Full screen recommended.
Kevin Kern, "Above The Clouds"
So, we rise from the rubble...
Monday, May 3, 2021
"A Look to the Heavens"
“This shock wave plows through space at over 500,000 kilometers per hour. Moving toward to bottom of this beautifully detailed color composite, the thin, braided filaments are actually long ripples in a sheet of glowing gas seen almost edge on. Cataloged as NGC 2736, its narrow appearance suggests its popular name, the Pencil Nebula.
About 5 light-years long and a mere 800 light-years away, the Pencil Nebula is only a small part of the Vela supernova remnant. The Vela remnant itself is around 100 light-years in diameter and is the expanding debris cloud of a star that was seen to explode about 11,000 years ago. Initially, the shock wave was moving at millions of kilometers per hour but has slowed considerably, sweeping up surrounding interstellar gas.”
"Biden Family Justice"
"Biden Family Justice"
by Jim Kunstler
"If you want to grok the awesome failure of authority these Fourth Turning crack-up years in America, start with the lawlessness at the Department of Justice and its sociopathic step-child, the FBI, along with a demonic host of intel agencies seeded throughout the national government: the CIA, the NSA, the DIA, the DHS, and even the lowly crypto-public US Postal Service, lately enlisted to spy on US citizens’ social media posts.
Who is supposed to rein-in these freewheeling rogues? I’ll tell you: the courts and the judges appointed to them. The problem is especially acute in the federal courts where, for instance, Judge James Boasberg allowed the FBI to lie repeatedly on warrant applications to his FISA court, and Judge Emmet G. Sullivan hung General Mike Flynn out to dry even after the DOJ had to admit misconduct in his prosecution - and the DC Court of Appeals failed to enforce the DOJ’s reluctant decision to finally drop charges.
The campaign of false witness against US citizens went into overdrive when Donald Trump strutted onto the scene and “seventeen agencies of the Intel Community” conspired with The New York Times and other news media to manufacture the RussiaGate hoax. No top official across the boards has been taken to law for the stupendous cavalcade of false accusations and deceitful investigations associated with that venture in sedition, and the nation is still waiting for the apparition known as Special Counsel John Durham to make a peep. In fact, since 2017 much of the publicly-reported activity around the DOJ and FBI has demonstrated only their attempts to suppress their own felonious misdeeds - cover-ups on top of cover-ups.
Now comes the curious case of Rudy Giuliani, whose apartment was raided on a warrant last week by the FBI seeking his computers and cell phones. The probable cause remains murky - something to do with violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) in representing Ukrainian clients in the US? So, the DOJ wants Rudy’s files, emails, and memoranda on that? Of course, Rudy was acting as the President’s lawyer in impeachment No. 1 over a telephone call to Ukraine, and what was that about? Hunter Biden’s grifting activities, his cumulatively receiving millions from the Burisma Company, of which Hunter’s dad was due to receive at least his usual ten percent cut? And concerning which activity, Joe Biden threatened former Ukraine President Poroshenko in withholding US aid, unless an investigation into Hunter’s Burisma grift was dropped.
It might be helpful to the current occupant of the Oval Office to know what kind of evidence Rudy has acquired on all that and more over the years - yes? But then, there’s plenty of evidence about it and much much much more on Hunter’s wayward laptop. Perhaps hundreds of millions in wide-ranging grifts beyond lowly Ukraine all the way to China, where to this day Hunter retains active and substantial financial connections through his Skaneateles LLC financial company. And it has become known that the FBI was in possession of Hunter’s laptop from at least one month prior to the commencement of impeachment proceedings in December of 2019. And nobody was informed about that… not least the president’s lawyer?
Don’t Christopher Wray and William Barr have some ‘splainin’ to do about how such a crucial trove of evidence was withheld during the impeachment? After all, Mr. Trump’s fateful phone call to Ukraine was about the influence-peddling operations of the Biden family in foreign lands. A whole other year passed before the existence of Hunter’s laptop was even acknowledged in the fall of 2020, and then the sole reportage about it from The New York Post was suppressed in a coordinated campaign between the social and news media - in the midst of a national election, with Joe Biden standing for president. Funny how that worked.
Also, note the connections between Rep Adam Schiff’s House Intel Committee, where the first impeachment hearings were staged, especially the committee’s Chief Counsel, one Daniel Goldman, and William Barr’s DOJ. Mr. Goldman was a former US Attorney in the Southern District of New York (2007 -2017). Do you suppose he knows people in Main Justice - like, just about everybody? Was he apprised formally or otherwise of the existence of Hunter’s laptop in possession of the FBI at the time of the hearings? Or Did Mr. Wray and Mr. Barr leave him in the dark about what was on it? (Personally, I doubt it.)
