. However, supply and demand are just part of the complex housing issue. ‘Based on our social media pages and whatnot… nobody can afford the homes being built,’ Greg Dinaldo with the Pikes Peak Regional Building Department said.”
The Arizona Republic. “It’s nearly impossible these days to build a single-family home in metro Phoenix for under $400,000. And that’s a problem, considering that the average resident doesn’t make enough to afford a $400,000 home. If this is the new normal — and every homebuilder and housing affordability researcher I spoke with says it could be — that has major implications. As recently as 2020, two-thirds of metro Phoenix homes sold were considered affordable for the average resident (meaning, the mortgage was less than 30% of their income). Now, less than a third fit that definition, placing us among the least affordable major cities in the nation for housing.”
12 News in Arizona. “On a recent weekend, a Phoenix family of three stayed in Unit 203. They were visiting Flagstaff during a high-travel weekend and told 12News they paid $340 a night for the rental. The complex is called Venture at Route 66 and is owned by real estate development company Neighborhood Ventures. Flagstaff City Councilman Jim McCarthy said the short-term rental craze worsens the city’s affordable housing shortage because it reduces inventory. The city has no authority to limit the number of short-term rentals and has lobbied state legislators to give them more authority to regulate the industry. ‘About one in four residential properties are owned by people who don’t live here and that’s a problem,’ McCarthy said.”
The Los Angeles Times. “A stay in Brian Maggi’s house, per the Airbnb listing, is what coastal California dreams are made of. The little house in Dillon Beach, a remote town in western Marin County, is a second home for Maggi, a software designer who lives full time in Livermore, a hundred miles southeast. That’s a pretty common practice in Dillon Beach where, according to county estimates, a whopping 84% of the town’s 408 housing units are second homes and 31% are used as licensed short-term rentals. In nearby Bolinas, artist Marlie de Swart and husband Bruce Bowser welcomed the new rules, telling the Coastal Commission in a letter that their town ‘is being changed from a characteristic village to a vacation rental suburb.’ ‘We used to know this as very much a vibrant neighborhood,’ Bowser said. ‘A lot if it’s thinned out. A lot of people are older and have passed or moved on. We used to look out on this valley, and there were a lot of lights at night. Now, it’s mostly dark.'”
KSNV in Nevada. “Clark County continues to focus on short-term rental enforcement this year after writing nearly the same number of citations issued in all of 2023. ‘It’s very frustrating. I mean, the homeowners are outraged,’ said Jacqueline Flores, founder of the Greater Las Vegas Short-Term Rental Association. ‘These people that are still, you know, doing it, because they don’t have a choice, they still have to, they still have to keep the lights on, they still have to pay a mortgage.'”
The Denton Record Chronicle in Texas. “Though the stereotype is people looking to party and bring crime to neighborhoods, short-term rental landlords in Denton claim that the clients are actually respectable people. They also contribute to the local economy. While short-term rentals like those listed on Airbnb and Vrbo are popular, they aren’t welcomed in every city. It’s an all-too-familiar claim for the short-term rental landlords who attended Denton’s town hall meeting Thursday night. ‘When we think about it as a realtor in the community, if you own a property next to that and your situation changes and you immediately have to move or relocate, and you’re in a situation where you bought in the last two years, you don’t have the equity to be able to do a long-term rental,’ explained one real estate agent, who didn’t give her name to city staff.”
The News Press. “If you are selling a house in Florida and think you are going to get the asking price, you might want to think again. At least based on a recent study conducted by real estate experts at Agent Advice. They used Zillow house price data for each state to see the regions with the most properties sold undervalue. The data looked at the most recent 950 properties sold to find the states with the highest percentage of those sold below the listed price. The research found Florida was the state with the most properties sold undervalue at 69.4% of recent sales being bought below the listed price. Montana sold 68.1% of homes undervalue according to the most recent data.”
The Globe and Mail. “As governments at all levels grapple with the housing crisis in Canada evidence is building that new home buyers and builders won’t be bailing out the country with a pile of new supply. The slide in new home sales appears even steeper in the Greater Toronto Area. April figures from market researcher Urbanation Inc. showed just 1,461 condominium sales in the first quarter of 2024: ‘Sales were down 71 per cent when compared to the latest 10-year average for Q1 periods [4,978 sales], dropping 85 per cent from the Q1 high in 2022 [9,723 sales].'”
“An oft-mentioned factor in the Toronto-area market’s sales slowdown is perhaps the most obvious: price. Outside of Toronto, the per square foot price for new homes in the first quarter hit $1,161, while inside Toronto’s boundaries the prices fell four per cent to $1,522 per square foot. Ten years ago, the first quarter of 2014 saw new condos sell for an average of $549 per square foot. The question buyers have to ask is if the condos they are looking at now are 177 per cent better than they were a decade ago.”
Blog TO in Canada. “A Toronto apartment sold at a massive loss last month demonstrates just how much prices in the city’s real estate market tend to vary year-over-year. The two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment, located at 190 Borough Dr. in Scarborough, comes with over 1,000 square feet of living space, an open-concept modern kitchen with granite countertops, and stainless steel appliances. After roughly one week on the market in February 2022, the apartment sold for $868,000, at a time when the city’s real estate market saw an uptick in demand and skyrocketing prices thanks to cheaper borrowing rates. Just over two years later, the apartment was put back on the market for $684,900. Following two weeks on the market, the apartment eventually sold for $653,000 — representing a substantial loss of $215,000 in just two years.”
Bisnow London. “It almost seems that the modern real estate industry doesn’t know how to transact unless interest rates are falling or historically low. ‘Everybody’s waiting for [Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome] Powell to relent,’ Starwood Property Trust CEO Barry Sternlicht said earlier this month. Interest rates dropped steadily from the early 1980s on, MSCI’s Jim Costello said in a recent note. But from 2009, in the wake of the financial crisis and again after the pandemic, central bankers in the U.S. and UK began the process of cutting interest rates to essentially zero, as well as buying bonds through the process of quantitative easing. That flooded the financial system with more capital, giving banks and investors access to essentially free money.”
“For Sabina Reeves, CBRE Investment Management chief economist, real estate is experiencing a return to normalcy. Given the abnormality of the past few years, that means it will have to reinvent itself. ‘If you look at things in the long term, for decades, for centuries even, real estate has been a good investment,’ she said. ‘But then, every 10 or 15 years or so, it’s bad.'”
