We are now seeing the aftermath of Biden’s failed, top-down, Soviet-style economic policies (or follicies). And it is grim. Bidenomics is now fully exposed like The Fully Month. Except this is The Full Joe!
The GDPNow model estimate for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the first quarter of 2025 is -1.5 percent on February 28, down from 2.3 percent on February 19. After recent releases from the US Bureau of Economic Analysis and the US Census Bureau, the nowcast of the contribution of net exports to first-quarter real GDP growth fell from -0.41 percentage points to -3.70 percentage points while the nowcast of first-quarter real personal consumption expenditures growth fell from 2.3 percent to 1.3 percent.
Another sign of Biden’s failed, top-down cronynomics is housing. Pending home sales fell to 70.6.
Elon Musk, who Democrats consider to be The Borg King, and DOGE have laid-off many Federal workers. Today’s jobless claims report revealed that over 2 million Federal workers filed for unemployment benefits.
DOGE has saved taxpayers over $143 BILLION thus far.
High housing prices, high commodity prices, high interest rates. All thanks to Biden’s horrible top-down economic policies. Its as is Biden was humming “I’m going to take prices higher” while he was President.
Sales of new single-family houses in January 2025 were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 657,000, according to estimates released jointly today by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. This is 10.5 percent below the revised December rate of 734,000 and is 1.1 percent below the January 2024 estimate of 664,000.
The most unaffordble countries are Portugal, Canada, the USA, Switzerland, and the Czech Republic. The most affordable? Romania, Finland, Italy, and Bulgaria.
For the USA, Hawaii and California are the least affordable while West Virginia and Iowa are the most affordable.
The US got hit with 2 deadly viruses in 2020. First, Covid-19 struck then another deadly virus struck in late 2020 with the election of DEI-obsessed Joe Biden, the worst President in history.
With rising interest rates and housing prices under “Clueless Joe,” buying conditions for housing plunged from around 160 under Trump to an abysmal 30 under Biden. And now Trump.
For the second straight month, US home prices accelerated YoY in December (according to the latest data from S&P Global’s Case-Shiller Index). The 20-City Composite saw prices jump 0.5% MoM (faster than expected and the biggest jump since June) and accelerating MoM for the 3rd straight month.
Only Tampa FLA of the top 20 metro areas had a negative YoY price change, but 14 of the top 20 metro areas experienced price declines from November to December: Atlanta, Charlotte, Cleveland, Dallas, Detroit, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New York, Phoenix, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle, Tampa and Washington DC.
Citi’s economic surprise index fell to -7.80 in February. This is the remnant of Biden/Democrats horrible economic policies and fear of Trump’s tariff policies.
Gold, Bitcoin and the S&P 500 are doing quite well on the prospects for growth in the US under Trump.
The US economy like an aircraft carrier, doesn’t turn on a dime. Think of the Japanese carriers at Midway in WWII. Thanks Admiral Biden! And Rear Admiral Harris!
Sales of existing single-family houses, townhouses, condos, and co-ops that closed in January dropped by 4.9% from December, seasonally adjusted, to an annual rate of 4.08 million sales, according to the National Association of Realtors today.
This rate of sales was up just 2.0% from the abysmally low levels a year ago – 2024 as a whole had been the worst sales year since 1995 – and flat with the abysmally low levels two years ago.
Compared to January 2021, the sales rate was down by 36%, compared to January 2019, the sales rate was down by 25%
On a NON seasonally adjusted basis, things look even more grim.
Active inventory is up 27.6% YoY. As mortgage rates are projected to rise, things can get worse.
Mortgage rates continue to hover around 7%. Mortgage rates rose 164% under Biden!
Maybe if Fed Chair Jerome Powell is forced to wear Sky Saxon of The Seed’s wizard outfit, he will improve his policies.
I call this the house latitudes. Horse latitudes is a belt of calm air and sea occurring in both the northern and southern hemispheres between the trade winds and the westerlies. And when the ships motion stalled, the crews would jetison their cargo of horses to the delight of sharks! So, we are in state of HOUSE latitudes where the wind pushing mortgage refis and purchase apps. So we are all riders on the storm.
Mortgage applications decreased 6.6 percent from one week earlier, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending February 14, 2025.
