Confounded Interest – Anthony B. Sanders
Financial Markets And Real Estate
The US economy is Slippin’ Into Darkness.
The Fed’s favorite yield curve measure, the implied yield on 3-month T-Bills in 18 months less the 3-month T-bill yield has inverted. Note that this curve inverts prior to a recession.
The new face of reckless Fed policy and Federal spending. 19 straight months of negative REAL earnings growth as America re-elects the same irresponsible fools that are turning the US into Venezuela.
Former Obama economist and Harvard University President Lawrence Summers says that the FTX meltdown whiffs on an Enron-like scandal.
“A lot of people have compared this to Lehman. I would compare it to Enron,” Summers told Bloomberg Television’s “Wall Street Week” with David Westin. “The smartest guys in the room. Not just financial error but — certainly from the reports — whiffs of fraud. Stadium namings very early in a company’s history. Vast explosion of wealth that nobody quite understands where it comes from.”
Lehman, Enron? How about Solyndra, one of the biggest political boondoggles in US history.
About two years after the Obama administration co-signed $535 million loans to Solyndra, the company filed for bankruptcy on September 1, 2011. A 2015 report from the Department of Energy found major flaws in Solyndra’s business practices and claimed the company made “inaccurate and misleading” statements to obtain the loan guarantees, and also found fault with Department of Energy oversight.
Which brings us to FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried (the son of Stanford law professor Barbara Fried and co-founder of the political fundraising organization Mind the Gap, which advocates for progressive political candidates and funds get-out-the-vote groups). Sam Bankman-Fried was a big Biden donor. What are the odds that The Federal government will impartially investigate SBF and the FTX fiasco? ZERO!
Why did FTX run into trouble?
FTX has a native cryptocurrency token called FTT, which traders use for operations like paying transaction fees. Last year, Mr. Zhao sold his stake in FTX back to Mr. Bankman-Fried, who paid for it partially with FTT tokens.
On Nov. 2, the crypto publication CoinDesk reported on a leaked document that appeared to show that Alameda Research, a hedge fund run by Mr. Bankman-Fried, held an unusually large amount of FTT tokens. FTX and Alameda are meant to be separate businesses, but the report claimed that they had close financial ties.
Binance announced on Nov. 6 that it would sell its FTT tokens “due to recent revelations.” In response, FTT’s price plummeted and traders rushed to pull out of FTX, fearful that it would be yet another fallen crypto company.
FTX scrambled to process requests for withdrawals, which amounted to an estimated $6 billion over three days. It seemed to enter a liquidity crunch, meaning it lacked the money to fulfill requests.
How did Binance intervene?
On Tuesday, Binance said it had reached an agreement to bail out FTX by buying the company. But, Mr. Zhao added in the announcement, “Binance has the discretion to pull out from the deal at any time.”
In a concurrent announcement, Mr. Bankman-Fried said the deal would protect customers and allow FTX to finish processing their withdrawals. He attempted to dispel rumors of conflict between FTX and Binance, adding, “we are in the best of hands.”
His last quote made me laugh.
Bitcoin plunged another -6% today as gold (gold line) and the S&P 500 (yellow line) rose. Moral to the story? Nothing has been the same since The Fed started tightening.
All cryptos are down today (except Litecoin). The three biggest, Bitcoin, Ethereum and Binance Coin are all down over 5%.
Why does Sam Bankman-Fried remind me of the late John Belushi?
Here is Sam Bankman-Fried defending his actions to his law professor Mom.
Now that the midterm elections are over (except for counting of million of mail-in ballots, a massive moral hazard risk), President Biden has proclaimed that he isn’t changing any of his horrid policies. And apparently, neither is The Federal Reserve.
Despite the headlines that The Federal Reserve is rapidly downsizing its massive balance sheet of assets, The Fed is just letting their enormous holdings of mortgage-backed securities (MBS) run off. That is, just letting MBS mature. So, The Fed’s System Open Market Holdings of Agency MBS has barely declined.
Here is the table of MBS run-off. The mass of MBS doesn’t start to mature until … 2039. It is Treasuries that are maturing.
So, The Fed is raising its target rate rapidly, although that is likely to reverse course in the first half of 2022.
Meanwhile, mortgage applications fall to lowest level since 1997 with Fed tightening.
“So Mr Bond…let me tell you my plan for global domination.”
Biden’s magic trick was to turn the economy into a train wreck.
Example? The 30-year mortgage rate was 2.88% on Biden’s inauguration day (January 20, 2021). They are now 7.32%, a 154% increase under Biden.