From Domain News. “Australia’s cascading housing affordability crises have all but killed belief in the Great Australian Dream, experts say, as the average house becomes further out of reach of the average earner. ‘We effectively capitalised zero interest rates into house prices during the boom over 2021,’ Jarden chief economist Carlos Cacho said. ‘Since then we know that borrowing power has gone back by roughly 30 per cent, a little bit more or less depending on the household. The person who could afford to buy when rates were zero can no longer afford to buy.'”
From News.com.au. “Simon Pressley, founder and managing director Propertyology, has weighed into the debate over the rapidly worsening housing crisis with a pointed rebuke to a common complaint, which he has dubbed bulls**t.’ ‘I get the s**ts every time there’s a story, once a year, ‘We’ve done the numbers and now it takes 10 years for someone to save for a deposit,’ Mr Pressley said. ‘A standard house in one of Australia’s 40 largest cities today costs circa $650,000. In 20 years’ time, that same standard house will have tripled in value to be worth $2 million.'”
“Stories of eye-watering sale prices for modest homes in once working-class capital city suburbs are now an almost daily occurrence. Last weekend, a 100-year-old four-bedroom bungalow in Glebe sold for $4.7 million, after a neighbour already living on the same street beat out four other bidders, Domain reported. The desirable inner-west suburb has a median household income of just over $91,000, according to 2021 Census data. In other words, it would take a median-income household in Glebe, saving 20 per cent per year, nearly 52 years to save up a 20 per cent deposit of $940,000.”
“Clearly, that is not what’s happening — mortgages of that size are vanishingly rare. Wealthy, cashed-up buyers are driving the market in these suburbs. ‘Salaries can no longer pay for houses in Sydney,’ Freelancer chief executive Matt Barrie wrote on X. ‘Average house price rapidly going to $5 million. $4.7 million for a 100-year-old bungalow in … Glebe. Blind Freddie can see the writing on the wall. Not a serious country.'”
South China Morning Post. “Scott Xiong of Wuhan, the capital city of China’s central Hubei province, is racked with disappointment after a potential buyer pulled the plug on a deal to buy his home last week. Now the 30-year-old PhD student is considering cutting another 50,000 yuan (US$6,900) from his asking price, which is already close to his original floor price. Meanwhile, 840km away in Shanghai, Li Huiting is feeling buyer’s remorse after she bought a second-hand home with her husband in the city’s Pudong New Area in April. Prices then had already dropped by around 1 million yuan compared with a year earlier, but now the 26-year-old teacher thinks ‘prices might go lower if I waited for a while.'”
“Both stories suggest that a stimulus plan unveiled a week ago – including more than US$41 billion for local governments to buy unsold homes – may not be sufficient to refloat China’s massive property market, which ran aground more than three years ago. Certainly little has changed for potential buyers, who at this point have been conditioned to expect falling prices and to eye developers’ promises about delivery dates with a jaundiced eye.”
“‘This is a buyer-led market, where I must offer more benefits to lure buyers,’ Xiong lamented. In fact, he worries that the new policies reinforce the idea that the market is in a downturn, leading buyers to delay their decisions in case prices plummet further or even more supportive measures rain down. Simply on a practical basis, some unfinished projects will need a lot of attention, according to Liu Huanhuan, a general manager with Huapai Auction in Shanghai, which specialises in distressed assets. One 17-storey residential building she knows of in eastern Jiangsu province, for example, now sits in the middle of a pond that formed as water collected on the deserted construction site. ‘It will be a long process to revitalise such distressed properties,’ she said.”
“Prices of existing homes in March were down 23.9 per cent from a high in July 2021, according to data compiled by the Beike Research Institute based on a sample of 50 large cities. ‘The myth that home prices will only rise has been broken over the past three years,’ said said Zhu Ning, a professor of finance at the Shanghai Advanced Institute of Finance at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, who as early as 2016 called the property market a ‘bubble.’ ‘Unless there is speculative demand driven by strong expectations that prices will rise, buyers, except those buying for their own use, will not buy at this level of prices, which are still high if compared with their income. It will be a long time before we see home prices rise to levels as high as in 2017 and 2018, unless there is dramatic inflation or quantitative easing.'”
“Linda Chen, a former teacher, now marketer, sold her 753 sq ft home in the eastern metropolis of Hangzhou at a discount of about 300,000 yuan in December, moving into a rented unit of similar size with her husband. For years she had paid about 9,000 yuan a month for her mortgage, and was still paying 7,000 despite several rounds of mortgage rate cuts by the authorities last year. ‘The house had become a huge burden for us, and we knew we must sell no matter what the price was,’ Chen said.”
“‘Personal experience has a great impact on one’s risk appetite and investment decisions,’ Zhu said, adding that the past few years have taught young Chinese two lessons. First, young couples saw the risks of home delivery as they got nothing even after emptying ‘six wallets’ – their own plus those of their parents. Second, they learned that even those lucky enough to get their homes could find themselves out of work and unable to afford loans. ‘They once regretted not buying a home earlier when they saw their friends earning [from appreciation],’ he said. ‘But now they are like, ‘Thank God I didn’t buy.'”
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‘When we think about it as a realtor in the community, if you own a property next to that and your situation changes and you immediately have to move or relocate, and you’re in a situation where you bought in the last two years, you don’t have the equity to be able to do a long-term rental’
Oh dear…
You will own nothing.
“the most properties sold undervalue”
WTF is this realtor babble I’m reading? Same thing with “below market” what you sell for is the market.
Obvious to anyone with an IQ over 80, but those are not the people interested in buying a shack right now.
and this guy ( bozo) wants to be pres or vice?
In San Jose, a grant from the state took months to arrive; the project will only be completed next summer. And in Los Angeles, there is no approved site yet.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2024/05/24/report-none-of-gavin-newsoms-1200-tiny-homes-has-opened-a-year-later/
On one hand he is youngish, good looking and articulate. On the other hand his track record is an unmitigated disaster.
so, you’re saying he’s a shoo-in
‘Based on our social media pages and whatnot… nobody can afford the homes being built,’ Greg Dinaldo with the Pikes Peak Regional Building Department said.”
Another critical milestone has been reached. The builder boyz never seem to learn, but as has been said here before, they build because that’s all they know what to do, even when there is no demand.
Having seen the quality of new construction in Denver the past several years, I would rather build my own house.
Alleged “electricians” who only do resi and install romex for a living don’t have any sense of craftsmanship.
It’s nearly impossible these days to build a single-family home in metro Phoenix for under $400,000.
That’s because the land is way overpriced and the subs charge like they were doctors and lawyers. That will soon change.
