The Nation's Financial Condition

[runrussellrun]

November 1, 2021
Heather Cox Richardson
Nov 2

Americans appear to be waking up to the reality that our democracy is on the ropes.........................

and the first "example" is a infotainment celebrity ?

your gang IS infected.......and COX wasn't clear as to whom we should hate , today.

Just the vague lies of percentages, FOX viewers (would LOVE to see COX richardsons "data" on the stop the steal stuff


Who are your posts for? Have you no thoughts of your own?

[youthathletics]

MD you are buying the Rubio type of BS, hook line and sinker. They are doing nothing more than capitalizing on the extremes from the other side...this is political gamesmanship to keep ones job, by any means necessary. So much so, that even Nancy and Chuck refuse to call out the far lefties on their side....why is that? At least HRC give Bernie the Heisman when she ran in hopes it would bury him. Wonder why Heather does not recognize anything negative on her side of the street.....gotta keep us at odds.

[Farfromgeneva]

They did all shut Bernie down last Feb (2020) in the primary. The right hasn't done anything remotely close to that.

[Farfromgeneva]

I've suggested this in various ways in the past and continue to pound this issue which is the complete financialization of residential real estate perpetrated by the existence of Fan/Fred & HUD. It's a major problem along with BNPL and related consumer unsecured credit extension as a consequence of our response to the financial crisis which sets the stage for a full fledged revolution one day. Here's another story down this path - one of the head guys was at Aladdin Cap Mgt who became a busted CLO mgr and some senrior golmdan folks.

Rental-Home Owner Pretium Buys Home-Flipping Lender for $1.5 Billion
Anchor Loans has made $10 billion in loans, specializing in lending to home-flippers

Investment firm Pretium Partners is acquiring home-flipping lender Anchor Loans for $1.5 billion, the latest sign that big investors believe the record-setting housing boom has more room to run.

The deal gives Pretium, one of the country’s largest owners and managers of rental houses, a large new revenue stream in the hot business of turning homes into investment properties. Soaring home prices have been compelling more families to turn to rental homes to live in prime suburban neighborhoods.

The sellers were a group of investors that included Wafra Capital Partners Inc., an affiliate of a Kuwait government pension fund, which had acquired a controlling stake in the company in 2019.

Thousand Oaks, Calif.-based Anchor has originated more than $10 billion in debt, specializing in small loans to professional home-flippers as well as rental landlords. According to the company, 95% of its loans go to borrowers that have completed at least 40 projects. Flip loans are generally short-term—about one-year and high-interest.

In bringing Anchor in under its roof, Pretium is betting on continued business from investors looking to buy and renovate houses. The company points to both a shortage of homes and the needs of the country’s roughly 64 million existing homes built before 1990, many of which require updates and repairs to remain viable long-term investments.

“It’s not only that we don’t have enough houses, it’s that we don’t have the right houses,” said Ted Huffman, senior managing director and head of strategic development at Pretium.

Anchor and its large loan book will provide Pretium with possible leads for its rental-property management operation, Progress Residential, and a potential pipeline of newly renovated homes that Pretium might want to purchase, Mr. Huffman said.

The single family-rental market has had a banner year. Rents in the sector reached record high growth in July, rising 8.5% annually, according to housing data firm CoreLogic. Institutional investment in the single-family rental sector is also soaring. Large firms such as Blackstone Group Inc. and Invesco Real Estate recently have made multibillion-dollar commitments, while big home builders are becoming more focused on building homes for rent.

In the second quarter, one in four home buyers was an investor in hot markets such as Phoenix and Miami, according to real-estate company Redfin. Nationally, some 80,000 home sales that quarter were flips, meaning they were sold one year or less after purchase, the most flips since 2006, according to Attom Data Solutions. Home sale prices rose nearly 23% during the second quarter compared with the previous year, according to the National Association of Realtors.

