Confounded Interest – Anthony B. Sanders
Financial Markets And Real Estate
The Freddie Mac 30-year mortgage survey rate fell below 3% today to 2.98%.
And with today’s abysmal inflation report, the REAL 30-year mortgage rate fell to -3.13%.
Yes, President Biden is asking his economic council to do something about inflation. How about 1) telling The Fed to back off its outrageous and damaging stimulus and 2) stop shutting down pipelines.
Here is Joe Biden (aka, the Skipper) eyeing inflation from the White House.
How insanely overstimulated in the US economy by The Federal Reserve? Today’s red-hot inflation report of 6.2% YoY implies a Fed Funds Target rate of … 14.94%!! According to the Taylor Rule model, The Fed Funds Target rate should be almost 15%.
If we use CORE inflation (that is, CPI less food and energy), The Fed’s Target rate should be “only” 11.10%.
I feel like I am watching re-runs of Gilligan’s Island with Biden as the Skipper and Powell as Gilligan. Thurston Howell III and his wife lovey are the US Congress and Janet Yellen is the Professor. Case in point? REAL average hourly earnings YoY fell to -1.2% under the Gilligan’s Island leadership in DC.
Biden Starts To Freak Out About Soaring Inflation, Orders Economic Council To “Reduce Energy Costs”
This economic council?
President Biden wants to know if you are Tuff Enough to stand rapidly rising energy prices as he shuts down American supply?
Since Biden’s inauguration, West Texas Intermediate crude prices have soared by 58%, regular gasoline prices have soared by 43% and heating oil has soared by 54%.
How do you spell Federal energy policies? M-O-N-E-Y!
Meanwhile, US households are told to put on more blankets and drive less while the DC elites (like Obama, Kerry and Yellen) fly around the world in fossil-fuel guzzling jets lecturing everyone on the need to get rid of fossil fuels.
Odd, since annual CO2 emissions have declined significantly from 2007 levels.
The face of Biden’s energy policies. Blah-blah-blah.
With The Federal Reserve leaving its target rate at 0.25%, but hinting at a tapering (slowdown) of asset purchases, I thought it would be good to present where The Fed sits at the moment.
You can see the rise in the effective Fed Funds rate from 2016 to early 2020, then KABOOM! COVID struck, the effective Fed Funds rate crashed while The Fed dramatically increased their purchases of Treasuries and Agency MBS. Both Treasury and Agency MBS purchases are projected to decline by mid-2022. The Fed’s target rate (purple line) is project to rise to 1% after 2023.
Where SHOULD The Fed Funds Target rate be? How about 8.80% instead of 0.25%.
So we still have over-stimulypto with The Fed projected to raise rates at a snail’s pace.
Face it, Wall Street wants interest rates low, even if inflation burns out of control.
From The Land of 1,000 Excuses, The Federal Reserve Open Market Committee (FOMC) will announce … no rate increases and a slight reduction in their assets purchases (Treasuries and Agency MBS). The announcement will be at 2pm EST (not at The Midnight Hour).
The Federal Open Market Committee is all but certain to hold rates near zero after a two-day policy meeting and announce a $15 billion monthly reduction in bond buying from the current $120 billion pace, judging that the test for tapering has been met as the economy heals from Covid-19.
There are two rate increases baked into the Fed Funds futures data as of today.
But a troubling aspect of The Fed’s monetary policy is that M2 Money Velocity is near the lowest in history and The Fed has been binge printing. What this means is that money printing has had little impact on GDP growth.
When The Fed mentions the post-COVID recovery, I hope they mention that REAL hourly wage growth is NEGATIVE.
And REAL S&P 500 earnings yield is also negative.
The Fed will likely to blame TRANSITORY effects such as the backed-up port traffic in Long Beach for rising prices rather than their flooding the markets with too much money.
But The Fed will continue to print, even though they will blame bottlenecks for inflation rather than their haphazard drowning of the economy in money.
Given that The Fed is monetizing the reckless spending by The Federal government, particularly Pelosi’s latest budget, we will see coordination between Chairman Powell and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen (aka, Mustang Sally).
Call Jerome at 634-5789 to tell him to raise rate to normal levels.
Yes, home prices are still growing at a super-hot pace of 18%, according to Corelogic.
But the forecast for home price growth is for 1.9% YoY in 2022.
As home price growth crashes back to earth as wages don’t keep pace with home prices.
Home prices have been growing in most states out west where The Fed’s money pump has resulted in a boom in second homes and people escaping high tax California and Oregon for Nevada, Idaho, Arizona (again), Utah and Montana. The east coast is seeing the Carolinas booming along with Florida and Indiana. Escape from New York?
Escape from LA … to Arizona, Nevada, Idaho and Utah?
Instead of Bonjovi singing “Keeping the faith,” they should sing “Losing the faith” with regard to central banks and inflation.