It has come out lately that the FBI secretly hacked its way into Mr. Giuliani’s iCloud data storage account without a warrant in the fall of 2019, when Mr. Schiff’s Intel Committee held its hearings preliminary to impeachment and Mr. Giuliani was the president’s lawyer. Did Mr. Wray and Mr. Barr or others funnel info about what was on the president’s lawyer’s private iCloud files to Mr. Goldman and Mr. Schiff? And was that info known to then Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire? Or Intel Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson, who allowed the bogus complaints of CIA “whistleblower” Eric Ciaramella and National Security Council officer Alexander Vindman to be manufactured into an impeachable “crime?” Do these seem to be esoteric issues? I don’t think so. Will they ever be adjudicated? And will our country pay a price for allowing all that to happen?
It has also been imputed in media coverage of the Giuliani raid that the president’s lawyer was somehow nefariously involved in advising Mr. Trump to fire US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch. In fact, ambassadors to foreign lands serve at the pleasure of the chief executive. He can fire them for any reason. And his lawyer has every right to advise him to do it. Does the news media not know that?
Does the DOJ aim to mount an indictment against Rudy Giuliani? Well, if they do, of course, they open the door to evidentiary discovery - like, who gave the order to hack into the President’s lawyer’s iCloud account during the 2019 impeachment? Anything funny going on with that? It happens that Mr. Giuliani’s personal lawyer is one Bob Costello, who served as head of the Southern District’s criminal division when Rudy ran the DOJ’s SDNY. Mr. Costello might know something of the workings in Main Justice. He could possibly root something interesting out.
To return to my original point: who and where are the authorities who will hold high public officials accountable for the things they’ve been doing? Do you wonder why Americans increasingly lack faith in their government? Do you wonder why, for example, so many want to avoid “vaccine” shots, endorsed by government officials as “safe and effective?” Do you note the contrast between what’s taken ultra-seriously in the BLM hoopla over police shootings of perps obviously resisting arrest and fighting with them, and the awesome depravity at the highest levels of the US justice system? Oh, by the way, the Arizona ballot recount and voting machine forensic inquiry goes on. Maybe soon you will start putting together the reasons why your country is cracking up."
"I Would Rather Have..."
"When a bull is being lead to the slaughter, it still hopes to break loose and trample its butchers. Other bulls have not been able to pass on the knowledge that this never happens and that from the slaughterhouse there is no way back to the herd. But in human society there is a continuous exchange of experience. I have never heard of a man who broke away and fled while being led to his execution. It is even thought to be a special form of courage if a man about to be executed refuses to be blindfolded and dies with his eyes open. But I would rather have the bull with his blind rage, the stubborn beast who doesn't weigh his chances of survival with the prudent dull-wittedness of man, and doesn't know the despicable feeling of despair."
- Nadezhda Mandelstam
"I Am An Invisible Man..."
"I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids - and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination - indeed, everything and anything except me."
- Ralph Ellison, "Prologue to Invisible Man"
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"Out on the Ledge"
"Out on the Ledge"
by Bill Bonner
YOUGHAL, IRELAND – "Last week, Charles de Vaulx, a famous value investor, was apparently so depressed by the bad performance of his fund that he jumped from the 10th floor of his office building. The New York Post: "Shortly before 1 p.m. Monday, Charles de Vaulx entered the posh Midtown tower at 717 Fifth Ave. that had long housed the offices of International Value Advisers [IVA], an investment firm founded 14 years ago, according to police. Minutes later, de Vaulx - who built IVA into a financial powerhouse with $20 billion in assets at its peak before it abruptly liquidated last month - plummeted from the 10th floor, according to a building employee.
Old fashioned, Graham-and-Dodd value investing is hard work. You need to study balance sheets. And understand a company’s business model. What is the real return on capital employed? How “efficient” is the investment? How risky… and how reliable?
But sometimes – despite your best efforts – things don’t work out. Even Warren Buffett himself – maybe the greatest value investor of all time – couldn’t make much headway in 2019/2020. CNBC: "In 2020, Berkshire Hathaway shares were up, but not by much (2%), against an S&P 500 that gained over 18%, with dividends reinvested, according to S&P Global. Taken together, the two-year stretch of 2019 and 2020 marked one of the biggest gaps between Berkshire and the broader U.S. stock market in recent history, with the [multinational conglomerate led by] Buffett trailing the index return by a combined 37%. Says Buffett, chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway: “I attribute this largely to a lack of exposure to tech stocks.”
