Confounded Interest – Anthony B. Sanders
Financial Markets And Real Estate
Joe Biden likes to sell himself as “working class Joe” or “union Joe.” The truth is anything but. He is “Washington DC insider Joe” or “big corporate Joe.”
The US mortgage 30 year rate is down slightly today to 7.30%. That is a whopping 160% increase since Biden’s Presidency began.
Mortgage rates will continue to climb as the US Treasury 10-year yield climbs.
The US homeownership rate is falling as mortgage rates climb.
Biden and Congress have never met a project that they weren’t willing to fund (except a border wall with Mexico, of course).
Inflation is heating up again as the Federal government continues to spend.
US CPI on trend for 4-5% at US election in November.
Strong CPI raises market probability of YE25 rates above 5%.
“Our measure of cyclical inflation–which should capture the impact of excess demand on prices–appears to be stuck at around 5%, which is too elevated”
The US is the only economy in the G10 where the latest inflation print surprised to the upside.
Under current policies, government debt outstanding will grow from 100% to 200% of GDP.
That’s a significant amount of government debt maturing within the next year.
OMB forecasts 5% budget deficit every year for the next 10 years.
US government interest payments per day have doubled from $1bn per day before the pandemic to almost $2bn per day in 2023.
Chart shows long-term US government bond (15+ year) rolling 10-year annualized returns, %.
The intermediate part of the yield curve still offers the highest yields in over fifteen years.
Finally, electricity costs keeps rising, ESPECIALLY with the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). The real name of the IRA should have been the Large Green Donor Increase Act (LGDIA).
Joe Biden, his Administration, and The Federal Reserve are really “The Alligator People.” Despite what they tell you, they have small brains (particularly Biden) and are hyperfocused on spending.
A good example comes from “Wall Street On Parade” where they show that The Federal Reserve is still paying BILLIONS to US Treasury in the form of remittances (losses). While at the same time, paying the mega banks on Wall Street high interest loans.
As of April 3 of this year, the Federal Reserve (Fed) has racked up $161 billion in accumulated losses. We’re not talking about unrealized losses on the underwater debt securities the Fed holds on its balance sheet, which it does not mark to market. We’re talking about real cash losses it is experiencing from earning approximately 2 percent interest on the $6.97 trillion of debt securities it holds on its balance sheet from its Quantitative Easing (QE) operations while it continues to pay out 5.4 percent interest to the mega banks on Wall Street (and other Fed member banks) for the reserves they hold with the Fed; 5.3 percent interest it pays on reverse repo operations with the Fed; and a whopping 6 percent dividend to member shareholder banks with assets of $10 billion or less and the lesser of 6 percent or the yield on the 10-year Treasury note at the most recent auction prior to the dividend payment to banks with assets larger than $10 billion. (This morning the 10-year Treasury is yielding 4.41 percent.)
Operating losses of this magnitude are unprecedented at the of Fed, which was created in 1913. In a press release dated March 26, the Fed stated this: “The Reserve Banks’ 2023 sum total of expenses exceeded earnings by $114.3 billion.”
As of March 13 of this year, the Fed’s accumulated losses stood at $156.24 billion and yet on March 20 the Federal Reserve voted to sustain those high 5+ percent interest rates to its member banks – making it look like the captured regulator it is considered to be by millions of Americans.
As the chart above indicates, the Fed’s ongoing weekly losses have ranged from a high of $3.3 billion for the week ending Wednesday, January 31, 2024, to $1.86 billion for the most recent week ending Wednesday, April 3, 2024.
American taxpayers have good reason to sit up and pay attention to the Fed’s giant and ongoing losses. That’s because when the Fed is operating in the green, as it was on an annual basis for 106 years from 1916 through 2022, the Fed, by law, turns over excess earnings to the U.S. Treasury – thus reducing the amount the U.S. government has to borrow by issuing Treasury debt securities. According to Fed data, between 2011 and 2021, the Fed’s excess earnings paid to the U.S. Treasury totaled more than $920 billion.
The loss of remittances from the Fed means the U.S. government will go deeper into debt, putting a heavier tax burden on the U.S. taxpayer and raising the risk of another credit rating agency downgrade of U.S. sovereign debt.
Of course, The Allgator People like Joe Biden, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Fed Chair Jerome Powell, will Treasury remittances as “free money” to spend. And its an election year, so Joe Biden (aka, King Gator) is canceling $7.4 billion in student debt for 277,000 borrowers. Only alligators in Washington DC considered this action to have no consequences.
