Confounded Interest – Anthony B. Sanders
Financial Markets And Real Estate
The Fed will have to whip it good with rate cuts if the recession warnings are an indicator of what lies ahead for the US economy.
The ratio of The Conference Board’s Leading Economic Indicators (LEI) vs. The Conference Board’s Coincident Economic Index (CEI) ratio hasn’t been this low since 2008.
Fed Funds Futures are signalling rate cuts at the September 17th FOMC meeting and December 10th meetings.
On the crypto front, Ethereum is soaring.
Debt stress is mounting!
People get ready! Powell and the Fed might actually lower their target rate at The Fed’s Open Market Committee meeting on September 17.
The Fed hasn’t touched rates under Trump, but were hyperactive under Biden.
Let the good times roll? I wonder if Jay Powell and the other Fed honchos are taking Jackalope Rides in Jackson Hole, WYO?
Is This My Free One-Way Bus Ticket To Cleveland? Cleveland is leading the nation in home price growth at 4.7% YoY. Followed closely by Hartford CT, Louisville KY, Detroit MI and Buffalo NY.
Well, if The Fed would stop printing money (M2), home prices would decline. But The Fed will keep on printing!
Of course, the top 1% of net worth households are doing quite well thanks to The Fed’s eternal money printing.
On the commercial RE side, US office vacancy rates are approaching 20%.
Lastly, Tampa FL is the slowest growing area. Actually declining at a rate of -6.2% YoY.
The US housing market is finally slowing down in terms of price growth. But this is after 3 Federal government-fueled house price bubbles.
In addition to record-high housing prices, mortgage rates are higher than levels going back to 2006.
Throw in the “woke” movement, and we have a problem. The percentage of 30-year-olds who are both married and homeowners has plummeted to the lowest level since 1950.
Simply lowering interest rates won’t fix this problem. Much of the housing “crisis” is due to local and state level politicians and their restrictive housing policies. Like LA Mayor Karen “Venceremos Brigade” Bass allocating the burnt-down Pacific Palisades area on the Pacific Ocean to “affordable housing.”
The July jobs reports for the US revealed some interesting factoids, such as the BLS Commissioner, Erika McEntarfer, being fired. Note that McEntarfer was BLS Commissioner since January 29, 2024. But under McEntarfer, downward revisions were the norm except for election season (Oct 2024 – Dec 2024) when there were upward revisions. But once Trump was elected and took office, all jobs report revisions were negative.
Native born workers rose while foreign born workers declined.
And for the 6th straight month, Federal jobs declined.
And with the poor jobs report that will surely be revised upwards.
The market is pricing in a rate cut at the 09/17/2025 FOMC meeting.
Yes, the US housing market is in a price bubble. If we compared home price growth with median earnings.
The financial crisis was spawned by a home price bubble where home price growth was faster than median earnings growth (see Bubble 1). After home price growth cooled in 2007-2009, the cycle started again (Bubble 2). But the current bubble (Bubble 3) is related to the Covid outbreak and massive spending binge by Congress (and The Fed). Notice that median earnings dropped (green line) post Covid.
But while we have normalized home price growth and median earnings, the LEVELS are still unaffordable for millions of households.
Poor Bill Pulte (FHFA Director). He has to work with an uncooperative Fed under Foul Powell, and local politivcians like Greasy Gavin Newsom (Democrat Gov of California), JB Pritzker (Democrat Gov on Illinois), Kathy Hocul (Democrat Gov of New York), and the assorted lunatic Mayors like Karen Bass (D, Mayor Los Angeles), Zohran Kwame Mamdani (D, presumptive Mayor New York City), etc.
Mortgage applications decreased 3.8 percent from one week earlier, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending July 25, 2025.
The Market Composite Index, a measure of mortgage loan application volume, decreased 3.8 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 6 percent compared with the previous week and was 17 percent higher than the same week one year ago.
The Refinance Index decreased 1 percent from the previous week and was 30 percent higher than the same week one year ago.
Between Powell keeping rates high and Biden’s grossly incompetent management, the mortgage market remains in the doldrums.
The US Real GDP report is out tomorrow. Here is an advanced estimate of Q2 US Real GDP, courtesy of The Atlanta Fed. It is forecast to be 2.9%. Despite dire forecasts by Democrats and the media.
Latest estimate: 2.9 percent — July 29, 2025
The final GDPNow model estimate for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the second quarter of 2025 is 2.9 percent on July 29, up from 2.4 percent on July 25. After this morning’s Advance Economic Indicators report from the US Census Bureau, a decline in the nowcast of real gross private domestic investment growth from -11.7 percent to -12.7 percent was more than offset by an increase in the nowcast of the contribution of net exports to real GDP growth from 3.31 percentage points to 4.04 percentage points.
My knucklehead Congressional Rep Joyce Beatty (Democrat) says that Trump is lying about the economic data, but was silent about Biden’s inflated jobs numbers. So Ms Beatty, is the Atlanta Fed lying too??
US home prices fell for the 3rd straight month In May. The MoM decrease in the seasonally adjusted (SA) Case-Shiller National Index was at -0.29% (-3.5% annual rate).
Despite continued money printing by The Fed.
kkk
Confounded Interest - Anthony B. Sanders 
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