Most Central Bankers Were Convinced They’d Beaten Inflation, They Shouldn’t Have Been

A report from Realtor.com. “The pandemic sent the real estate market into overdrive before higher mortgage rates caused a virtual standstill. But now, the number of homes for sale is the highest since 2019, including in pandemic ‘boomtowns.’ The total number of homes for sale in October was 29.2% higher than the year before, marking the 12th consecutive month of growth. The Southern boomtowns that rose to prominence during the pandemic are once again making waves—with welcome surges in housing stock. Austin, TX, tops the list with a 40.1% jump in inventory, trailed by Memphis, TN, (+39.2%); and Orlando, FL, (+26.6%). These metro areas now boast listings that have surpassed pre-pandemic levels—a notable shift. Metros that saw the largest increases in the number of homes for sale included San Diego, CA, at 63.5%; Seattle, WA, at 60.5%; and Denver, CO, at 59.5%.”

“The metros that saw the largest increase in fresh listings compared with last year included Baltimore, MD, at 24.9%; Washington, D.C., at 19.4%; and Seattle at 17.5%. And those figures could climb even higher before year’s end. ‘November and December are usually some of the colder months in the housing market, but it’s possible we’ll also see an increase in listing activity in these months after the uncertainty of the presidential election subsides,’ says Realtor.com® senior economist Ralph McLaughlin.”

Washington State Standard. “Voters of all age groups say the economy is one of their top factors in deciding who to choose for Washington’s next governor. But the issue appears to be top-of-mind for younger voters — specifically the cost of basic necessities. ‘The cost of living has increased, the ability to buy a home on one income has, by and large, evaporated,’ said Grant Gutierrez, 31, a Seattle resident who does environmental justice work. ‘I think that’s a piece of why people are so fixated on the economy. Even if real wages are rising, adjusted for inflation and adjusted for cost of living, we don’t have as much wealth.’ Last week, on a street corner on Capitol Hill, Xihucoatl Alvarado, 24, a Seattle resident who works as a paid canvasser for Greenpeace was trying to get people to donate. It was tough work. ‘Every other person under 30 that we stop is like, ‘I can’t afford to do this right now,’ Alvarado said. ‘Like, ‘I don’t even have money for food or for gas right now.'”

Los Angeles Times. “Retiree Madonna Raffini recently shopped for groceries for herself and her 96-year-old mother. ‘I went into Walmart, of all places, and looked at the meat — little teeny steaks. Two of them, less than a quarter-inch thick, $18.99. That’s outrageous,” said the former Wells Fargo employee. ‘We can’t afford to eat beef anymore, or chicken for that matter. So that’s my No. 1 beef’ in the 2024 election. Economic pain — inflation, a lack of affordable housing, sticker shock when filling gas tanks and grocery carts, fears about steady employment and sustainable wages that can support their families — is acute in conversations with voters in Nevada. The state was devastated economically by the pandemic because of its reliance on tourism. Casinos were closed. The state had the nation’s highest unemployment rate — 28.2% — in April 2020, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Hundreds of thousands of the state’s residents had lost their jobs.”

“‘To hear a lot of people talk about it, the economy is in terrible shape,’ said David Fott, chair of the political science department and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, adding that for Nevadans, that feeling is framed by their experiences during the COVID-19 lockdown and its aftermath. I think it’s a hangover, that it’s one of the ways in which the pandemic is not over. We don’t have a downtown that suffers from people working at home and not coming back to the office the way Washington, D.C., does, for example,’ he said. ‘So we don’t have that, but we feel the effects in other ways.'”

“The cost of housing is another major factor, Fott added. ‘This is an area where although the overall inflation rate has been dropping, the price of housing does not always reflect that. There’s a lack of affordable housing,’ he said. ‘I read recently that to be able to afford to rent a one-bedroom apartment, someone working minimum wage would have to work two full-time jobs.’ As seen in other states, such as Arizona, the lack of affordable housing is partly blamed on the number of Golden State residents moving to Nevada. ‘Our market is infiltrated by Californians coming over with money to pay cash up front,’ Fott said.”

48 Hills in California. “Let’s put the Nov. 5 local election in some historical context, since many of the themes that underlie the major campaigns have roots in community struggles that defined San Francisco politics in the post-War era. The tech industry doesn’t like moving slowly and carefully. Big Tech wants to ‘move fast and break things.’ When you disrupt an industry, there are impacts on the people who work in it, but that’s capitalism. When you disrupt the Latinx community in the Mission by forcing people out, that’s something else entirely. Under Mayor Willie Brown and later Mayor Ed Lee, tech came to town in a big way—and wanted to move fast and break things. The response, particularly from Lee, was: Full throttle, go.”