WHO pays for the student loan forgiveness? It just doesn’t vanish, it is transferred to taxpayers. Alligators like Alexandria Ocasio Cortez going on talk shows to argue the benefits of being free from financial obligations that student voluntarily agreed to. Say, can AOC get my mortgage forgiven?? Just kidding. Now those same students can borrow additional money to get MBA degrees with the expectation that the student loan is “free money.”
Yes, Biden is acting recklessly (no surprise). Here is a picture of King Gator, Joe Biden.
The Biden Administration and The Federal Reserve ARE the alligator people. Except these gators are hungry for your money and votes constantly.
Gold futures prices are soaring and are at $2,422.00. Gold futures prices are up 19.61% over the past year.
Silver futures prices are also soaring and are at $29.64. Silver futures prices are up 16.40% over the past year.
Bitcoin is almost at $70,000 and is up 133.44% over the past year.
Returning to gold, we are seeing another gold breakout, like the breakout in 2008.
Even central banks are loading up on gold, silver, and cryptos. Why? Primarily fear of US reckless budgets and exploding debts/deficits (don’t listen to Biden talk about how “he” reduced deficits and debt (both have risen to dangerous levels under he inattentive eyes).
However, calming the jangled nerves of pension funds is that the S&P 500 stock market index is up 26.04% over the past year.
Overall prices are up by 19.4% since Biden took office.
Of course, the S&P 500 is not sustainable given that it has been driven by excessive spending by the Biden Adminstration coupled with still massive monetary stimulus from The Federal Reserve.
In summary, gold, silver and cryptos are rising on FEAR! Of Biden, Congress and The Fed.
One reason that America’s youth is disgusted with Bidenomics is skyrocketing prices, particulalry housing. (simply unaffordable). Thanks to awful economic policies, home prices are up 32.5% under Biden and 30-year mortgage rates are up a whopping 160%! Good luck buying a home with a part-time job.
The bad news is that the 10-year Treasury yield rose to 4.53%, the highest since November 2023. This means that mortgage rates will rise even further.
Yes, rising rates AND home prices are daunting to part-time job holders.
Of course, Biden and Powell want to addicted to gov.
Doctors, doctors (Yellen and Brainard), we’ve got a bad case of unaffordable housing.
It looks like “10% Joe” Biden is an older, more demented version of California Governor “Greasy” Gavin Newsom. They both loved spending taxpayer money and running up enomous budget deficits.
Under Biden’s “Reign of Error”, the interest on US debt just hit a record $1.1 trillion and the US deficit for just the first six months of fiscal 2024 is also $1.1 trillion.
According to the latest Treasury Monthly Statement, in March the US deficit hit $236 billion, some $40 billion more than the $196 billion expected, if below February’s $296 billion…
… which was the result of $332 billion in govt tax receipts – translating into $4.580 trillion in LTM tax receipts, and which was down 5% compared to a year ago…
… offset by the now traditional ridiculous monthly outlays, which in March amounted to $568 billion, up from $567 billion in February and the highest monthly spending total in calendar 2024, which translated into a 6 month moving spending average (for smoothing purposes) of $542 billion. Take a wild guess what will happen to the chart below during and after the next recession.
This, incidentally, is a reminder that the US does not have a tax collection problem – it has a spending problem, and no amount of tax changes will fix it; in fact all higher taxes will do is force more billionaires to move to Dubai where they pay zero taxes.
Putting the YTD deficit in context, in the first six months of fiscal 2024, the US deficit hit $1.065 trillion, just shy of the $1.1 trillion reached last year, which was the 2nd highest on record and only the post-covid 2021 was worse. Annualized, we expect total deficit to hit $2.2 trillion in fiscal 2024, a year when the US is supposedly “growing” at a nice, brisk ~2.5% pace. One can only imagine what the GDP growth would be if the US wasn’t set to have a wartime/crisis deficit…
… and we can’t even imagine what US deficit will be after the next recession/depression.
Meanwhile, as reported previously, total US interest continues to explode, and after surpassing total annual defense spending about a year ago, just the interest on US debt will soon become the single largest government outlay as it surpasses social security by the end of 2024, when according to BofA’s Michael Hartnett it hits $1.6 trillion…
.. and surpasses Social Security spending as the single largest spending category in the US government.