Pretium owns about 70,000 single-family rental homes and in September launched a joint venture to invest $1 billion in the construction of new homes built to rent. Previous to that, Pretium and other investors took publicly traded landlord Front Yard Residential private in a $2.4 billion deal. Pretium has roughly $30 billion in total assets under management, the company said.

Write to Will Parker at [email protected]

[CU88]

What's happening in the Magic Kingdom is happening across the entire economy. Domino's is taking longer to deliver pizzas. Airlines are putting customers who call them on hold for hours. Restaurants, bars and hotels are understaffed and stretched thin. The quality of service seems to be deteriorating everywhere.

We've all heard about rising inflation. The price of stuff is going up. And if you read this newsletter, you've heard of shrinkflation. That's when the price of stuff stays the same, but the amount you get goes down. The economywide decline in service quality that we're now seeing is something different, and it doesn't have a good name. It's a situation where we're paying the same or more for services, but they kinda suck compared with what they used to be. We propose a new word to describe this stealth-ninja kind of inflation: skimpflation. It's when, instead of simply raising prices, companies skimp on the goods and services they provide.

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2021 ... says-it-is

[youthathletics]

Maybe its a good thing in the long run.....a 'reset' button if you will. To get us all back to the real world of not needed so damned much crapola and to focus on the simple things.

[Farfromgeneva]

What's happening in the Magic Kingdom is happening across the entire economy. Domino's is taking longer to deliver pizzas. Airlines are putting customers who call them on hold for hours. Restaurants, bars and hotels are understaffed and stretched thin. The quality of service seems to be deteriorating everywhere.

We've all heard about rising inflation. The price of stuff is going up. And if you read this newsletter, you've heard of shrinkflation. That's when the price of stuff stays the same, but the amount you get goes down. The economywide decline in service quality that we're now seeing is something different, and it doesn't have a good name. It's a situation where we're paying the same or more for services, but they kinda suck compared with what they used to be. We propose a new word to describe this stealth-ninja kind of inflation: skimpflation. It's when, instead of simply raising prices, companies skimp on the goods and services they provide.

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2021 ... says-it-is

There's been so much resistance to price increases from consumers going back to the financial crisis this is all been in place for a decade (and really in the 2000s as well). It's informaiton asymmetry in lieu of competitive advantage and we're seeing it more overtly in the "knowledge economy" cohort which is straight up monetizing personal information while wrapping it in the veneer of "metadata" as if they don't granularly isolate each individual. But I blame an increasingly uninformed consumer (along with the lack of enforcement of antitrust laws) as well as a deleterious and nefarious venture capital industry that destroys for the cheap option on a fat tail upside over competing to win the traditional way.

[Farfromgeneva]

Maybe its a good thing in the long run.....a 'reset' button if you will. To get us all back to the real world of not needed so damned much crapola and to focus on the simple things.

Well if prices reflected reality, and they havent in a decade, we'd have this more organically. Thanks Central Bank ZIRP.

[CU88]

What's happening in the Magic Kingdom is happening across the entire economy. Domino's is taking longer to deliver pizzas. Airlines are putting customers who call them on hold for hours. Restaurants, bars and hotels are understaffed and stretched thin. The quality of service seems to be deteriorating everywhere.

We've all heard about rising inflation. The price of stuff is going up. And if you read this newsletter, you've heard of shrinkflation. That's when the price of stuff stays the same, but the amount you get goes down. The economywide decline in service quality that we're now seeing is something different, and it doesn't have a good name. It's a situation where we're paying the same or more for services, but they kinda suck compared with what they used to be. We propose a new word to describe this stealth-ninja kind of inflation: skimpflation. It's when, instead of simply raising prices, companies skimp on the goods and services they provide.