“Airbnb ‘disrupted’ the hotel business, and also caused thousands of evictions and local tenants saw their apartments turned into transient rentals. It was illegal; Lee told the city staff to look the other way. Uber and Lyft ‘disrupted’ the cab industry, and left hundreds of taxi drivers with massive debts for city permits that they can never pay; it was illegal, and Lee told city staff to look the other way. In the process, thousands of San Franciscans were forced out of town, evicted, displaced by higher-paid tech workers.”

“Candidates who define themselves as progressives are, generally, about protecting existing vulnerable residents, about making a safe place for non-wealthy people who come here seeking sanctuary. About moving more intentionally and with everyone’s interest in mind, not just the rich. If that means we ‘lose’ some of the race for more innovation, more tech jobs, more disruption, maybe it’s worth the price. Maybe we should have a slogan that says ‘disrupt neoliberal capitalism.'”

The Denver Post on Colorado. “Whispering Pines apartment in Aurora has drawn national attention over allegations that it was overtaken by a transnational Venezuelan gang. In September 2023, police began to raise concerns about a Venezuelan gang in the area, according to internal department emails leaked late last month. City officials have said those emails described ‘speculation and concern among some of our officers’ that Tren de Aragua was active in the city. In October 2023, an Aurora police officer who specialized in environmental security visited Nome Street. The officer wrote in a report that “gangs in the area have moved into the apartments and use threats and coercion to control the apartments.’ He said the gangs had extorted immigrants at Nome Street in a bid to prevent them from talking to police — and that police cars had been rammed by fleeing vehicles. But the Aurora officer also indicated that conditions at the Nome Street property had invited criminal activity.”

“‘I’m not saying, as chief of police, there is not crime in these complexes,’ Aurora Police Chief Todd Chamberlain, who started the job in late August, said last week. ‘I’m not saying … people aren’t being victimized, because (they) are. But what I am saying, also, is that the place is not taken over. And what I’m also saying is that a lot of the information that’s coming out — it is a false narrative. It’s a false narrative that’s not based on facts. It’s not based on data, it’s not based on statistics. It’s based on anecdotal, third-party stories that somehow circulate and go around and around in circles.'”

Pro Publica on Colorado. “For months, Venezuelan migrants had been arriving in Denver with nowhere to go. At first, they came in groups small enough to escape notice by most. A few immigrant aid groups with connections on the U.S.-Mexico border warned city officials to prepare for more but were ignored. Then, in December 2022, a busload of about 90 migrants stepped into the freezing night, bound for Denver Rescue Mission. The shelter, which serves the city’s growing unhoused community, was full.”

“City officials and local aid organizations scrambled, filling a recreation center with beds to keep migrants from sleeping on the streets. A week later, their growing numbers prompted an emergency declaration, freeing up state and federal resources to help. The city filled a second recreation center with beds and transformed a third into an intake center. By the end of the month, city shelters housed nearly 500 migrants. It was just the beginning. But by the following January, Denver was feeling the full weight of being a welcoming city. More than 300 migrants a day were rolling into Denver, just over 4,000 were living in shelters and hundreds more were sleeping on the street. Aid workers reported flaring tensions between migrants and the unhoused at food banks and shelters.”

“Tim Rogers, a Denver native, was riveted by media coverage of the arriving migrants. The stories focused not just on what the mayor was spending, but on how the community was rallying to support newcomers. Residents delivered food, knitted winter hats and even opened spare bedrooms to them. Watching these families shuttled into hotels and shelters, Rogers couldn’t help but think about his own decade-long battle with homelessness. he had spent years on a waiting list for housing assistance. He still had friends living on the streets. And he couldn’t reconcile how the city would spend so heavily on the newcomers when its homeless population had long been desperate for that kind of help. ‘It ain’t fair,’ he said. ‘We got guys doing what they’re supposed to do, seeing their case managers and trying to get housing. If they ask to get a pair of shoes they get a big runaround.'”

“Even Denver mayor Mike Johnston wondered how long the city could keep it up. At the end of 2023, hundreds of migrants who had timed out of the shelters had erected a sprawling tent encampment, where families with small children were living in the dead of winter. Under mounting political and humanitarian pressure, he organized a city effort to disband the camp and in one day got all of the migrants sheltered again. But as Johnston touted the city’s accomplishment to reporters, two more buses pulled up with more newcomers in need of help. ‘It was like, ‘Will there ever be an end?’ Johnston told ProPublica. ‘That was a moment where, even when we were creating heroic solutions, we weren’t sure how sustainable they would be.'”