Biden has wanted to get rid of Social Security for a long-time and now wants to get rid of Medicare Advantage programs and put everyone on Medicare. Looks like Cloward-Piven!
On top of skyroceting budget deficits, we have Producer Prices rising at fastest pace in a year in March.
After yesterday’s CPI-surge, PPI followed along, with headline producer prices rising 0.2% MoM (+0.3% MoM exp), pushing the YoY PPI to +2.1% (+2.2% exp) from +1.6% – the highest since April 2023…
Core CPI rose 2.4% YoY (hotter than the expected 2.3%) – the third hotter-than-expected core PPI print in a row…
Under the hood, Services prices rose while goods prices declined MoM.
One thing that stands out as rather odd is the 1.6% MoM decline in Energy costs in the month… as prices soared for crude and gasoline?
Leading the March decline in the index for final demand goods, prices for gasoline decreased 3.6 percent…
And blame the markets for why the print was hot:
A major factor in the March increase in prices for final demand services was the index for securities brokerage, dealing, investment advice, and related services, which rose 3.1 percent.
And on a YoY basis, Services costs are accelerating…
Pressure continues to build in the inflation pipeline too…
While some may cling with grim hope to the ‘cooler than expected’ headline PPI print, core PPI is hot, damn hot, and headline PPI is rising. Not at all what The Fed, or Biden, wants to see – no matter how hard they spin it.
This is Victor Davis Hansen from Stanford’s Hoover Institute.
Funky cold Joe Biden is his reaction to inflation caused by his outragous spending. His legion of sycophants are now saying inflation is a good thing or don’t notice it. But Biden will never stop spending .
Coming into today’s CPI number, which followed three previous red-hot inflation prints, we said that it’s time for a “miss” (the first of 2024) not because the data demands it – on the contrary, prices continue to rise at a frightening pace – but because a dovish CPI print today would be the last opportunity for the Fed to set a timetable for a rate cut calendar ahead of November’s election.
Well, you can wave goodbye to all that, because we just got the 4th consecutive “inflation beat” in a row…
… with supercore inflation coming in blazing hot…
… thanks to a boiling inflation print which saw every single CPI metric coming in hotter than expected – was a shock, not because it reflected reality, but because it effectively sealed Biden’s fate because as Bloomberg’s Chris Antsey writes, “obviously, this is very bad news for Joe Biden… we’re approaching the point where high inflation is bound to still be in voters’ minds when they head to the polls, regardless of how the price figures come in over summer.”Easy financial conditions continue to provide a significant tailwind to growth and inflation. As a result, the Fed is not done fighting inflation and rates will stay higher for longer.”
It’s about to get even worse: recall today we have a $39 billion 10-year auction which is already being dubbed “sloppy” and a definitive break of 4.5% could easily extend if underwriting dealers are left holding the bag. As it stands, the 10yr has popped above the 4.5% parapet. Ian Lyngen at BMO Capital Markets says:“We expect the setup to the auction will break 4.50% in 10-year yields with ease.”
Obviously, this is very bad news for Joe Biden. It’s still only April, and we’ll have another half-a-year’s worth of inflation reports before the election. But we’re approaching the point where high inflation is bound to still be in voters’ minds when they head to the polls, regardless of how the price figures come in over summer.
Joe Biden continues to act like a gangsta giving away student loan forgiveness despite being told no by the US Supreme Court. As I said, Funky Cold Joe Biden. But Biden’s gangstaism favors the top 0.5% of net worth people, not the masses.
As Biden gropes for more voters, claiming he was raised in Puerto Rican, Greek, Black, and every other race on the planet, he probably sings “Ride The White Horse” to The Presidency. Reminiscint of Hillary Clinton claiming she kept a packet of hot sauce in her purse when talking to a black commentator.
Biden versus Trump?
Today’s jobs report was terrible despite the sheer number of jobs added. Why? They were all part-time jobs.
And on that “all part-time jobs” report, the US 10-year Treasury yield rose to 4.38%.
Which means that mortgage rate will follow upwards. All based on part-time job growth.
Bizarro World! Unfortunately, the Federal government and Federal Reserve think they are Superman. But only in Bizarro World.
Bidenomics was born under a bad sign. Or born under large corporate donor payoffs.