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2021 ... says-it-is

There's been so much resistance to price increases from consumers going back to the financial crisis this is all been in place for a decade (and really in the 2000s as well). It's informaiton asymmetry in lieu of competitive advantage and we're seeing it more overtly in the "knowledge economy" cohort which is straight up monetizing personal information while wrapping it in the veneer of "metadata" as if they don't granularly isolate each individual. But I blame an increasingly uninformed consumer (along with the lack of enforcement of antitrust laws) as well as a deleterious and nefarious venture capital industry that destroys for the cheap option on a fat tail upside over competing to win the traditional way.

I still can't wrap my head around the 4 lbs bag of sugar.

[Farfromgeneva]

What's happening in the Magic Kingdom is happening across the entire economy. Domino's is taking longer to deliver pizzas. Airlines are putting customers who call them on hold for hours. Restaurants, bars and hotels are understaffed and stretched thin. The quality of service seems to be deteriorating everywhere.

We've all heard about rising inflation. The price of stuff is going up. And if you read this newsletter, you've heard of shrinkflation. That's when the price of stuff stays the same, but the amount you get goes down. The economywide decline in service quality that we're now seeing is something different, and it doesn't have a good name. It's a situation where we're paying the same or more for services, but they kinda suck compared with what they used to be. We propose a new word to describe this stealth-ninja kind of inflation: skimpflation. It's when, instead of simply raising prices, companies skimp on the goods and services they provide.

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2021 ... says-it-is

There's been so much resistance to price increases from consumers going back to the financial crisis this is all been in place for a decade (and really in the 2000s as well). It's informaiton asymmetry in lieu of competitive advantage and we're seeing it more overtly in the "knowledge economy" cohort which is straight up monetizing personal information while wrapping it in the veneer of "metadata" as if they don't granularly isolate each individual. But I blame an increasingly uninformed consumer (along with the lack of enforcement of antitrust laws) as well as a deleterious and nefarious venture capital industry that destroys for the cheap option on a fat tail upside over competing to win the traditional way.

I still can't wrap my head around the 4 lbs bag of sugar.

My kids probably have that in their Halloween buckets right now…

[CU88]

What's happening in the Magic Kingdom is happening across the entire economy. Domino's is taking longer to deliver pizzas. Airlines are putting customers who call them on hold for hours. Restaurants, bars and hotels are understaffed and stretched thin. The quality of service seems to be deteriorating everywhere.

We've all heard about rising inflation. The price of stuff is going up. And if you read this newsletter, you've heard of shrinkflation. That's when the price of stuff stays the same, but the amount you get goes down. The economywide decline in service quality that we're now seeing is something different, and it doesn't have a good name. It's a situation where we're paying the same or more for services, but they kinda suck compared with what they used to be. We propose a new word to describe this stealth-ninja kind of inflation: skimpflation. It's when, instead of simply raising prices, companies skimp on the goods and services they provide.

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2021 ... says-it-is

There's been so much resistance to price increases from consumers going back to the financial crisis this is all been in place for a decade (and really in the 2000s as well). It's informaiton asymmetry in lieu of competitive advantage and we're seeing it more overtly in the "knowledge economy" cohort which is straight up monetizing personal information while wrapping it in the veneer of "metadata" as if they don't granularly isolate each individual. But I blame an increasingly uninformed consumer (along with the lack of enforcement of antitrust laws) as well as a deleterious and nefarious venture capital industry that destroys for the cheap option on a fat tail upside over competing to win the traditional way.

I still can't wrap my head around the 4 lbs bag of sugar.

My kids probably have that in their Halloween buckets right now…

Serious, I just laughed out loud.

Thanks!

[Farfromgeneva]

Daughter had 122 pieces of candy. Makes it hard to tax when she keeps an inventory. Knows me too well, then goes “I’m going to shaaare”.

Read this and wondered if the scarcity in the labor or Sonic customers because their food is disgusting.