“Rogers, a slight man with wiry muscles built over decades of manual labor, moved into the apartment just before migrants from Venezuela began rolling into Denver. He watched the city mobilize to keep migrants sheltered and fed in a way it never had for him or his friends. ‘I’m sorry to say it, I know we’re all human, but to me it ain’t fair,’ he said. ‘Back in our day, you’d go up to a cop and he’d say, ‘We got a place for you,’ meaning jail, Rogers said. ‘They never threw us on a bus and took us to a motel.'”

The Globe and Mail. “Last week, the Canadian cryptocurrency billionaire Changpeng Zhao made his first public appearance after leaving U.S. prison. And Mr. Zhao talked about Toronto-Dominion Bank’s money-laundering woes. Mr. Zhao is founder of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, which has broken U.S. anti-money-laundering laws in a manner not too different from TD. Binance was fined US$4.3-billion, and Mr. Zhao went to prison for four months. At a crypto conference in Dubai on Thursday, Mr. Zhao was asked if he thought his sentence was fair.”

“‘I can give you a couple of data points for people to benchmark,’ Mr. Zhao said. ‘We failed to implement an adequate anti-money-laundering program. … I’m the only one who went to jail for this in U.S. history.’ This is where Mr. Zhao brought up TD, which recently pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering and has been fined, along with other penalties. No TD executive was personally charged or even publicly shamed by the authorities, Mr. Zhao said. ‘No one was named. Just the company was fined.’ Keep in mind that Mr. Zhao’s plea deal bars him from speaking ill of it. This was as far and as explicit as Mr. Zhao could go in saying, ‘Why did I have to go to prison while these TD bankers did not?’ A most thought-provoking question.”

“No two cases are exactly alike. The dirty money on Binance had flown to groups including ‘terrorists, cybercriminals, and child abusers,’ while TD’s case appeared to involve only drug traffickers. Binance’s case involved the breaking of U.S. sanctions, which TD’s did not. There’s a whole lot of crypto-specific stuff Binance did that doesn’t apply to TD. If we boil down what Binance and TD did, it’s hard to tell the difference. They profited off bad actors who used them to move dirty money. The amounts involved are similar at ‘hundreds of millions.'”

“See if you can tell which Justice Department comments refer to Binance and which to TD: ‘Because of the crimes it committed – now it is paying one of the largest corporate penalties in U.S. history… [the company] turned a blind eye to its legal obligations in the pursuit of profit.’ The company ‘chose profits over compliance with the law – a decision that is now costing … billions of dollars in penalties.’ ‘In one instance a compliance employee asked a manager what ‘the bad guys’ thought about the [company]. The manager replied: ‘Lol. Easy target.’ ‘As one compliance employee wrote, ‘we need a banner ‘is washing drug money too hard these days – come to [our company] we got cake for you.’ (The answers: Binance, TD, TD, Binance.)”

From ABC News. “It’s finger-pointing time. What, or more precisely who, is to blame for the inflation episode that has up-ended our lives for the past three years? Usually, this is the point where one can insert the name of their least favoured local politician, completely ignoring the obvious, that it has been a global phenomenon. Or, to zone in on a local recovery that isn’t entirely uniform with the rest of the world, completely ignoring the obvious; that each nation has unique strengths and weaknesses. In Australia, we’re routinely told huge government spending and expansionary budgets for the past few years have been largely to blame.”

“Which tends to completely ignore the obvious; that the past couple of federal budgets have delivered surpluses. And if they alone fuelled the continued inflation outbreak, why was inflation so undercooked during all those earlier years of deficits? The textbook definition on inflation will tell you that it is the result of too much money chasing too few goods and services. Which, in hindsight, all makes sense. Most central bankers were convinced they’d beaten inflation through their clever management techniques and were blindsided by the sudden outbreak three years ago. They shouldn’t have been. Globally, there was a huge cash splash during the pandemic to keep the economy ticking over. And once the world emerged from lockdowns, we suddenly found ourselves short of supplies as different countries came back on line at different times and shipping struggled to keep up.”

“As a nation, we’ve run large immigration programs since around the turn of the century. If we’d relied on our natural birth rate, the population would have been in decline, so we’ve brought people in. Prior to 2000, annual net immigration was a touch under 100,000 a year. That was ramped up to more than double during the next 20 years and peaked at 550,000 as borders reopened after the pandemic. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, there were 19.2 million people living in Australia in 2000. That’s now grown to 27.46 million. That’s an increase the equivalent of more than one-and-a-half Sydneys.”

“As the graph illustrates, there was an unexpectedly large post pandemic bump in new arrivals which boosted demand for housing, leading to surging property values and higher rents. Meanwhile, the cost of building new dwellings has soared following large increases in the price of building materials.”