The Market Composite Index, a measure of mortgage loan application volume, decreased 6.6 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from one week earlier. On an unadjusted basis, the Index decreased 4 percent compared with the previous week. The seasonally adjusted Purchase Index decreased 6 percent from one week earlier. The unadjusted Purchase Index decreased 1 percent compared with the previous week and was 7 percent higher than the same week one year ago.
The Refinance Index decreased 7 percent from the previous week and was 39 percent higher than the same week one year ago.
Privately-owned housing starts in January were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,366,000. This is 9.8 percent below the revised December estimate of 1,515,000 and is 0.7 percent below the January 2024 rate of 1,376,000. Single-family housing starts in January were at a rate of 993,000; this is 8.4 percent below the revised December figure of 1,084,000. The January rate for units in buildings with five units or more was 355,000.
Janet Yelllen, the former Federal Reserve Chair and Treasury Secretary under clueless Joe Biden was a disaster in every respect. As Fed Chair, she was noteworthy for her clinging to low rates for too long. And as Treasury Secretary, she is noteworthy for her gross fiscal mismanagement (look at the deficit and debt crisis!). Now Zero Hedge has this disastrous report of $4.7 TRILLION in virtuallly untraceable Treasury payments.
The Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) on Monday revealed its finding that $4.7 trillion in disbursements by the US Treasury are “almost impossible” to trace, thanks to a rampant disregard for the basic accounting practice of using of tracking codes when dishing out money.
With a debt load of $36.5 trillion and D.O.G.E. clock at $109 million and growing. Not to mention the $227 trillion in unfunded liabilities.
Mind you, it’s not as if such a federal tracking system wasn’t already in place— it simply went casually unused for all sorts of payouts adding up to an almost unfathomable $4.7 trillion. Without Treasury Access Symbol (TAS) identification codes associated with those payouts, there’s little hope in figuring out where all that money went.
“In the Federal Government, the TAS field was optional for ~$4.7 Trillion in payments and was often left blank, making traceability almost impossible,” DOGE announced via its X account. Thanks to DOGE, those “optional” days are over. “As of Saturday, this is now a required field, increasing insight into where money is actually going,” DOGE added.
DOGE’s scrutiny of various government agencies is eliciting high-pitched shrieks from nearly every leftist in America, from establishment politicians who don’t want the curtain that hides their hijinks and grifting torn down, to your liberal sister-in-law who thinks the government has an endless supply of money and that it spends it all virtuously.
Earlier this month, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent pushed back on portrayals of DOGE employees as reckless rogues. “These are highly trained professionals,” he told Bloomberg. “This is not some roving band going around doing things. This is methodical and it is going to yield big savings.”
In the wake of the latest revelation that makes normal people glad that DOGE teams are scouring the federal government, Democrats desperately tried to find a way to make it sound bad that DOGE exposed trillions in untraceable payouts and promptly instituted tighter accounting discipline.
Meanwhile, leftists have also been foaming at the mouth over news that DOGE staffers are looking into the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) books, as if they were going to start rerouting funds to Tesla. Considering Social Security is careening toward mandatory benefit cuts as soon as 2033, everyone should welcome a team of financial professionals making sure the system isn’t being drained by improper payments.
Of course, that appears to be exactly what’s been happening. On Sunday night, Musk said DOGE might be on the trail of “the biggest fraud in history,” as SSA data appears to show that 20.789 million Americans over the age of 100 are collecting Social Security retirement benefits. That includes 12 million who are purportedly over 120 years old.
Bent on derailing DOGE, Democrats have sued to prevent the organization from accessing federal data associated with the Office of Personnel Management, and the Health and Human Services, Education, Energy, Transportation, Labor and Commerce departments. On Monday, the federal judge handling the request for a restraining order expressed skepticism over Democrats’ challenge, noting that their “evidence” was largely media speculation about potential harms springing from DOGE’s activities: “The courts can’t act based on media reports. We can’t do that.“
A ruling is expected Tuesday. Here’s looking forward to DOGE proceeding to uncover a relentless string of scandals for months and months to come.
Confounded Interest - Anthony B. Sanders 
You must be logged in to post a comment.