“We’re scarce, we have higher standards and that gives us more power than we’ve had before.”
— Zella Roberts, a waitress at a Sonic drive-in in Asheville, N.C., who successfully petitioned the company to make it easier for customers to tip their carhops. Flush with options and frustrated after laboring through lockdowns, employers are noting a shift in power that could be long-lasting.

[Farfromgeneva]

On a webinar so haven'd digested this yet but Fed statement came out at 2pm on tapering of bond purchases. Wondering where MBS (GSE, so fannie and freddie 15 and 30yr MBS pools of mortgages) spreads have gone. That and agency debentures are the closest derviative of treasury bonds and everything out moves off of that.

Fed Dials Back Bond Purchases, Plots End to Stimulus by June
Central bank affirms forecast that factors driving high inflation are “expected to be transitory”

Fed Chairman Jerome Powell has been seeking to assure investors that inflation risks are being closely monitored, while not appearing so worried that markets might anticipate a faster pivot to tighter money.
PHOTO: SARAH SILBIGER - POOL VIA CNP/ZUMA PRESS
By Nick Timiraos
Updated Nov. 3, 2021 2:21 pm ET
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The Federal Reserve approved plans to begin scaling back its bond-buying stimulus program this month and end it by June, a major step toward withdrawing its aggressive, pandemic-driven economic support amid a recent inflation surge.

Fed officials in their postmeeting statement Wednesday said they still anticipated elevated inflation would fall because high readings are “largely reflecting factors that are expected to be transitory.”

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“Supply and demand imbalances related to the pandemic and the reopening of the economy have contributed to sizable price increases in some sectors,” the statement said.

The Fed cut its short-term benchmark rate to near zero when the coronavirus pandemic hit the U.S. economy in March 2020. It held rates at that level on Wednesday.

It also has been buying at least $120 billion a month in Treasury and mortgage securities—initially to stabilize financial markets and later to hold down longer-term interest rates. The Fed’s holdings of those securities has more than doubled since March 2020 to around $8 trillion.

The Fed will reduce its bond purchases by $15 billion per month in November and by a further $15 billion in December, the central bank said Wednesday. It said similar reductions in the pace of net purchases “will likely be appropriate each month,” though officials would be prepared to adjust that pace “if warranted by changes in the economic outlook.”

Fed Chairman Jerome Powell has so strongly signaled in advance the decision on the asset purchases that investors have shifted their focus to how he will characterize inflation risks at his news conference later Wednesday—and the implications for how soon the central bank might raise interest rates.

Fed officials don’t want to lift rates until after they have ended the bond purchases. Mr. Powell has slightly moved up plans to wind down those purchases, relative to earlier market expectations, as inflation has soared this year.


Brisk demand for goods, disrupted supply chains, temporary shortages and a rebound in travel have pushed 12-month inflation to its highest readings in decades. Core inflation, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, rose 3.6% in September from a year earlier, according to the Fed’s preferred gauge.

From April through September, the Fed’s statement described high inflation as “largely reflecting transitory factors.” Wednesday’s statement included additional language to characterize why officials still expect prices to decline. “Progress on vaccinations and an easing of supply constraints are expected to support continued gains in economic activity and employment as well as a reduction in inflation,” it said.

Since officials’ previous meeting in September, inflation data have hinted at a potential broadening in price pressures and at the prospect that prices for certain items such as used cars, which witnessed sharp gains earlier this year, have started climbing once more.

While the data don’t necessarily disprove the Fed’s earlier expectations that certain price increases tied to the reopening of the economy this year from the pandemic will fade over time, it does at least augur a longer interval of elevated inflation readings.

“Supply-side constraints have gotten worse. The risks are clearly now to longer and more-persistent bottlenecks, and thus to higher inflation,” Mr. Powell said last month.

Higher inflation readings and policy pivots by other similarly-situated central banks have led bond investors to anticipate that the Fed will raise rates next summer, after it stops buying bonds, and again later in the year.