Waste of Time: There are times when long-term value mining seems like a waste of time. Why go to all the trouble of working at the coalface of real investing when Dogecoin (a popular cryptocurrency that has zero value from an investment standpoint) is up more than 7,000% so far this year? Why bother with all those company reports when you can just listen to Elon Musk… and get rich on Tesla? And why worry about investing at all? The feds will do it for us.
Daring Investments: Also in the news last week was the U.S. government, announcing the jumping-off point for the most daring “investments” in the history of the world. Yes, that’s what Joe Biden calls the 2020 COVID-19 relief programs and the 2021 follow-on infrastructure, family support, and climate change boondoggles… “investments.”
It’s the biggest, most ambitious, grandest larceny ever attempted. Trillions of dollars will be taxed or inflated away from their rightful owners to be “invested” by the feds. In fact, since March 2020, the total to be “invested” by public officials is rising toward $10 trillion.
The fib from the White House is that the rich will pay the costs. The top 5% of taxpayers already pay 60% of the taxes. The bottom 50% pay almost nothing. And if these credits and other provisions are passed, about 75% of the voters will pay zero. That will leave the full burden on the richest 25% of the population. But these are also the people who are most likely to vote. They’re the people who own businesses. They’re investors, accountants, doctors, and lawyers. And they’re the major backers of both political parties and of every member of Congress. And they’re likely to be Democrats. Over the last 25 years, the two parties have flipped, so that the Democrats now represent the wealthiest citizens. Will these people really be asked to pony up an additional $10 trillion?
Point of Diminishing Returns: Most likely taxes will go up – especially for the richest people of all. These super rich people have reached the point of diminishing returns. They already have their houses and their boats. An extra million dollars, more or less, won’t force them to look at the right side of the menu and choose the tuna sandwich. Like superinvestor Warren Buffett, they actually may prefer to pay their “fair share” – giving up a little low-value money in exchange for relatively higher-value, more socially responsible status.
But let us assume that the feds could identify 1,000 billionaires and squeeze each one for $10 million. That would only be $10 billion. Peanuts. Suppose the IRS really cleaned them out, taking a billion from each one. Now, you’re beginning to talk real money – $1 trillion. Hmmm… still a $9 trillion hole.
Nothing Comes From Nothing: And it’s not as if this money were sitting in a drawer somewhere. It is already employed, one way or another. But that is the problem with all efforts to finance the feds’ bamboozles by raising taxes. Nothing comes from nothing. Nobody gets anything from the feds that doesn’t come from someone else. And people are usually much better off spending and investing their own money than letting the government do it for them.
Private investors usually put their money into value-adding enterprises, in the hope of getting a return on their investment. They are value investments, in other words, even if the investors themselves don’t realize it. In the short run, take a trillion dollars out of the stock market and you could cause a panic – wiping out $20 trillion in paper gains and making the whole upper decks of Americans feel much poorer. Longer term, accumulated capital – savings, businesses, machines, factories – is what makes a society rich. Taking money out of the “capital structure” weakens it, leaving it less productive… and ultimately, making us all poorer.
Addled by Fake Money: At this stage in the Bubble Epoch, investors have been so addled by trillions in new, fake money that value may be hard to find. With people pouring billions into nonfungible tokens (NFTs), money-losing companies, dodgy cryptos, SPACs , and buybacks… a good case could be made that even the government could do a better job of allocating capital.
But Mr. Market quickly punishes private mistakes – if he is allowed to do so. And the capital, what is left of it, is shifted into “stronger” hands… which is to say, people who make money instead of losing it. But when the government “invests,” it’s a whole different thing.
What is the return on investment from giving more money to school administrators… to meals-at-school programs… to Amtrak… to people who are on leave from their work… to subsidize electric vehicles… to cities and states that have mismanaged their pension programs… to diversity training? Nobody knows. But few investors – even those now buying NFTs – would want to find out with their own money. And since you can’t calculate the rate of return, government ‘investments’ develop their own political support and continue misallocating capital resources almost permanently.
Out on the Ledge: What was the bottom line on the War on Terror, for example? And the War on Drugs? Or the War on Poverty? How often do lawmakers say, “Well, that was a bad investment,” and cut off funding? No, a nation’s “investment” mistakes are often much more serious. Japan got the bill for attacking Pearl Harbor at Hiroshima. The Soviet Union’s centrally planned economy lasted for 70 years until it was finally discarded in 1989. And now, Venezuela – #1 in the Misery Index – is undergoing a bitter correction.
The rich alone don’t pay for them – everybody does, the poor especially. And what about the decision makers – the people who choose where to place the money? They are the Charles de Vaulxs of the public sector, playing with trillions of dollars that don’t belong to them. Their decisions affect millions of lives. What happens to them when things don’t work out as planned? Will Nancy Pelosi or Chuck Schumer step out on the ledge? More to come…"
"Economic Market Snapshot 5/3/21"
"Economic Market Snapshot 5/3/21"
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"Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will
do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone."
