Resident Biden and Congress unleashed inflation of the unsuspecting American middle class. Now real estate is starting to feel the pain of Fed monetary tightening.
For March, the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller 20 metro home price index actually fell -1.15% YoY as The Fed continues to tighten its monetary noose on the US economy.
The biggest losers in terms of home prices? The west! Los Angeles, Denver, Phoenix, Portland, Las Vegas, San Diego, San Francisco and Pramila Jayapal-ville, Seattle.
On the commercial real estate side, quarterly returns were all negative in Q1 2023. Especially office space.
California Governor Gavin Newsom (Nancy Pelosi’s newphew). “Watch me make housing values collapse!” Abracadabra!
But that is where we are in the US. A President who acts like a spoiled 12 year old bully, members of Congress like Cori Bush and AOC who think The Fed can just print trillions MORE and give it to preferred groups. Senator Diane Feinstein (soon to be replaced by a horrible human being in the person of Adam Schiff). John Fetterman, the next Bernie Sanders?? C’mon DC. A true ship of fools. And dangerous ones at that.
So since September 26, 2022, we have seen a fundametal shift in markets. The US Dollar is down -21% since September 26, 2022 while Bitcoin is up 41%, Gold is up 21% and Silver is up 28%.
Biden is sitting pretty, If McCarthy chickens out and agrees to Biden’s outrageous budget, Biden looks like a hero. If Biden defaults, the MSM media will blame McCarthy and Republicans, so Biden wins. No wonder Biden said he isn’t worried about the debt ceiling negotations. He wins no matter what, And we the 99% get screwed.
The Federal government in Washington DC is broken beyond repair. Politicians get elected by promising free or cheap things, so they keep delivering the bacon. Or pork to political donors. The top 1% get massive payoffs (like green energy subsidies or bank bailouts), the bottom 99% get out of control entitlements like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. And other unsustainable entitlements. In fact, student loans are now an entitlement since some voters will vote for the corrupt politician (no, Joe Biden isn’t the only corrupt politician in Washington DC) who will forgive their student loans.
In fact, we now have $187 TRILLION in UNFUNDED liabilities that were promised to the 99%. The 1% will always get their political contributions paid. Biden and Schumer have promised their donor class trillions in spending, so that are threatening to let the US debt default to protect the 1%.
And unfunded entitlements are expected to soar, particularly Medicare.
Mandatory spending is expected to soar while discretionary spending is almost flat in terms of growth.
Meanwile, the US credit default swap remains elevated as the US Treasury short curve (2Y-3M) is near the most inverted in history.
And this headline, “Biden Not Ready Yet to Invoke 14th Amendment to Avoid US Default”. That means Biden would adopt extraordinary powers to prevent a debt default. Hence, the idiocy like the trillion dollar coin.
Nobel Laureate and Statist useful idiot Paul Krugman wants to keep spending trillions. As a result, he argues “Don’t worry about the declining US dollar hegemony … as long as the US doesn’t default.” Translation: Krugman agrees with Dementia Joe that Republicans should just pass Biden’s budget with no strings attached. C’mon Krugman. The growth of BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, South Africa and growing) is partly due to 1) perceived weakness of Senile Grandpa Joe and 2) the fiscal spending and debt growth in Washington DC. Of course it matters, but Krugman wants to keep spending on green lunacy and entitlements until we break the back of the country. Sounds like Krugman is on board with Cloward-Piven.
They can’t cut promised entitlements. Look at France where Macron raised the retirement age by 2 years and there are endless riots. So debt default is the only option, though painful.
Will Congress and future administrations stop prominsing endless spending that benefits the 1%? Not likely. Our political system is hopelessly broken.
I am sure that China’s Communist Party has sent Dementia Joe a message “We own you! You better not default on what you owe us!!” Or default so we can own you financially.
Three of the four horsemen of the financial apocalypse. Yellen is the fourth horseman, but is too short to appear in the picture.
US Core inflation keeps rising despite The Federal Reserve slowing M2 Money growth and raising The Fed Funds Targget rate as The Fed plays catch up from Janet Yellen’s “Too Low For Too Long” monetary policies under Obama. And she was … negligent.
US Core Inflation (Core CPI YoY) rose to 5.6% in March despite The Fed cranking up their target rate and rapidly withdrawing M2 Money.
How about REAL wages? Real average weekly earnings growth has now been negative for 24 straight months.
One reason that core inflation is still rising is that The Fed still has not raised rates sufficiently. According to the Taylor Rule, the Fed Funds Target rate should be 11.77% based on core inflation of 5.6%. Hey, The Fed isn’t even half way there. It is like the Doolittle Raiders in World War II dropping their bombs 100 miles off the Japanese coast well short of their target.
Fed Funds Futures are pricing in one more rate hike (and a small one at that) before they resume cutting rates again.
Are central banks like The Federal Reserve and European Central Bank ({ECB) sinking the banks?
Deutsche Bank, Germany’s largest bank (eerily like Germany’s World War II battleship The Bismarck) is seeing a blow out in its 1-year credit default swaps (CDS) as the ECB cranks up it main refinancing rate to fight inflation.