The US economy is suffering from knucklehead energy policies, reckless Federal spending and rampant inflation.
And why I won’t watch of subscribe to Peacock.
Yes, this is an economic double whammy!
First, according to Black Knight, US home values declined -2.6% over the past three months.
Second, the US Treasury 10Y-2Y yield curve remains near 1980s low.
There is a third whammy, rising utility costs (highest in a decade).
Yes, its a double whammy!
Here is the US midterm election in one chart.
According to Real Clear Politics, the generic Republican polling data FAVORABLE (red line) is at 47.9% while Democrat polling data favorable polling data (yellow line) is at 45.4%, advantage Republicans.
Biden has been a disaster as President (energy mandates, Afghanistan debacle, endless funding of Ukraine, highest inflation in 40 years, and every time he opens his mouth. But it is the “kitchen table” issues where Biden is getting clobbered: inflation, rising gas, food and diesel prices. One Democrat Congressman, Sean Patrick Maloney, said “Let them eat Chef Boyradee.” I can’t believe how tone deaf some politicians can be.
Biden’s UNFAVORABLE polling numbers (orange line) are directly related to the US headline inflation rate. Inflation was 1.4% YoY when Biden became President and it is now 8.2% YoY (blue line).
And I don’t think Biden’s hateful rhetoric toward “MAGA Republicans” is helping him. I thought his set looked like the movie “Doom” with Duane “The Rock” Johnson and Karl Urban.
There is no doubt that Biden is the Cousin Eddie of politics with his gifts that keep on giving. Like rampant inflation, soaring food, gasoline and diesel prices, and Pelosi/Schumer’s helping hand in creating price controls that will kill potential cures for illnesses.
In addition to rampant 40-year highs in inflation, we have the Clark Griswold of the economy, Fed Chair Jerome Powell, slamming his foot on the economic breaks to combat inflation created by Biden’s energy mandates and reckless Federal spending (like the aforementioned, laughable “Inflation Reduction Act.”
So, Biden helps creates massive inflation and Powell and the Gang counterattacked by raising their target rate with more to come (at least until May 2023). And with the implied Fed Funds rate soaring (red line), we are seeing the FANG stocks (Facebook or Meta, Amazon, Netflix and Google) falling more rapidly (white line) than the S&P 500 index. Which is also falling like a rock (yellow line). All this is happening as M2 Money YoY crashes and burns.
How about growth versus value under Cousin Eddie and Clark Griswold? The Vanguard Growth ETF and Vanguard Real Estate ETF are plunging with Fed tightening (red line). Vanguard’s Value ETV (yellow line) is down too, but not by as much.
Yes, Washington DC elites. The gift that keeps on giving … bad things.
Thanks to my former GMU student Andrew Edwards for the Cousin Eddie suggestion!
It has been a wild and mostly negative ride under Biden’s Reign of Error. 40-year highs in inflation (caused by Biden’s fossil fuel mandates and Federal spending) have left the US mortgage market FINALLY seeing positive REAL mortgage rates (now 0.32%), even though the REAL 10yr Treasury yield is still negative (-2.50%).
Even Joe Biden’s hate speech towards Republicans can’t mask the horrid inflation on his watch. As if Biden watches anything other than ice cream cones.
On a YoY basis, US Productivity is down for the 3rd straight quarter (and 4th quarter of the last 5).
On the mirror image of productivity, unit labor costs rose 3.5% QoQ (a notable slowing from the 8.9% QoQ growth in Q2). This was the 6th quarter in a row of rising unit labor costs (but was less than the +4.0% QoQ expected)…
However, on a YoY basis, that is the fastest growth since Q3 1982.
Yikes! The 2s10s Yield Curve Inversion Is the worst since the 1980s.
Markets are getting stranger than the Paul Pelosi hammer attack.
The S&P 500 index tanked -2.35% after Powell and The Fed failed to pivot.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell opened a new phase in his campaign to regain control of inflation, saying US interest rates will go higher than previously projected, but the path may soon involve smaller hikes.
Addressing reporters Wednesday after the Fed raised rates by 75 basis points for the fourth time in a row, Powell said “incoming data since our last meeting suggests that ultimate level of interest rates will be higher than previously expected.”
Powell said is it would be appropriate to slow the pace of increases “as soon as the next meeting or the one after that. No decision has been made,” he said, while stressing that “we still have some ways” before rates were tight enough.
“It is very premature to be thinking about pausing,” he said.
Fed Funds Futures data point now to a June peak in the target rate of 5.055%, then a decline.
Confounded Interest - Anthony B. Sanders 
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