- John Maynard Keynes
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"Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...
Only the consequences are real - to you!
Your guide:
Gregory Mannarino, AM 5/3/21:
"UPDATES: Fed. "Digital Dollar," Inflation,
Markets, Crypto, Gold, Silver, Crude. MORE!"
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"The more I see of the monied classes,
the better I understand the guillotine."
- George Bernard Shaw
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MarketWatch Market Summary, Live Updates
CNN Market Data:
CNN Fear And Greed Index:
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A comprehensive, essential daily read.
May 2nd to May 4th, Updated Daily
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Financial Stress Index
"The OFR Financial Stress Index (OFR FSI) is a daily market-based snapshot of stress in global financial markets. It is constructed from 33 financial market variables, such as yield spreads, valuation measures, and interest rates. The OFR FSI is positive when stress levels are above average, and negative when stress levels are below average. The OFR FSI incorporates five categories of indicators: credit, equity valuation, funding, safe assets and volatility. The FSI shows stress contributions by three regions: United States, other advanced economies, and emerging markets."
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Daily Job Cuts
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And now, the End Game...
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Oh yeah...
"Insights into Risk: Taleb and Tyson"
"Insights into Risk: Taleb and Tyson"
by Charles Hugh Smith
"I see the same question in forums, threads, articles and emails: what can I do to protect myself and my family from whatever lies ahead? Given the uncertainties and extremes that are so evident, recognizing risk is a useful first step, a recognition that is very much out of fashion. If we glance at the charts of margin debt (loans taken against one's stock portfolio) which is at record highs, and short interest (bets that stocks will drop) which is at record lows, it seems the primary risk on investors' minds is FOMO (fear of missing out) of all the fat, juicy guaranteed gains just ahead.
For the few still asking about the source of risk, the general answer takes one of two paths: inflation leading to hyper-inflation or a deflationary collapse of defaults and popping asset bubbles. It's easy to find pundits arguing for one or the other, but do we have the initial conditions, variables and functions we need to solve this problem and get a clear answer, inflation or deflation?
Consider two variables that are rarely visible in pundits' arguments:
1) What will benefit the banks?
2) What will benefit the nation's place in the geopolitical pecking order?
The inflationary camp holds that the soaring debt, public and private, can only be serviced if incomes inflate so households, companies and governments have enough income to make the payments on their soaring debts. Since this is a self-reinforcing spiral - more inflation leads to more inflation - central banks will be forced to print their currencies into oblivion, i.e. hyper-inflation. If they ever stop printing, the house of cards (soaring debt) will collapse.
This logic seems sound enough, but once hyper-inflation takes off and people are earning $250,000 a month and a loaf of bread is $250, how will banks profit from households paying off their once-stupendous mortgage (that required 30 years of monthly payments to pay off) with a single month's pay?
Hyper-inflation will destroy not just the currency but the entire banking sector, which is politically powerful. Will the banks just sit by passively watching their wealth and income being destroyed by high inflation? One suspects they will use their political power to avoid being ground into dust by hyper-inflation. The banks would much prefer defaults that they can shift to the government (via bailouts) and deflation, where every monthly credit card/mortgage payment has greater purchasing power than the previous month.
Next, consider the consequences of hyper-inflation on the nation's currency: it loses virtually all its value in terms of buying food, oil, semiconductors, autos, etc. from other nations. Nobody will want to trade real goods for worthless dollars. Imports paid with dollars will plummet to zero in hyper-inflation. In terms of a nation's economic power, its currency is the foundation, because if the currency plummets to near-zero then everything denominated in that currency also loses value on the global stage.
A reserve currency - a national currency that is widely held globally because it it's expected to hold its value, and the market for everything denominated in that currency is extremely large and liquid--is the crown jewel of whatever nation (or entity, in the case of the EU) issues it. Who would benefit from the destruction of a nation's reserve currency? Virtually no one. The nation would be impoverished. So why is hyper-inflation - the destruction of the currency - so broadly accepted as inevitable?
It's also widely assumed that the Federal Reserve and other central banks control all the variables in setting bond yields, interest rates and inflation. But what if some variables are outside the Fed's control? What if their claim of controlling all variables is mere PR?
We also don't know what function inflation or deflation might manifest. Will it be arithmatic-- 1 + 1 = 2 + 1 = 3, etc.--or geometric-- 1 + 1 = 2 + 2 = 4 + 4 = 8 + 8 = 16?