And then we have Deutsche’s Banks gross notional derivatives exposure (Euro 55.6 TRILLLION) dwarfing German GDP (Euro 2.7 Trillion). By a factor of greater than 20! Now, THAT’S a lot of derivatives exposure.
On the bond front (the NEW eastern front), we see the US Treasury 2-year yield rising 17.1 basis points. But European sovereign yields are up double digits as well (except for Italy).
Despite cries from Summers, Yellen and other the DC illuminati (Biden is oddly silent), US banks are NOT fine. In fact, banks in general are suffering from Fed rates increases due to holding of long-term Treasuries and MBS.
In fact, The Federal Reserve’s fight against inflation is causing serious problems, as exemplified by AOC. No, not THAT AOC. but bank Accumulated Other Comprehensive Income.
Accumulated Other Comprehensive Income (AOCI) are special gains and losses that are listed as special items in the shareholder equity section of a company’s balance sheet. The AOCI account is the designated space for unrealized profits or losses on items that are placed in the other comprehensive income category.
On the regulatory call reports, AOCI is added to regulatory capital. Since SVB’s AOCI was negative (because of its unrealized losses on AFS securities) as of Dec. 31, it lowered the company’s total equity capital. So a fair way to gauge the negative AOCI to the bank’s total equity capital would be to divide the negative AOCI by total equity capital less AOCI — effectively adding the unrealized losses back to total equity capital for the calculation.
Getting back to our list of 10 banks that raised similar red margin flags to those of SVB, here’s the same group, in the same order, showing negative AOCI as a percentage of total equity capital as of Dec. 31. We have added SVB to the bottom of the list. The data was provided by FactSet:
Or this chart of vulnerable banks from Morningstar of unrealized losses and liquidity risk.
Here is a snapshot of SVB’s balance sheet. Or UNbalanced sheet.
After Congress passed the greatly flawed Dodd-Frank banking legislation, bailouts of banks are prohibited. But bank BAIL-INs still exist. Banks use money from their unsecured creditors, including depositors and bondholders, to restructure their capital to stay afloat. Put simply, they can convert their debt into equity to increase their capital requirements. Although depositors run the risk of losing some of their deposits, banks can only use deposits in excess of the $250,000 protection provided by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).
In any case, the FDIC and Fed are weighing a special vehicle after SVB swiftly collapses. Special vehicle? Sounds an awful like the mega bank bailout of 2008 under Hank Paulson.
As Americans are painfully aware, inflation is still haunting us. Despite Administration proclamations that inflation is declining, it is rising again. And with rising inflation (and an overheated labor market), The Federal Reserve is in full counterattack mode, withdrawing stimulus and raising rates.
And with Fed tightening comes rising 30-year mortgage rates.
Out of boredom, I watched the Clive Barker film “Hellraiser” and noticed perpertual Democrat Presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton in the cast as the female Cenobite.
First, banks are stashing cash with the New York Fed on an “overnight basis” although it is looking pretty permanent to me. Repos (or repuchase agreements) soared to $2.55 TRILLION as of 12/30/22.
But this morning we see the US Treasury 10-year plummeting -15 basis points. As I used to tell my University of Chicago, Ohio State and George Mason finance students, any 10 basis point shift (plus or minus) is a big deal. Something is happening.
The 10-year Treasury yield plunging -15 bps is a “good thing” for the mortgage market in that US mortgage rates will likely follow suit and fall.
(Bloomberg) — Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda just gave investors a glimpse of what to expect when the world’s boldest experiment with ultra-loose monetary policy comes to an end.
In the face of sustained market pressure, Kuroda shocked markets Tuesday by saying he’ll now allow Japan’s 10-year bond yields to rise to around 0.5%, double the previous upper limit of 0.25%.
Whether this is a strategic tweak to buy time for his yield-curve control settings until his decade-long term ends in Aprilor the start of the end for his unprecedented monetary easing remains to be seen.
Here are the BOJ’s rate. bands being widened.
The yen?
And with the ECB, Fed and now Bank of Japan all tightening, we are seeing sovereign yields rising across the board.
The Japanese sovereign yield curve is upward sloping unlike the humped US Treasury yield curve.
The Federal Reserve forecast for the US economy is a dismal 0.50% YoY. Do I detect a trend?
The FOMC forecast for 2023 and 2024. Core PCE YoY (inflation) is forecast to drop to 3.50%, still considerably higher than The Fed’s target rate of inflation of 2%. And unemployment is forecast to be 4.60%.
To cope with Bidenflation, US personal savings rate as of October is -67.9% YoY. The “good” news is that rents YoY are crashing. But food prices under Inflation Joe remain very high. But most everything is slowing down, not due to Biden’s policies, but a global and US economic slowdown.
With a big slowdown coming our way, you can understand why The Fed’s December Dot Plot is showing declining Fed Funds Target rate starts declining in 2024.
Even US mortgage rates are headed down.
Speaking of going down, cryptos are down across the board with Cardano leading the decline at -6.91%.
Confounded Interest - Anthony B. Sanders 
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