Mr. Powell has been seeking a middle ground that assures investors the Fed is closely monitoring inflation risks while not appearing so worried that he leads markets to anticipate an even faster pivot to tighter money. The expectation that inflation-adjusted interest rates will remain low have buoyed global asset prices. The Fed risks triggering new economic or financial stress by shifting abruptly.

[youthathletics]

You mentioned SALT recently, thought you may enjoy this:

~ https://www.crfb.org/blogs/there-no-suc ... cap-relief
~ https://www.crfb.org/blogs/72500-salt-c ... regressive

[runrussellrun]

They did all shut Bernie down last Feb (2020) in the primary. The right hasn't done anything remotely close to that.

the wrong, haven't done anything remotely close to that.

[Farfromgeneva]

You mentioned SALT recently, thought you may enjoy this:

~ https://www.crfb.org/blogs/there-no-suc ... cap-relief
~ https://www.crfb.org/blogs/72500-salt-c ... regressive

That looks like good analysis thanks. I only skimmed but will go back later and really dive in. It certainly only has the effect of increasing home prices. Backdoor way to allow companies to reduce compensation as people lived off their home value appreciation for the last 3 decades ignoring their inability to increase cash flow.

But yeah I don’t like how much we’ve subsidized home ownership at the expense of the renter class. It was a hit for me personally in the last tax code but my bigger problem is that it was done specifically to target and hurt a certain cohort not to help anyone in specific and if it did it was helping wealthy people by subsidizing broader reduction in marginal rates. Folks much below 30% marginal don't have incremental cash anyways not like going from 23 to 21% makes a difference.

Personally get rid of the agencies fan/Fred/hud (homelessness safety net can be executed without an agency that does so much more and puts money in the pockets of people like Ruby Schron and Stephen Ross). Get rid of mortgage tax deduction altogether. I’m for bouncing deposit insurance (FDIC) as it creates major problems by not differentiating the cost of debt, commoditizes money.

But the throw in all the ag and trade subsidies too.

[Farfromgeneva]

They did all shut Bernie down last Feb (2020) in the primary. The right hasn't done anything remotely close to that.

the wrong, haven't done anything remotely close to that.

Waah

[runrussellrun]

They did all shut Bernie down last Feb (2020) in the primary. The right hasn't done anything remotely close to that.

the wrong, haven't done anything remotely close to that.

Waah

never heard of that radio station, is it any good ?

Peter BROWN......he better slow down.

we HAVE to stop disinformation, on these threads.

Did your kids eat their breakfast, before walking to school ?

Must be really HOT down there.......global warming.

Does the band LIVE....hit home

[Farfromgeneva]

They did all shut Bernie down last Feb (2020) in the primary. The right hasn't done anything remotely close to that.

the wrong, haven't done anything remotely close to that.

Waah

never heard of that radio station, is it any good ?

Peter BROWN......he better slow down.

we HAVE to stop disinformation, on these threads.

Did your kids eat their breakfast, before walking to school ?

Must be really HOT down there.......global warming.

Does the band LIVE....hit home

You own that station

[runrussellrun]

Daughter had 122 pieces of candy. Makes it hard to tax when she keeps an inventory. Knows me too well, then goes “I’m going to shaaare”.

Read this and wondered if the scarcity in the labor or Sonic customers because their food is disgusting.

“We’re scarce, we have higher standards and that gives us more power than we’ve had before.”
— Zella Roberts, a waitress at a Sonic drive-in in Asheville, N.C., who successfully petitioned the company to make it easier for customers to tip their carhops. Flush with options and frustrated after laboring through lockdowns, employers are noting a shift in power that could be long-lasting.

dear diary..........

just tell her a "fear porn" story about how candy has been tainted with covid.......and take it all. Not , really, untrue. You wash all the pieces of candy, or did the jack O latern have an alcohol sprayer to kill the covid virus landing on the candy ?

Remember hand washing and social distancing ?

baseball........packed stadiums.....maskless.