This makes an enormous difference: arithmatic inflation is predictable - 5% a year, for example - but geometric increases lead to hyper-inflation and complete destabilization of the economy and society.
Very few pundits reckon the central banks and governments will choose default and deflation because these will be painful - but what could be more painful than wiping out the value of the currency?
If the wealthy elite own precious metals, farmland, manufacturing, government bonds, etc., then the default of zombie households and corporations (zombies defined as entities that have to borrow more to remain among the living), then why would they care? Corporate bondholders and marginal lenders would be destroyed, but again, the wealthy need only avoid owning marginal debt to avoid the debacle of default losses.
The politically powerful elites have their ace in the hole: they can demand politicians (who need their contributions to fund their re-election campaigns) bail out the banks, transferring the losses from defaults from private banks to the public sector, exactly what happened in 2008-09.
But once again, are the elites and government fully in control of all variables, or could they be assuming arithmatic functions when geometric functions might actually manifest? Deflationary defaults can destroy bank assets just as quickly as hyper-inflation, as once buyers vanish (markets go bidless) then the value of assets pledged as collateral plummets to levels no one believes possible. Entire highrise buildings are sold for the value of the elevator system. Yes, it happened in the Great Depression.
A little inflation or deflation is a good thing, manageable by the government and elite, but geometric inflation or deflation undermines the entire financial system, including the finances of governments and elites.
How do we calculate the probability and potential intensity of destabilizing social disorder? It's widely assumed that the U.S. could never experience the sort of massive, widespread social disorder that occurs in developing-world nations during crises. But humans are humans, and when put under pressure by high inflation / deflation and declining prosperity, people respond in ways that can very quickly escape the control of authorities. "Is a Cultural Revolution Brewing in America?"
If the consequential variables and functions are not measurable, then seemingly small disorders can spread throughout the entire society - or supply chain. Where does all this leave us? We know from studies of human psychology that humans don't feel comfortable with uncertainty and seek a haven of certainty as quickly as possible. They will cling to anchored beliefs in the face of conflicting evidence and strengthen their attachment to beliefs when challenged. We're wired for a decisive commitment to a belief structure.
Sustained indecision and ambiguity is uncomfortable. We want an answer, and if there isn't one, then we'll make one up or commit to an answer proposed by a pundit, even though that person has no better grasp of the initial conditions, variables and functions as anyone else.
Alternatively, if we can't possibly answer the question of what happens next, we have to accept that this era's uncertainties may not be resolvable. This is an exceedingly valuable insight, as if we embrace this uncertainty, we can avoid defaulting to a rigid, brittle false certitude that can only lead us astray if events don't follow the path we've committed to. In other words, we all want certainty, but this isn't possible because 1) the variables are invisible 2) the functions are unknown and 3) the "solution" (predicted path) depends entirely on the initial conditions, in which small changes completely change the outcome.
Faced with the knowledge that so-called fat tail risk (i.e. a geometric function replacing an arithmatic function, and small events triggering large consequences, i.e. non-linear dynamics) is real but unpredictable, then we're forced to think through these supposedly low-probability risks and devise a response that we can implement because we already thought it out.
This is the difference between having a pre-planned response and panic. Mike Tyson's memorable quote offers great insight into risk and uncertainty: "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth." The average person considers the odds of getting punched in the face as very low. The martial arts student doesn't follow the line of thinking that because the odds appear low, there is no need to learn self-defense. Rather, being prepared to defend oneself is a permanent state of readiness, perhaps rusty and imperfect, but there nonetheless.
Events that devastate the majority financially greatly enrich the few who bet on non-linear dynamics. This 2002 profile of Nassim Taleb by Malcolm Gladwell offers an enlightening perspective on this approach. "Blowing Up: How Nassim Taleb turned the inevitability of disaster into an investment strategy"
Very few of us can pursue Taleb's mathematically sophisticated strategies. But that doesn't mean we can't embrace uncertainty and fat-tail risks and think through responses in advance, and plan a hedging strategy that accounts for possibilities from 1) nothing changes to 2) everything changes.
We don't have to respond perfectly to be successful. We simply need to have prepared responses for contingencies from whatever we consider most likely to whatever we consider very unlikely but still possible. The point here is that embracing uncertainty means we accept that the market might still punch us in the face, and we might make mistakes or fail to perform as we'd hoped, but the process of planning layers of response may well help protect us from irreversible losses and bad decisions made in the chaos of fear and panic."
Sunday, May 2, 2021
"Fourth Stimulus Check Huge Monthly Checks! 4th Stimulus Check Update 2021 SSI SSDI"
LALATE, Evening 5/2/21:
"Fourth Stimulus Check Huge Monthly Checks!