I still remember from the great recession, business was so slow that the subs fired all their illegals and did the work themselves, assuming they found any work.
Australia’s cascading housing affordability crises have all but killed belief in the Great Australian Dream, experts say, as the average house becomes further out of reach of the average earner.
A sparsely populated country with over 15,000 miles of coastline and land as far as the eye can see, yet through some mystery housing is utterly unaffordable.
thank you
and they have had multiple housing bubbles thru their history (going back to the 1800’s). How is this possible?
Debt.
Mr Pressley said. ‘A standard house in one of Australia’s 40 largest cities today costs circa $650,000. In 20 years’ time, that same standard house will have tripled in value to be worth $2 million.’”
I just love these predictions: prices absolutely no one can afford. And we aren’t talking about prime real estate in Sydney or Melbourne, but in Oz’s equivalent of flyover.
Assuming 7% annualized growth over 20 years checks out! Property grows like an index fund or something.
New York Post — 100 years ago, the US took a break from immigration — and America thrived (5/24/2024):
“One hundred years ago this Sunday, the Ellis Island wave of immigration was brought to an end.
And all Americans are better for it.
For decades we’ve been taught to be ashamed of the period of immigration restriction the law inaugurated.
Only by taking an extended breather was America able to successfully assimilate the 25 million-plus newcomers who’d arrived after 1880.
The pause in immigration led to a half-century-long decline in the foreign-born share of the population, from a level that fluctuated between 13% and 15% of the nation’s inhabitants during the Great Wave, to a low of less than 5% in 1970.
Immigrant communities were thus not continually refreshed with newcomers; that, combined with vigorous and self-confident Americanization efforts in schools and elsewhere, forged the strong common national identity that helped America prevail over Nazism and Communism.”
https://nypost.com/2024/05/24/opinion/100-years-ago-the-us-halted-immigration-and-america-thrived/
“Americanization” there’s a word you’ll never hear from the globalist replacers.
patrick boyle, new video today
Was Endless Shrimp to Blame for Red Lobster’s Bankruptcy?The decision to make the $20-dollar endless shrimp deal a permanent menu item is said to have led to an $11 million dollar loss.
The bankruptcy declaration says that “the Debtors are currently investigating the circumstances around these decisions.” 19 min
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEDFNcsC0JI
Too many mediocre chain restaurants, not enough people with money to burn.
580 locations. 36,000 employees. We are to believe $11M in shrimp sent them to bankruptcy? What about the $1B in debt?
– Housing is no longer affordable for the what’s left of the middle class. No one comes right out and says this. Government responses to the GFC and the pandemic did this; protecting the wealthy, while the middle class got the bill. Prove me wrong.
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A weekend topic starting with KRDO in Colorado. “According to the Common Sense Institute, there is a pretty stark disconnect between household mortgage capacity rates and the value of available single-family homes in Colorado Springs. That means many of the homes here are more expensive than people can afford.”
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The Arizona Republic. “It’s nearly impossible these days to build a single-family home in metro Phoenix for under $400,000.”
“And that’s a problem, considering that the average resident doesn’t make enough to afford a $400,000 home.”
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– One time useful, but now bygone era housing metrics, or ‘rules of thumb’, pre-financialization, pre-Fed strip mining of the middle class:
– median house price = 3x median annual gross income
– median house price mo. payment = equivalent mo. rent
– 20% down payment
– 25-30% of income to house payment
– homeowners insurance + property taxes weren’t at “rape and pillage.” levels.
– Buy vs. Rent calculation. Everyone should “run the numbers” before buying. Right now, for “buy” (PITI only), it’s at least 50% more expensive to buy vs. rent in most U.S. MSAs. Buying doesn’t “pencil out” from this simple financial calculation. There are many online calculators for this if “math is hard” for you.
– Housing bubbles are devastating to everyone, except the Fed and the other members of the 1%, as per the plan. Everyone loves the free money on the way up, but not the pain on the way down as assets reprice to reality. Think hangover. During the created crisis, the wealthy hoover up more of your wealth, while you get the debt. Seems fair to me.
– Is America becoming Bedford Falls or Pottersville? I think it’s pretty clear at this point.
– U.S. housing currently priced at <3% pandemic mortgage interest rates. The Fed did this to "save us". But, rates are now 7%. Just like for a car, house buyers buy the payment. It's what they can afford. Right now housing is unaffordable. There's a 40-50% gap in price that's being ignored for the moment. Whistling past the graveyard, or ignoring the elephant / gorilla in the room.
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https://nypost.com/2022/05/26/team-biden-might-be-purposefully-crushing-the-middle-class/
Opinion
Why Team Biden might be purposefully grinding down the middle class
By Glenn H. Reynolds
May 26, 2022 4:50pm
Updated
“Vladimir Lenin supposedly once said, “The way to crush the bourgeoisie [middle class] is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.””
“There’s some doubt as to whether this line is genuine; regardless, it seems like a pretty good description of what the Biden administration is doing to America’s middle class.”
“Inflation is running rampant. The Producer Price Index, the most useful measure of general inflation, is up a whopping 16.3% from April 2021, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics.”
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https://economicprism.com/your-government-hates-you/
Your Government Hates You
Posted on December 23, 2022 by MN Gordon
“The federal government, after decades of mass money printing, now has rampant consumer price inflation to contend with. For this reason, the Treasury can no longer count on the Fed to create credit out of thin air to buy Treasury notes. To do so would be counter productive to the Fed’s inflation containment program.”
“Now, for the first time since quantitative easing was hatched in late 2008, if Washington wants to borrow money to finance its ridiculous spending programs it will have to do so with loans from honest Treasury investors. Some may find today’s yields worthy. Others may not.”
“Adding to the army of dependents reliant on government for their daily bread is beyond foolish. People who receive ongoing handouts slip into apathy. They become unwilling and unable to provide for themselves. They become dependents for life. And what happens when the guaranteed income can no longer be guaranteed?”
“Without question, these guaranteed income programs are epic disasters in the making.”
“The fact of the matter is that if you work hard, pay your own way, believe in free speech and traditional values, and fear God, your government – the dirty cadre of elites and insiders – hates you. There’s no other way to explain it.”
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“The most perfect political community is one in which the middle class is in control, and outnumbers both of the other classes.” – Aristotle
“We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.” – Louis D. Brandeis
“The government you elect is the government you deserve.” – Thomas Jefferson
– Venezuelans actually voted for Socialism. How’s that workin’ out for ya? Argentina at least has a chance with Javier Milei. We have Brandon (Obama 3.0), the Manchurian candidate. May God help us!