In the real world labor market, 2024 has been a deluge of layoffs of the US economy…
1. Everybuddy: 100% of workforce
2. Wisense: 100% of workforce
3. CodeSee: 100% of workforce
4. Twig: 100% of workforce
5. Twitch: 35% of workforce
6. Roomba: 31% of workforce
7. Bumble: 30% of workforce
8. Farfetch: 25% of workforce
9. Away: 25% of workforce
10. Hasbro: 20% of workforce
11. LA Times: 20% of workforce
12. Wint Wealth: 20% of workforce
13. Finder: 17% of workforce
14. Spotify: 17% of workforce
15. Buzzfeed: 16% of workforce
16. Levi’s: 15% of workforce
17. Xerox: 15% of workforce
18. Qualtrics: 14% of workforce
19. Wayfair: 13% of workforce
20. Duolingo: 10% of workforce
21. Rivian: 10% of workforce
22. Washington Post: 10% of workforce
23. Snap: 10% of workforce
24. eBay: 9% of workforce
25. Sony Interactive: 8% of workforce
26. Expedia: 8% of workforce
27. Business Insider: 8% of workforce
28. Instacart: 7% of workforce
29. Paypal: 7% of workforce
30. Okta: 7% of workforce
31. Charles Schwab: 6% of workforce
32. Docusign: 6% of workforce
33. Riskified: 6% of workforce
34. EA: 5% of workforce
35. Motional: 5% of workforce
36. Mozilla: 5% of workforce
37. Vacasa: 5% of workforce
38. CISCO: 5% of workforce
39. UPS: 2% of workforce
40. Nike: 2% of workforce
41. Blackrock: 3% of workforce
42. Paramount: 3% of workforce
43. Citigroup: 20,000 employees
44. ThyssenKrupp: 5,000 employees
45. Best Buy: 3,500 employees
46. Barry Callebaut: 2,500 employees
47. Outback Steakhouse: 1,000
48. Northrop Grumman: 1,000 employees
49. Pixar: 1,300 employees
50. Perrigo: 500 employees
But, according to the government-supplied data…
The number of Americans filing for jobless benefits for the first time last week rose from 212k to 221k (SA) to its highest since Jan, and claims ticked modestly higher on an NSA basis…
Continuing claims remain glued around 1.8mm Americans – where they have been for nine months…
Source: Bloomberg
But, here’s the thing… WARNs are soaring… and Challenger-Grey just announced that March saw the most job cuts (90,309) since January 2023…but government-supplied data on initial jobless claims continues to smoothly tick along near record lows…
Source: Bloomberg
The WARN data is very disturbing.
Ah, Bidenomics!!
If Trump wins in November, will all this data suddenly be ‘allowed’ to reflect reality?
But the feral pigs are already here in Washington DC as elected representative and non-elected bureaucrats.
Might explain the rush to gold.
Bidenomics is also a Highway To Hell for commercial real estate. Let’s say real estate is thunderstruck under Bidenomics.
The rising supply of office space is due to a combination of surging remote and hybrid work that forces companies to reduce corporate footprints. Also, companies are exiting imploding progressive cities and high-taxed blue states for red ones while downsizing space. In the report, office tower vacancies rose to a record 19.8%, up from 19.6% in the fourth quarter of 2023.
Even with the increase, there is an eerily calm across the commercial real estate sector. This comes as the Federal Reserve’s interest rate hiking cycle is higher for longer, indicating that the pain train is nearing (perhaps after the presidential election).
“The office stress isn’t quite done yet,” Thomas LaSalvia, Moody’s head of commercial real estate economics and one of the authors of the report, told Bloomberg in an interview. He noted recent positive economic indicators stave off a “perfect storm in the office sector.”
“There are spots of light and there are spots of extreme darkness,” LaSalvia said, adding, “This is part of a longer-term evolution where we are seeing obsolete buildings in obsolete neighborhoods.”
The high office vacancy rate continues to be terrible news for landlords and developers eager to fill their buildings, and the Fed’s hiking cycle has made refinancing very challenging.
Last month, Goldman’s Vinay Viswanathan penned a note explaining how “office mortgages are living on borrowed time.”
Viswanathan said there have been no major fireworks in CRE tower debt because the debt is being “extended and modified rather than refinanced,” which “mitigates a default wave and a sharp pick-up in losses on CRE loan portfolios.”
Yes, both residential and commercial real estate are thunderstruck under Bidenomics.
Confounded Interest - Anthony B. Sanders 
You must be logged in to post a comment.