4th Stimulus Check Update 2021 SSI SSDI"
"Housing Crash Is Ahead! As Lumber Prices Surged 340% Price Bubble Is Out Of Control"
Full screen recommended.
"Housing Crash Is Ahead!
As Lumber Prices Surged 340% Price Bubble Is Out Of Control"
by Epic Economist
"The US housing market bubble is running out of control. A growing number of experts have been warning the Federal Reserve has been blowing the current price bubble by keeping mortgage rates at historically low levels, enabling prices to reach unprecedented highs. However, things are becoming increasingly unsustainable and the threat of a housing market crash of epic proportions is looming on the horizon.
The remarkable surge in home prices and household debt have deteriorated the Housing Affordability Index, which measures whether a typical family makes enough income to qualify for a mortgage loan on a typical home at the national and regional levels. The expanding gap between home prices and affordability is a clear sign that the housing market is in dangerous bubble territory, just as seen during the previous housing boom.
Housing data is reaching levels last seen in 2006, and industry experts are concerned about the impacts another housing bubble will have, particularly considering that 15 years ago the 2008 real estate bubble burst threatened the stability of the entire global financial system, and today we're experiencing the same levels of inflation, but a lot more money is flowing into the sector, which means the crash is bound to be much more extreme. Today's market is already creating major imbalances across several segments of the economy, and although this rally might look different from the last one, the market's principles remain the same.
That's what billionaire real estate investor Jeff Greene has recently argued in an interview with CNBC. Greene, who made a fortune shorting subprime mortgages more than a decade ago, said this is an "omni-bubble". When asked for how long this euphoria would last before a crash occurred, the investor said: "It depends. How long do you keep the faucet open and this money running?"
Greene believes the market is overheating right now and his previous bet against the housing market in the mid-2000s makes his comments quite notable. "When you see prices go up the way they've gone up, you have to ask yourself: Why did this happen?" he outlined. Americans have also been posing the same question and Google data show that in recent days, searches for "When is the housing market going to crash?" have dramatically increased.
In essence, consumers have been growing worried that the housing bubble may be ready to burst in face of skyrocketing prices and an exceedingly elevated demand. Google reported that the search question "When is the housing market going to crash?" had jumped 2,450% in the past month. "Why is the market so hot?" searches had doubled in just a week. And, in the most telling indication that the market bubble is running out of control, the question "How much over asking price should I offer on a home 2021" spiked 350% in that same week.
The U.S. has just a 3.6-month supply of homes - the lowest point on record. By the numbers, it’s becoming increasingly harder to deny that America’s housing market is overheating. Greene upholds that this is happening "80% because of the extraordinary amount of liquidity in the economy, 20% because of fundamentals". The investor also mentioned rising costs for lumber, suggesting a major inflationary spike will show up across several segments of the economy over the comings months.
The Federal Reserve's monetary policies have not only expanded the home price bubble but they have also created several other price bubbles due to rising inflation. Lumber prices portray that reality. In twelve months, prices spiked 340%, and new records are set almost on a daily basis. The surge in lumber costs added $35,872 to the price of an average new single-family home and $12,966 to the market value of an average new multifamily home, according to the NAHB. And this is just the beginning. "I think we're going to have inflation that no one is forecasting whatsoever, and it's going to have to lead to much higher interest rates and that is going to slow down all these markets," Greene warned.
The last time America’s housing industry looked like this, the Great Recession occurred, property values plummeted, a massive wave of foreclosures was registered, and Americans lost trillions of dollars of equity and retirement savings. Even though this time around the intrinsic supply and demand fundamentals might be different in part due to the effects of the health crisis, but the panic-buying and speculative exuberance look a lot like it did fifteen years ago. As we've crossed the bubble zone and consumers aren't keeping up with the pace of the home price appreciation, when the housing market finally crashes we will see our fragile post-outbreak economy falling again in a steep recession and we'll be lucky if a global financial crisis doesn't follow."
Must Watch! "Why Is Everything Closing? The Collapse Has Begun And Nothing Will Stop It; You Should Be Worried"
Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe,
"Why Is Everything Closing?
The Collapse Has Begun And Nothing Will Stop It; You Should Be Worried"
"Cruel Summer"
"Cruel Summer"
by The ZMan
"Way back when the Covid panic began, smart people pointed out that shutting down an economy was going to have unforeseen consequences. A modern economy is an incomprehensibly complex organism. Even turning off some parts of it for a short time will change the organism, resulting in downstream changes. It is why people who work with complex things are very careful about the changes they make. They accept that there is much about the system that they cannot known in advance.