For this reason, the Treasury can no longer count on the Fed to create credit out of thin air to buy Treasury notes. To do so would be counter productive to the Fed’s inflation containment program
The Fed will have to make a choice: fund the deficits and bury America with inflation, or fight inflation.
“…or fight inflation…” and CR8R risk asset prices, including stocks, housing and crypto.
I can understand why speculators keep piling into risk assets, despite increasingly overvalued prices. The inflationary path is a reasonable bet, given the precedent of the 1970s.
+1 great post.
“There’s a 40-50% gap in price that’s being ignored for the moment. Whistling past the graveyard, or ignoring the elephant / gorilla in the room.”
I guess you aren’t among the rate dater cargo cult faithful, who believe <3% mortgage rates will resume any day now, courtesy of the Fed?
https://www.britannica.com/topic/cargo-cult
Ali Bradley
@AliBradleyTV
#BREAKING DHS sources confirm the illegal immigrant who reportedly assaulted a Border Patrol agent last week in the Quemado area is wanted for murder in Mexico.
32 y/o Makcario Reyes has a lengthy history in the U.S. as well—He was encountered more than a handful of times and was subsequently removed in 2023.
Sources confirm he is still in the hospital and remains in CBP custody pending criminal charges.
The agent-involved shooting happened in the Del Rio Sector where the chief is reporting that over the last 90 days, 10 agents have been assaulted by combative subjects.
The agent sustained a fractured rib. Reyes was shot in the leg/femoral artery— Sources say the agent used a tourniquet on scene and likely saved Reyes’ life before he was airlifted for treatment.
The FBI is currently investigating.
https://x.com/AliBradleyTV/status/1794064945849528599
British MP Says We Are Already At War With Russia
May 24, 2024
1:00
https://youtu.be/4TTWWCQmNmY?si=wlpqbVCU1NwG-eCY
Exposing The CIA’s Secret Effort To Seize Control Of Social Media
FRIDAY, MAY 24, 2024 – 12:00 PM
While the CIA is strictly prohibited from spying on or running clandestine operations against American citizens on US soil, a bombshell new “Twitter Files” report reveals that a member of the Board of Trustees of InQtel – the CIA’s mission-driving venture capital firm, along with “former” intelligence community (IC) and CIA analysts, were involved in a massive effort in 2021-2022 to take over Twitter’s content management system, as Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi and Alex Gutentag report over at Shellenberger’s Public (subscribers can check out the extensive 6,800 word report here).
According to “thousands of pages of Twitter Files and documents,” these efforts were part of a broader strategy to manage how information is disseminated and consumed on social media under the guise of combating ‘misinformation’ and foreign propaganda efforts – as this complex of government-linked individuals and organizations has gone to great lengths to suggest that narrative control is a national security issue.
According to the report, the effort also involved;
a long-time IC contractor and senior Department of Defense R&D official who spent years developing technologies to detect whistleblowers (“insider threats”) like Edward Snowden and Wikileaks’ leakers;
the proposed head of the DHS’ aborted Disinformation Governance Board, Nina Jankowicz, who aided US military and NATO “hybrid war” operations in Europe;
Jim Baker, who, as FBI General Counsel, helped start the Russiagate hoax, and, as Twitter’s Deputy General Counsel, urged Twitter executives to censor The New York Post story about Hunter Biden.
Furthermore, companies like PayPal, Amazon Web Services, and GoDaddy were mentioned as part of a concerted effort to de-platform and financially de-incentivize individuals and organizations deemed threats by the IC. This approach represents a significant escalation in the use of corporate cooperation to achieve what might essentially be considered censorship under the guise of national security.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/twitter-files-cia-exposing-secret-effort-us-intelligence-seize-control-social-media
Image file for Jeff — 1-1/4 Inch Thick Plaster Edition:
https://ibb.co/hXQwy7H
Including this one not full yet, that will be 126 cubic yards off rolloff capacity pulled out of here.
Almost down to the foundation, then I either rent a generator and jack hammer, or hand somebody a Very Large Check.
Been there done that. A bunch.
Bust ass job, keep a mask on, they did an exploratory on my lungs about 9 years ago, I think a few months after we met for lunch at the Ring that day. Anyway, my lungs gave out and after they went in and looked the doctor told me my lungs were coated in white stuff and he wanted to know why, I told him I’d been a drywall guy since 1983 and he asked, didn’t you wear a mask? i just laughed. Well between the router dust, all the demo of drywall and plaster, scraping popcorn ceilings with asbestos in it and sanding to go along with Marlboros hanging out of my mouth while I was doing, it I wore the lining in my lungs out.Been a struggle breathing ever since.
Anyway, that’s a hell of a job you’re doing all by yourself, but take it from me and keep a mask on, they can’t stop Covid spit but they can stop plaster dust.
+1
Mask for the demo, not for the Covids. I am pleased to say that I am done with shoveling soot on this project.
Travis Kelce has given me a great idea for a couple on new products that are in need today in the United States…
Product #1
Having trouble standing up to the Woke crowd?
Try “Spine in a Bottle”
Yes Spine in a Bottle, just 2 pills a day for 2 weeks and you will be able to stand up straight, look that Real Journalist in the eye and say…No, I don’t think biological men should compete in women’s sports. Yes, I think the open Border policy is being executed for Democrats to have a super majority by allowing them to vote. Yes, I think that No Cash Bail and Soros sponsored DAs are destroying our cities.
That’s right, just 2 weeks of Spine in a Bottle and you also can speak like a person who was raised in this country and learned about the U.S. Constitution while you were in school.
Product #2
“Grow a Pair”
Girlfriend brow beating you into attending the LBGTQ parade? Are you afraid to say only women can have babies? Don’t have the guts to say people should go to jail for stealing less than $1000?
Pick up a bottle of Grow a Pair!
Just 2 tablespoons of Grow a Pair daily and you’ll be at the Gun Range while the Little Woman is at the LGBTQ parade with her highschool friend who never got married. You’ll be able to laugh out loud when Joe Biden can’t find his way off stage no matter how many liberals are in the room. Stand up like a man and say… God damn right the 2020 election was stolen.
All this and more can be you with only 3 easy payments of $29.99 for 3 12 oz, bottles of “Grow a Pair”
Travis Kelce ‘Can’t Agree With Majority’ of Harrison Butker’s Sexist Grad Speech
“I don’t think that I should judge him by his views, especially his religious views, of how to go about life,” the tight end says of Kansas City Chiefs teammate
BY KORY GROW
MAY 24, 2024
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/travis-kelce-harrison-butker-graduation-speech-1235027307/
“God damn right the 2020 election was stolen.”