Ethererum, the cryptocurrency, is now at $4,298. It under $200 as the Covid crisis took shape in March 2020. Since Covid, The Federal Reserve went loco and massively increased their money supply and asset purchases. With that response (and economic bottlenecks), inflation has increased to 5.4% YoY.
The Fed’s new moto should be “Policy errors ARE our business!”
No, we don’t look to President Beavis to do much of anything positive about inflation.
(Bloomberg) — The largest owner of U.S. rental houses isn’t seeing any let-up in demand, or in its ability to increase rents.
Invitation Homes Inc., which owns more than 80,000 single-family rentals, raised prices by nearly 11% in the third quarter, according to a statement. The company boosted rents by 8% on renewals and 18% when leasing homes to new tenants. Rates are rising fastest in the Southwest, where rents increased 30% on new leases in Las Vegas, and 29% in Phoenix.
“It’s a little bit crazy,” Chief Executive Officer Dallas Tanner said on a conference call with investors Thursday. “There just isn’t enough quality housing available right now.”
Rising rents have been a staple of the economy since early Covid lockdowns lifted in the middle of last year. Surging purchase prices have pushed homeownership out of reach for first-time buyers.
Invitation’s properties, which tend be more centrally located than those owned by other institutional landlords, have been especially popular. And tenants tended to stay put: The company had a record-low turnover rate in the quarter, which reduced the expenses associated with preparing a house for leasing.
Invitation’s shares rose slightly to $40.77 at 12:49 p.m. New York time after the company raised its expectations for full- year revenue and net operating income. The stock is up 37% for the year.
As Milton Friedman once said, “If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there’d be a shortage of sand.” In this case, The Federal government and Federal Reserve were put in charge of the Covid epidemic and we have shortages of almost everything. Including housing.
I don’t have Invitations rent growth chart, but here is Zillow’s YoY rent chart against The Fed’s balance sheet.
The good news? The 11% increase is almost half of the 20% YoY Case-Shiller National home price index.
Here is Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen making housing supply disappear.
In the third quarter the median home price hit $404,700, jumping nearly 13% since third quarter of 2020, when the median sales price was $358,700.
Though it’s an eye-catching number, the market has been hot of late, and a lack of inventory and high demand means foretold the rise in home prices.
According to a recent note from Goldman Sachs, home prices could rise another 16% by the end of next year. Goldman economist Jan Hatzius pointed out that of all the pandemic shortages, the housing shortage might last the longest and that a crash is very unlikely.
Sure Jan. That’s what economists were saying in 2007 too before housing prices crashed and burned. Although this time its different: The Federal Reserve hadn’t gone insane buying Treasuries and Agency MBS before the housing bubble burst in 2008/2009.
Despite the staggering and unorthodox monetary stimulus from The Federal Reserve, US real GDP continues to fall. The Q3 real GDP report is out and real GDP QoQ fell to 2%. Not surprising given that the Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow tracker is at a dismal 0.195% and falling.
The culprit? Personal consumption fell to 1.6% in Q3 after hitting 12% in Q2.
The GDP price index actually declined slightly from 6.1% to 5.7%.
Of course, Bloomberg blames the decline in GDP on supply constraints … which were created by The Fed and Federal government dumping trillions of dollars of stimulus. While the monetary stimulus is still raging, Federal government stimulus has worn out. To paraphrase BB King, “The fiscal stimulus is gone.”
Yes, The Federal Reserve and the Federal government reacted insanely to the Covid crisis and created a total mess (including ill-advised government lockdowns of the economy, stimulus to households who already were employed, etc.)
Bloomberg News headline of “U.S. Posts Weakest Growth of Pandemic Recovery on Supply Woes” misses the point that The Fed and Federal Reserve CAUSED the supply woes. It reminds me of an episode from the British comedy series “Blackadder” with Rowan Atkinson, Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry.
General Melchett:
[explaining why they can’t rescue Captain Blackadder] Now George, you remember when I came down to visit you when you were a nipper, for your sixth birthday? You used to have a lovely little rabbit, beautiful little thing, do you remember?
Lieutenant George:
Flossie.
General Melchett:
That’s right, Flossie! Do you remember what happened to Flossie?
Lieutenant George:
You shot him.
General Melchett:
That’s right! It was the kindest thing to do after he’d been run over by that car.
Lieutenant George:
By *your* car, sir.
General Melchett:
Yes, by my car. But that, too, was an act of mercy when you remember that that dog had been set on him.
Lieutenant George:
*Your* dog, sir.
General Melchett:
Yes, yes, my dog. But what I’m trying to say, George, is that the state young Flossie was in after we’d scraped him off my front tyre, is very much the state that young Blackadder will be in now: if not very nearly dead, then very actually dead!
For those of you who watched Blackadder, think of The Fed and Federal government as being populated by Baldricks.
Speaking of people acting like Baldrick …
Confounded Interest - Anthony B. Sanders 
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