Of course, the people in charge are sure they have it all figured out, so they just blundered ahead with their lock downs and new rules. Shutting down most of the restaurant industry and closing the schools. for example, radically altered the demand side of the food market. Suddenly, goods for the restaurant business had no demand, while demand for home products shot through the roof. This should have given them pause, but they kept blundering ahead with their schemes.
Anyone who has been in a grocery store of late knows that food prices are jumping like it is the 1970’s again. There are also weird shortages. Something like mayonnaise will disappear from the shelves for a week and then come back, but then plastic bags become scarce. The same phenomenon is happening with other things like building supplies and petroleum products. The official statistics are complete nonsense, so we have no idea how much food has jumped. It is enough that people are talking about inflation in private conversations for the first time in decades.
The usual suspects, of course, are spilling into the streets to chant about fiat currency, hyperinflation, and the rest of their stuff. It is as if the Great Pumpkin has finally risen out of the pumpkin patch. They have been waiting their whole lives for the Weimar moment foretold in the prophesies. Because these people are always wrong it is good to remember they are wrong now. The problem now is actually much worse than too much money chasing too few goods. It is systemic.
For starters, governments around the world have been taking sledgehammers to the global supply chain. These supply chains evolved over a long period of time to solve the problems of getting goods to the market. In response to Covid, government willy-nilly started turning things on and off without much thought. The system can respond to short term emergencies like natural disasters, but it was never equipped to respond to random outages imposed by people who have never had a job.
Then you have the stimulus plans. Having idled large swaths of the economy for periods, the same people frantically turning things on and off started pumping money into the retail side. At first this new money was absorbed in the system. Personal debt fell in 2020 as people got conservative in the face of the crisis. They also began to change their lives in response to the lockdowns. Going to the movies and out to eat is a habit, not a necessity. Lots of habits changed in 2020.
Labor markets have been radically changed by Covid and the efforts from the rulers to make a big show of dealing with it. Entry level jobs are now hard to fill, because unemployment still pays very well. If you are a restaurant opening for the first time in a year, finding help is difficult. It is not a shortage of labor as much as a shortage of people ready to go back to work. Labor shortages, however they are created, result in a spike in labor costs, which appear at the cash register.
Finally, we have monetary policy. Central bank policy has evolved over the last thirty years based on certain assumptions. Government policy, for example, has been predictable going back to the 1990’s. While there have been the usual problems, the global economy has settled into some predictable patterns. All of a sudden, none of this is true, so monetary policy has to adjust. Adjusting to erratic government behavior and unpredictable consequences in the economy is practically impossible.
The upshot to all of this is we are seeing real inflation for the first time in generations, but we have a variety of causes this time. In the 1970’s, it was too much money chasing too few goods. Pulling money out of the economy was painful, but it worked. This time, we have too much money in some areas, but we have broken supply chains and labor markets contributing to the problem. The Fed cannot do anything about shortages of aluminum cans or chicken farm with too few chickens.
To make matters worse, pulling money out of the system is probably not possible, given decades of ultra-low borrowing rates. The world has become so accustomed to low interest rates, it has become an axiom, like the changing of the seasons or the laws of thermodynamics. Any significant change in the money supply to combat retail inflation would send the financial markets into a tailspin. Housing would collapse if mortgage rates returned to anything resembling normal.
None of this means there is no answer. Often, the right answer is to do nothing and let things run their course. That was the right answer with Covid. As with Covid, the rulers cannot accept that answer, so they will thrash around some more. The people animating the corpse of Joe Biden are promising to smash things up some more for the greater good. After all, what matters to them is that we know the people in the mansions and castles really care about us, while they live like royalty.
The result of all this is we are heading into a cruel summer. The bill for the Covid response is coming due. How a society responds to crisis is the result of the social trust in that society. America is a low trust society now. Further, the people who will be counted on to dig out of the mess created by the rulers are now treated like second class citizens by those rulers. The fix to the 60’s and 70’s was to first repair the loss of faith in the system. It is hard to imagine that happening this time."
"A Look to the Heavens"
"If our Sun were part of this star cluster, the night sky would glow like a jewel box of bright stars. This cluster, known as M53 and cataloged as NGC 5024, is one of about 250 globular clusters that survive in our Galaxy. Most of the stars in M53 are older and redder than our Sun, but some enigmatic stars appear to be bluer and younger. These young stars might contradict the hypothesis that all the stars in M53 formed at nearly the same time. These unusual stars are known as blue stragglers and are unusually common in M53. After much debate, blue stragglers are now thought to be stars rejuvenated by fresh matter falling in from a binary star companion.
By analyzing pictures of globular clusters like the featured image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers use the abundance of stars like blue stragglers to help determine the age of the globular cluster and hence a limit on the age of the universe. M53, visible with a binoculars towards the constellation of Bernice's Hair (Coma Berenices), contains over 250,000 stars and is one of the furthest globulars from the center of our Galaxy."