Amen!
Is Modular Construction Destined for Bankruptcy?
Belinda Carr
1 day ago
Homes made in factories were supposed to save us from the housing crisis. Modular builders made lofty promises to build homes quickly, sustainably and efficiently while being budget-friendly. However, we have seen numerous prefab, offsite and modular builders file for bankruptcy recently like Katerra, Veev and Modulous.
Chapters
0:00 Introduction
0:55 Katerra
2:06 Other failed businesses
4:36 Inexperience
5:49 Decentralization
6:17 Long-term investment
6:55 Restrictive codes
7:26 Uniqueness
8:16 Sponsor
9:15 BotBuilt
10:13 Conclusion
———————
There are numerous reasons that contributed to their demise, but I’ve narrowed them down to five.
#1 inexperience: The sector is a harsh environment for innovation. Outsiders from the tech field who are unaware of the complexities of construction come in with ambitious plans to disrupt it but little of the expertise necessary to fill a niche in the market. This inexperience and arrogance lays the foundation for a company’s demise.
#2 decentralization: Construction is highly fragmented with numerous stakeholders involved in every project. This can make it difficult to implement new technologies that meet the needs of every company, supplier and type of construction.
#3 long-term investment: Many of the failed modular companies we reviewed raised money by using pre-order numbers and hypothetical projects that could be built 5 to 7 years down the line. They used that money to invest heavily in automation and robotics. Now, in reality, real estate developers are not obligated to fulfill those orders.
#4 restrictive codes: Government regulations, zoning laws and building codes often stand in the way of more factory-made homes. Construction companies operate on razor thin profit margins, especially when you account for the cost of expensive automation lines in a factory.
#5 uniqueness: A successful modular construction project is one that balances a logical, repetitive kit of parts with beauty and uniqueness both on exterior and interior.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXOtvYQmMds
11:16.
Saw an ad on Indeed recently for electricians to work on modulars. They’re paying 1st/2nd year apprentice wages for that.
Is there a licensed journeyman supervising them? Is there a licensed master to pull permits?
Build new expensive luxuriee offices then lay off staff,
The budget reductions come as the station has completed a major $140 million expansion, which included a $94 million renovation of its headquarters in San Francisco and a $45 million investment in its programming and services.
It’s the second round of layoffs within four years. The public media nonprofit laid off 20 employees in 2020 amid a decline in corporate sponsorship.
https://www.kqed.org/news/11987509/kqed-cuts-34-positions-amid-budget-shortfall
Do you worry the Everything Bubble will pop and your risk assets will CR8R as a result?
Yahoo
Benzinga
Is $203 Trillion In Derivatives Held By Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan And Other Top Banks Causing an ‘Everything Bubble?’
Caleb Naysmith
Tue, Jan 30, 2024
4 min read
The scale of derivatives held by major banks like JPMorgan Chase & Co., Citibank and Goldman Sachs, amounting to $203 trillion, has raised concerns about the potential risks these positions might pose to the global economy. The third-quarter Quarterly Report on Bank Trading and Derivatives Activities, published by the Office of the Comptroller of Currency, provides a comprehensive dive into this issue.
This figure surpasses the world’s gross domestic product (GDP) by roughly double, highlighting the enormity of the market.
JPMorgan Chase, in particular, is noted for its substantial exposure to derivatives risk, topping the list with roughly $58 trillion in derivatives. The mounting scale of derivatives owned by banks raises several questions and concerns among regulators and investors.
The 15-digit number has recently drawn speculation among retail investors on social media platforms like Reddit and TikTok. But as recently as March 9, 2023, Congress held a hearing on managing volatility in global commodity derivatives markets.
A derivative is a contract that derives its value from the performance of an underlying entity. This underlying entity can be an asset, index or interest rate. Derivatives can be used to offset risks in the future or used as leverage to increase gains or losses.
But it’s unlikely the banks are the ones holding these derivatives. Rather, many of the top banks act as market makers for entities buying and selling derivatives.
…
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/203-trillion-derivatives-held-goldman-230016059.html
“The mounting scale of derivatives owned by banks raises several questions and concerns among regulators and investors.”
My question: Are these derivatives HODLers too-big-to-fail?
“$203 Trillion In Derivatives”
When, not if, this collapses, there WILL be bailouts. There can’t not be bailouts. Every PIG will be made whole.
If it results in 100+ million Americans being forced into poverty or even famine, there WILL be bailouts.
Would be nice to see some of the energy of the campus protests directed toward the Federal Reserve, which is the greatest crime syndicate to ever exist.
They are the enablers of, the supporters of, the “lender of last resort” to the Parasite Class.
Kill all the bankers. All of them. Nuke Wall Street, and the Hamptons for good measure.
If we have to burn this country to the ground to get back on a gold and silver sound money standard, so be it. Nobody weeps at the funerals of the money changers, the coin clippers, the practitioners of usury. America, and all of humanity, will be better off once these VERMIN are exterminated ☠️
America, and all of humanity, will be better off
Stay out of debt and these bankers have no income. I’ve been doing my part.
“I’ve been doing my part.”
Ditto!
The Fed Warns About The Everything Bubble
May 24, 2024 4:45 AM ETS&P 500 Index
Summary
– The Fed warns that “valuations across a range of markets appeared high relative to risk-adjusted cash flows”.
– This is essentially a warning about the “everything bubble”.
– Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell Holds Press Conference On Interest Rates
Damir Tokic
Commodity Trading Adviser (CTA), member of National Futures Association. Managing the Macrotheme TTF Trading Program, currently in a launch stage. Professor of Finance, research on Global-macro issues. Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Corporate Accounting and Finance.
…
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4695443-fed-warns-about-everything-bubble
The Fed has come a long way since Alan “No bubble here” Greenspan’s term as chair ended circa 2006.
Finance and economics | Buttonwood
Can anything pop the everything bubble?
Risky assets are proving extraordinarily resilient to threats
A strong balloon shown as tougher than attacking sharp objects
Satoshi Kambayashi
Jul 4th 2023
For a certain type of investor, last year came as a relief. True, the losses were grim. But at least markets were starting to make sense. Over the previous decade, central banks had pumped out floods of new money to buy bonds. Interest rates were kept unnaturally low, or even negative. The result was an “everything bubble”, a speculative mania in which valuations surged everywhere from stocks to housing to baffling crypto assets. It was never going to end well, and in 2022 it didn’t: inflation killed off cheap money; the everything bubble popped; asset prices plunged. Some were even approaching rationality. A return to reassuringly dull investing—based on fundamentals, not hype—beckoned.
If this sounds familiar, and you were one of these relieved investors, you may have found yourself wrong-footed by developments over the past few months. It is not just stockmarkets, though both in America and globally they have risen to within striking distance of all-time highs. It is that risky assets across the board have proved astonishingly resilient to seemingly disastrous news. An index of American high-yield (or “junk”) bonds compiled by Bank of America suffered a peak-to-trough loss of 15% in 2022. It has since recovered half that loss. So has a similar index for junk bonds in Europe. The housing slump already shows signs of petering out, even though global prices have fallen by just 3% from their peak, or 8-10% adjusting for inflation, after a boom in which they rose at their fastest rate ever.
…
https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2023/07/04/can-anything-pop-the-everything-bubble
Mark Hulbert
‘The best single measure’ of stock-market valuations is high and bearish
Published: April 22, 2024 at 7:46 a.m. ET
By Mark Hulbert
What does the Buffett Indicator tell us? Getty Images
The Buffett Indicator—the ratio of the stock market’s total value to GDP, which Warren Buffett said is “probably the best single measure of where valuations stand at any given moment”—is now higher and more bearish than it was at the January 2022 market top.
In fact, as you can see from the accompanying chart, it’s even far higher than it was at the top of the Internet bubble in early 2000.
I nevertheless think it would be a bad idea to bet that the stock market will fall over the next year.
Contradictory as these two observations might seem, however, they are consistent with each other. Like almost all other valuation indicators with good long-term records, the Buffett Indicator tells you next to nothing about the stock market’s near-term direction. Its greatest explanatory power exists over a many-year horizon. This means that, from the point of view of the Buffett Indicator, the market’s direction over the next year is a coin flip—but over the next decade it’s most likely to be well below average.
This crucial role played by investment horizon is illustrated in the accompanying chart, which reports the Buffett Indicator’s predictive power for horizons from as short as one year to as long as a decade. The chart plots a statistic known as the r-squared, which would be 0% if the Buffett Indicator had no explanatory power; notice that it is very close to zero at the one-year horizon.
The Buffett Indicator is not unique in this regard. The same is true for each of the valuation indicators at the end of this column.
The r-squared grows steadily as investment horizon expands, however. Given the Buffett Indicator’s bearish posture currently, this means that while we don’t know the direction the stock market may take over the next decade, it’s likely to have produced a below-average return between now and 2034. My favorite analogy for this comes from Ben Inker, head of asset allocation at Boston-based GMO. Likening the market to a leaf in a hurricane, he says, “You have no idea where the leaf will be a minute or an hour from now. But eventually gravity will win out, and it will land on the ground.”
How valuation models stack up currently
Reinforcing this bearish conclusion is the status of the other valuation indicators listed in the table below. They are uniformly bearish for the stock market’s prospects over the next decade.
…
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-best-single-measure-of-stock-market-valuations-is-high-and-bearish-645be9be
Much like the tale of the hunter and the bear, the bag holders fall in love with Wall street despite the rough shagging.
Fox Business
Housing
Published May 20, 2024 11:15am EDT
Homes are overvalued in most of the US – and the problem is worse in these 5 states
Home prices are most overvalued in these 5 states
By Megan Henney FOXBusiness
ResiClub co-founder and editor-in-chief Lance Lambert discusses the U.S. housing affordability crisis on ‘Making Money.’ video
Housing affordability is at worst level in four decades: Lance Lambert
An overwhelming majority of homes in the U.S. are overvalued as steep mortgage rates and an ongoing housing shortage push the price of real estate even higher.
A new report published by Fitch Ratings found that homes were overvalued by 11.1% at the end of 2023, a trend occurring in about 90% of U.S. metro areas.
But the increase in homes being sold at prices over the long-term average was noticeably higher in a handful of Southern states.
Tennessee, Arkansas and South Carolina saw the sharpest rise in overvalued homes, followed by Montana and Alabama.
…
https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/homes-are-overvalued-most-us-problem-is-worse-these-5-states
“An overwhelming majority of homes in the U.S. are overvalued as steep mortgage rates and an ongoing housing shortage push the price of real estate even higher.”
How is it that high interest rates, which kill end user demand, push prices higher? Is it something like how the pandemic made US housing prices increase?
“Tennessee, Arkansas and South Carolina saw the sharpest rise in overvalued homes, followed by Montana and Alabama.”
These don’t seem like places where everyone wants to live. This time is different: The Everything Bubble is also the Everywhere Bubble.
To the moon! Suddenly the crypto market is back to its bubble-era peak.
What’s different this time in the cryptocurrency market? Good question.
Peter Kafka, Chief Correspondent covering media and technology
Apr 5, 2024, 2:17 AM PDT
a visual representation of the digital Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin
Chesnot/Getty
It’s April 2024. Sam Bankman-Fried is going to jail for decades. No one wants to hear about your Web3 startup or your NFT collection. Miami is over it.
And crypto is as hot as ever.
How’s that?
Let me be more specific: There’s not a ton of visible interest in people pitching cryptocurrency as the building block for technologies that will reorder the world. But there’s a ton of visible interest in buying cryptocurrencies.
…
https://www.businessinsider.com/crypto-market-cap-bubble-peak-bitcoin-ethereum-solana-2024-4
“There’s not a ton of visible interest in people pitching cryptocurrency as the building block for technologies that will reorder the world. But there’s a ton of visible interest in buying cryptocurrencies.”
It’s great that the investing world has moved past all the hogwash about the mysteries of the block chain and recognizes crypto for what it really is: A pure speculative gamble that the Fed will not succeed in its mission to bring inflation under control.
Does it seem like we are reliving the South Sea Bubble episode, but on a more protracted timescale with global geographic reach?
It’s a Bubbledemic!
Physics Today
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Volume 73, Issue 7
July 2020
Isaac Newton and the perils of the financial South Sea
Despite Newton’s general brilliance and his expertise in finance, groupthink led him to plunge into the South Sea Bubble and lose much of his fortune.