“Hustled Through Life”
“Hustled Through Life”
by Paul Rosenberg
“Most people, sad to say, are too rushed, frightened, and confused to think about what they really want out of life. They are hustled through school, forced into long-term decisions before they’re ready to face them, then held to those decisions by fear and shame. They choose from a limited set of options, and they know that change will be punished. Eventually they get old and find time to think, but by then they can’t bear to question too deeply; that would jeopardize their self-worth, and they haven’t time to rebuild it.
For an intelligent, creative, and expansive species like ours, this rush to nowhere is among the greatest of evils. And yet it continues, mostly unquestioned. At no point in the usual Western life do we stop, take some serious time for ourselves, and think about the overall:
• What’s life about anyway? What’s the point of what we do?
• What’s the purpose of a career? Why should I care about it above everything else?
• Why should I glorify the existing system? Why should I agree to support it?
• Who paid for everything I learned in school?
• Should I have a family? If so, why? If not, why not?
• What do I think is fun? Does it really coincide with the beer ads on TV?
• What’s the purpose of being like everyone else? Why am I so afraid to be different?
We don’t address such questions. Rather, we’re pushed past them. Even in a church or synagogue – places where larger questions are supposed to be addressed – the person in the pulpit wants us to become and/or remain a member of the congregation; their job depends upon it. There are true ministers and rabbis, but for most it’s all too easy to push their audience into what’s convenient. As a result, we see little motivation in the modern West, save for the basest of motivators: things that match a line from the Bible that says, “Whose god is their belly.”
Mind you, I’m not against wealth, good food, or sex. I think those are fine things. They are not, however, the whole of life. We are much bigger than that. We ought not be limited to belly-level aspirations. But when we’re rushed, that’s all we’re able to see.
Status and Fear: The two big motivators we face in this rush through life – fear and status – are both negative. Fear is a manipulation technology; people who make you afraid are hacking your mind. They want you to ignore reason and obey them fast. (I wish I could cover this in depth here, but we haven’t space. Please see issue #54 of my subscription newsletter.) When we’re afraid, we make our worst choices. Put plainly, fear makes us stupid. But we encounter it on a daily basis… and it destroys us by inches.
Status is the compulsion to compare ourselves with others, and whether we’re looking for the ways we’re better than others or looking for our shortcomings, it is deeply destructive. It’s also irrational, but the advertising business would crash without it and advertisers currently own the collective eyeballs of humanity.
Fear and status are, in a broad sense, drugs, and if you had a choice between smoking pot every day or being on fear and status every day, I’d definitely recommend the pot.
Confusion: Let’s be clear on something: Nearly every adult in the West will agree that politicians are liars and thieves… and yet they obey them without question. Is there any possibility we’d do such things if we weren’t harried and confused? When we are confused, we pass over our own minds and their deliberations. There’s an old joke: “Who are you gonna believe, me or your lyin’ eyes?” But that’s precisely what confusion does to us, and under the pressures of confusion and authority, most people will ignore their own eyes.
Such things do not happen to people who are calm and confident. But the existing hierarchies of the West couldn’t function with a calm and confident populace; their operations require people to be frightened, confused, and blindly chasing status.
As a Result… As a result, most of us hurry through life, never knowing why. We live as others do, simply because that path is streamlined for us, exposing us to a minimal level of fear and shame. But that path does something else: It keeps us from experiencing ourselves. Seldom has this problem been put more succinctly than in this quote from Albert Einstein: “Small is the number of them who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.”
Stop following the crowd. Turn your back on the popular script. Stop feeding at the same trough as everyone else. Break away and learn to see with your own eyes, to feel with your own heart. Don’t conform. Let people criticize you. Decide for yourself what your life will be about. Make it matter.”
"A True Mother..."
"For many great deeds are accomplished in times of squalid struggle. There is a kind of stubborn, unrecognized courage which in the lowest depths tenaciously resists the pressures of necessity and ill-doing; there are noble and obscure triumphs observed by no one, unacclaimed by any fanfare. Hardship, loneliness, and penury are a battlefield which has its own heroes, sometimes greater than those lauded in history. Strong and rare characters are thus created; poverty nearly always a foster-mother, may become a true mother, distress may be the nursemaid of pride, and misfortune the milk that nourishes great spirits."
- Victor Hugo
Gregory Mannarino, PM 5/2/21: "Markets, A Look Ahead: This Week, Two Critical Things To Watch!"
Gregory Mannarino, PM 5/2/21:
"Markets, A Look Ahead:
This Week, Two Critical Things To Watch!"
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