Andrew Odlyzko
Crossmark: Check for Updates
Physics Today 73 (7), 30–36 (2020);
https://doi.org/10.1063/PT.3.4521
Brilliant scientists have been known to do foolish things, but Isaac Newton’s financially disastrous moves during the South Sea Bubble of 1720 are a particularly remarkable blunder. When it was founded in 1711, the South Sea Company was primarily a scheme for managing British government debt. Newton was an early investor and profited nicely as the price of South Sea stock rose over the course of the 1710s. However, in 1720 the company’s stock experienced one of the most legendary rises and falls in financial history. Newton decided in the early stages of that mania that it was going to end badly and liquidated his stake at a large profit. But the bubble kept inflating, and Newton jumped back in almost at the peak. His experience provides an instructive example of how even brilliant thinkers can go astray in an environment that lends itself to collective delusions as a result of the proliferation of misinformation and disinformation (see figure 1).
Figure 1. A satirical 1720 print about the chaos of financial bubbles, including the South Sea Bubble. (Image from the Wellcome Collection, CC BY 4.0.)
A satirical 1720 print about the chaos of financial bubbles, including the South Sea Bubble. (Image from the Wellcome Collection, CC BY 4.0.)
The story of Newton’s losses in the South Sea Bubble has become one of the most famous in popular finance literature; surveying his losses, Newton allegedly said that he could “calculate the motions of the heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people.” But for a long time, only a few pieces of reliable information were available about Newton’s investments. The recent discovery of extensive additional documents, many of them in the archives of the Bank of England, provides considerably more detail about Newton’s financial travails. Unlike many other anecdotes about famous figures, the colorful story of Newton and the South Sea Bubble was largely correct. In some ways it even understated the extent of his mistakes.
South Sea Bubble basics
The literature on the South Sea Bubble is voluminous, but many of the existing accounts are faulty. For example, some inaccurately claim that the South Sea Company was a fraudulent enterprise from the start, or that it collapsed after the crash of the bubble in the fall of 1720. The truth, as usual, is far more complicated.
The South Sea Company was established in 1711 to deal with a pressing financial problem. The British government had a large backlog of unpaid bills, largely from contractors supplying the British military during the War of the Spanish Succession. The government offered its creditors South Sea stock, a product similar to shares in a modern corporation. The stock did not promise full repayment of the money creditors were owed, but it did promise them regular payment of interest.
The South Sea Company received the funds from the government to pay that interest to the creditors. The company also held a monopoly on British trade with the west coast of the Americas and part of the east coast of South America—hence the name “South Sea Company.” The company profited from the sale of some British goods and, more significantly and more grimly, enslaved Africans. The enterprise enticed investors with the promise that profits from trade in the South Seas would add generously to their interest payments.
During the late 1710s, the South Sea Company was a rather dull operation that simply passed the government’s payments to its investors. Scholars don’t have solid information about the profitability of its trading activities during that period; the evidence strongly suggests the company’s commercial operations lost money in those early years. However, the trade monopoly helped inspire dreams of future riches among the public. Newton, who also owned government bonds and some investments in the Bank of England, was an early investor and added to his stake as time went on. His South Sea investment was initially quite profitable; the prices of financial securities increased as the long period of draining wars ended and peacetime economic activities began to grow.
The economic recovery of the late 1710s inspired a new vision for the South Sea Company. The British government announced that the company would take over most of the British national debt in 1720. The result was the South Sea Bubble. The price of South Sea stock soared through the summer of 1720, and then it underwent a precipitous collapse in September, most likely because investors began to realize their profit expectations were unrealistic. By October, the stock was worth less than a quarter of its peak price (see the box on page 33).
…
https://pubs.aip.org/physicstoday/article/73/7/30/800801/Isaac-Newton-and-the-perils-of-the-financial-South
A hedge fund manager beating the S&P 500 through April warns stocks could ‘easily’ drop 20-30% as inflation and interest rates stay elevated — and shares 5 economically resilient picks he’s betting on
William Edwards May 25, 2024, 2:07 AM PDT
Stock trades 1987 Black Monday
AP/Peter Morgan
Hedge-fund manager Lukasz Tomicki warns inflation risks are not being taken seriously enough.
Despite high inflation and interest rates, stocks have rallied significantly this year.
…
https://www.businessinsider.com/stock-market-crash-sp500-downside-recession-hedge-fund-stock-picks-2024-5
A reader sent these in:
Phoenix active listings on track to surpass 2017 levels in the coming weeks
https://x.com/DonMiami3/status/1794071384513020006
CRE office construction starts dropped to an all-time low in the first quarter, per ResiClub Analytics / JLL
https://x.com/MacroEdgeRes/status/1794059451248353591
New single family homes for sale hit highest levels since 2008 and continue to skyrocket
https://x.com/GRomePow/status/1794086814569099627
Elron fluffer realizes his “cybertruck” can’t do any truck things.
This WankTank meme thing is not a truck! Painful to watch. 😬
https://x.com/StrictlyChristo/status/1793748552906416175
Since buying, 44% of new homeowners have taken on extra debt to maintain their lifestyle, and 43% have struggled to make mortgage payments on time, according to a new survey from Clever Real Estate.
https://x.com/unusual_whales/status/1793983284419985453
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes
https://x.com/DarwinAwards_/status/1789053645507752340
Like clockwork, overleveraged windbag Barry Sternlicht is whining for a bailout.
Who could have predicted this?😂
https://x.com/dfwaaronlayman/status/1793956432078868554
‘As recently as 2020, two-thirds of metro Phoenix homes sold were considered affordable for the average resident (meaning, the mortgage was less than 30% of their income). Now, less than a third fit that definition’
That’s some sound lending right there.
‘ ‘We used to know this as very much a vibrant neighborhood,’ Bowser said. ‘A lot if it’s thinned out. A lot of people are older and have passed or moved on. We used to look out on this valley, and there were a lot of lights at night. Now, it’s mostly dark’
From the article:
‘The elementary school in Stinson Beach, he noted, is “having a hard time keeping its doors open” because so few children now live there. The town’s population, according to census data, plunged 38% from 2016 to 2022, to 371. In 2022, there were no children younger than 15’
‘Clark County continues to focus on short-term rental enforcement this year after writing nearly the same number of citations issued in all of 2023. ‘It’s very frustrating. I mean, the homeowners are outraged,’ said Jacqueline Flores, founder of the Greater Las Vegas Short-Term Rental Association. ‘These people that are still, you know, doing it, because they don’t have a choice, they still have to, they still have to keep the lights on, they still have to pay a mortgage’
The guberment has been backing loans so people could buy multiple shacks that don’t cash flow enough to pay it back unless it’s an illegal use.
‘The research found Florida was the state with the most properties sold undervalue at 69.4% of recent sales being bought below the listed price. Montana sold 68.1% of homes undervalue according to the most recent data’
From the article:
Ranking the rest of the U.S. for homes sold undervalue
3- Wyoming (64.7%)
4-Kentucky (63.4%)
5-Wisconsin (62.3%)
5-Missouri (62.3%)
6-Arizona (62.1%)
7-Texas (61.3%)
8-Louiiana (61.2%)
9-South Carolina (60.4%)
10-Tennessee (60.0%)
Apparently, “value” is imaginary.
‘The question buyers have to ask is if the condos they are looking at now are 177 per cent better than they were a decade ago’
They are 10 years older.
‘from 2009, in the wake of the financial crisis and again after the pandemic, central bankers in the U.S. and UK began the process of cutting interest rates to essentially zero, as well as buying bonds through the process of quantitative easing. That flooded the financial system with more capital, giving banks and investors access to essentially free money’
Hurray!
‘If you look at things in the long term, for decades, for centuries even, real estate has been a good investment,’ she said. ‘But then, every 10 or 15 years or so, it’s bad’
Actually Sabina, the saying is we got 10 year cycles and people have 8 year memories.
‘We effectively capitalised zero interest rates into house prices during the boom over 2021…The person who could afford to buy when rates were zero can no longer afford to buy’
You know what cuts through yer flimsy argument every time Carlos? Shortage. Seriously, how did we get here? Zero rates for a really long time. And how long were rates near zero? A long time before 2021.
Looked this up a few minutes ago when I heard the ABC Evening News say Jack Smith was seeking a Gag Order against Donald Trump for “falsely” claiming the FBI had authorized the use of deadly force at Mar-a-Lago.
Jack Smith Seeks Gag Order Against Trump for Criticizing ‘Deadly Force’ Authorization on Mar-a-Lago Raid — Trump Doubles Down!
by Jamie White
May 25th 2024, 2:22 pm
Donald Trump doubled down on his criticism of the Justice Department’s “deadly force” authorization for its 2022 raid on Mar-a-Lago after special counsel Jack Smith requested a gag order barring the former president from speaking out against it.
Smith in a Friday filing called on the Florida judge overseeing Trump’s classified documents case to block Trump from speaking out in a way that could “pose a significant, imminent, and foreseeable danger to the law enforcement agents participating in the investigation and prosecution of this case.”
“The Government moves to modify defendant Donald J. Trump’s conditions of release, to make clear that he may not make statements that pose a significant, imminent, and foreseeable danger to law enforcement agents participating in the investigation and prosecution of this case,” the filing reads.
The order revealed armed FBI agents were preparing to confront Trump and engage his Secret Service detail if necessary and authorized on-site FBI medical support on the scene and identified a local trauma center for anyone “injured” during the raid.
Garland the FBI defended the authorization to use deadly force against Biden’s chief political rival during their unprecedented raid on the former president’s Mar-a-Lago compound as “standard policy.”
Read Smith’s filing:
https://www.infowars.com/posts/jack-smith-seeks-gag-order-against-trump-for-criticizing-deadly-force-authorization-on-mar-a-lago-raid-trump-doubles-down/
‘Salaries can no longer pay for houses in Sydney,’ Freelancer chief executive Matt Barrie wrote on X. ‘Average house price rapidly going to $5 million. $4.7 million for a 100-year-old bungalow in … Glebe. Blind Freddie can see the writing on the wall. Not a serious country’
It’s always a good day when Blind Freddie shows up again on the HBB.
‘Li Huiting is feeling buyer’s remorse after she bought a second-hand home with her husband in the city’s Pudong New Area in April. Prices then had already dropped by around 1 million yuan compared with a year earlier, but now the 26-year-old teacher thinks ‘prices might go lower if I waited for a while’
The market needs knife catchers Li. Spreads the pain around.
‘Linda Chen, a former teacher, now marketer, sold her 753 sq ft home in the eastern metropolis of Hangzhou at a discount of about 300,000 yuan in December, moving into a rented unit of similar size with her husband. For years she had paid about 9,000 yuan a month for her mortgage, and was still paying 7,000 despite several rounds of mortgage rate cuts by the authorities last year. ‘The house had become a huge burden for us, and we knew we must sell no matter what the price was’
I’d bet you two were stuffing expensive food in yer pie holes every day Linda. You didn’t have what it takes to be a winnah!
Is the sky the limit on California’s minimum wage?
California Workers Seek Minimum Wage Increase to $30
Story by Tyler Connaghan
1d
California Workers Seek Minimum Wage Increase to $30
Increases in Long Beach
Los Angeles Airport Workers
California Workers Seek Minimum Wage Increase to $30
The rate of minimum wage for workers in California has become a hotly contested issue in the state after the recent introduction of a $20 minimum wage.
This comes as unions and labor groups have suggested that the increase to $20 an hour may not be enough for people to meet their basic needs in California.
…
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/california-workers-seek-minimum-wage-increase-to-30/ss-BB1mZpgm
Disney has announced a multimillion dollar expansion to Disneyland. I wonder if they will regret that decision
Correction: multi billion
The Who — Slip Kid:
“No easy way to be free”
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=w8KJnn41j3E&pp=ygUQdGhlIHdobyBzbGlwIGtpZA%3D%3D
The Kinks — Got to Be Free:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=l7qChiEGugE&pp=ygUUa2lua3MgZ290IHRvIGJlIGZyZWU%3D
I can hear that song playing on my brother’s turntable in 1976 as if it were yesterday.
This comment was for The Who — Slip Kid:
Did you hear all the good housing market news this week?
One of my son’s and his wife built one of these McMansion tract home demand killers.
Housing Market
Housing Market Takes ‘Interesting’ Turn
Published May 23, 2024 at 4:50 PM EDT
Updated May 23, 2024 at 5:15 PM EDT
The percentage of sales for homes priced below $300,000 is increasing, government data showed on Thursday, in what some housing economists say is a signal of a possible shift in which builders might be constructing smaller homes that can be priced lower to attract first-time homebuyers.
In April, 17 percent of new homes sold were priced at less than $300,000. This was higher than the 14 percent recorded at the same time a year ago, according to the latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Meanwhile, the percentage of homes sold between $300,000 and $399,999 fell to 27 percent last month compared to the April 2023 figure of 32 percent.
The shift comes at a time when buyers are reluctant to purchase property when mortgage rates are high and houses are expensive.
…
https://www.newsweek.com/housing-market-takes-interesting-turn-1904221
Oh, oh, looks like another young athlete died of suddenly
That dog won’t hunt.