Mark Pulte, the father of Lisa Cook accuser Bill Pulte, loses homestead exemption on Michigan property after Reuters investigation finds he committed same infraction of which his son accused the Fed governor lol

Bill is obviously not the sharpest knife in the drawer. 

 Bill Pulte accused Fed Governor Lisa Cook of fraud. His relatives filed housing claims similar to hers: Reuters

... Mark and Julie Pulte, the father and stepmother of Bill Pulte, President Donald Trump’s appointee as director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, since 2020 have claimed so-called “homestead exemptions” for residences in wealthy neighborhoods in both Michigan and Florida, according to the records. The exemption is meant to give a discount to homeowners on taxes for properties they use as their primary residence. 

Local tax officials in both states told Reuters that claiming more than one home as a primary residence isn’t generally allowed in their jurisdictions and could be punishable by fines or back taxes. After Reuters contacted tax officials in Bloomfield Township, Michigan, to inquire about the dual claims, Darrin Kraatz, director of assessing, on Thursday said the township “as of today” would revoke the exemption on the Pultes’ residence there. ... 

It isn’t clear how much the Pultes may have saved each year because of the Michigan claim, but on Friday property records already indicated the exemption there is now zero.

 

Bye dad!

 

 

U.S. Treasury yields tank in flight to safety after August 2025 jobs only +22k: Fed rate cut incoming

 

The core pce inflation rate was 48% lower 2009-2020 than it was in July 2025

 The July 2025 yoy rate of core pce inflation, the Fed's key measure, rose to 2.877%, the third increase in the rate since April.

The average rate 2009-2020 was 1.5%.

Averaging 2.77% for the last year and a half is not progress. 

 

Under Joe Biden we had a proposal to tamper with the Supreme Court, under Donald Trump we have an actual attempt to tamper with the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and the Federal Open Market Committee

Trump's firing of Lisa Cook is the actual power grab we only feared from Joe Biden. 

 

How Trump could give the Fed a MAGA makeover:

 ... Fed watchers say a Trump-appointed majority on the Fed Board could then exert greater influence over future decisions on interest rates by using a little-known process.

While it’s typically a routine event that gets little attention, every five years the Fed Board must approve the new terms of regional Fed presidents, who vote on a rotational basis on interest rates.

That event is coming up soon, with the terms of all 12 regional Fed presidents scheduled to expire – simultaneously – at the end of February.

That means, in theory, a Trump-nominated Fed Board could reject regional presidents, for whatever reason they wish, or no reason at all.

“The President could push his majority to reject reserve bank presidents unless they agree to back lower rates and are comfortable with more White House influence over monetary policy,” Jaret Seiberg, financial services policy analyst at TD Cowen Washington Research Group, wrote in a note to clients this week. “That would give Trump a more cooperative FOMC,” he wrote, referring to the Fed’s rate-setting committee.

While the Fed chair gets all the attention, decisions on interest rates are voted on by all 12 members of the Federal Open Market Committee. The committee consists of the seven members of the Fed Board, as well as five regional Fed presidents: the New York Fed president and four rotating regional presidents. ...

Trumpists have zero self-awareness about who's crazy

 What Made the Democratic Party Go Crazy?

 Victor Davis Hanson, American Greatness

 

 

Trump Fires Fed Governor Lisa Cook Over Fraud Allegations

Greg Wehner, FOX Biz

Trump signs order aiming for one-year jail terms for flag burning

Bart Jansen, USA Today

 

Trump repeatedly pointed a finger at Bolton in the days before raids

Natalie Allison

and 

Michael Birnbaum, Washington Post

 

Donald Trump is such an asshole

No "innocent until proven guilty" for this guy.

It's a blatant power grab which will give him two appointees to Fed governor on top of one to Fed chair when Powell finishes his term in the spring. If he finishes his term in the spring. 

What a tragedy for this country and its prestige as issuer of the world's reserve currency.

 

Trump says he’s removing Fed Governor Lisa Cook, cites mortgage fraud allegations

 

 

 

The Financial Times is full of it about a rate cut, and can't even spell

 

 ... the Fed chair is clearly more convinced by the employment side of that equation, indicating that “adjustment” may be necessary — a big hint that the central bank is poised to restart cuts in interest rates next month.

This was itself a surprise to investors, who seemingly were expecting a snoozefest. The dollar dropped sharply, government bonds jumped in price and stocks picked up at the end of a rough week as markets baked in those new expectations. A cut next month is now seen as a done deal, with likely chops in the following two meetings too. ...

If employment data for August picks up from its summer lull, which we will not know until the first week of September, then the Fed will be in the awkward spot of cutting interest rates in to a decent jobs market with inflation still running above target. “The Fed would risk a policy error if it were to cut rates,” warned analysts at Bank of America. ...

The Fed is supported by structures that protect its independence, but anyone who doubts Trump’s desire and willingness to bend it towards his will is kidding themself ... 

More.

Complete tosh. 

The Fed is data dependent, and there are two inflation readings and one employment report intervening before the next rate decision. 

Powell never even got close to saying the FOMC was poised to make a policy change. His remarks, as always, emphasize data and contextualize hypotheticals, that's all.

The press are scoundrels trying to bully the Fed like this. They are on Trump's level in Dante's Inferno. 

Powell said conditions "may warrant adjusting our policy stance." That could include a rate hike as well as a rate cut. He said "risks to inflation are tilted to the upside" while "the labor market appears to be in balance" even after the huge downward revisions to total nonfarm employment which got the head of the BLS fired.

In fact, he said that the latest data for July core pce inflation, which won't be out until Friday, indicate 2.9% year over year, an uptick from June's 2.8%. That's not good news for the rate cut cheerleaders, and that's why no one is reporting it. 

The FOMC is not going to cut the interest rate if that happens and employment remains steady.

August 29 and September 5 will tell us what is likely to happen on September 17, not The Financial Times. Fittingly, the ignoramus for The Financial Times ends her column with a preposition.

And don't forget core cpi inflation on September 11. Powell & Company will have all the very latest data for their decision, on which they will rely:

Monetary policy is not on a preset course. FOMC members will make these decisions, based solely on their assessment of the data and its implications for the economic outlook and the balance of risks. We will never deviate from that approach. 

Donald Saul Alinsky has picked his target and polarized it

 

Trump says he’ll fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook ‘if she doesn’t resign’

 

 

Forecasters YUGELY underestimated July producer price increases, aka wholesale prices, forecasting +0.2% month over month, getting +0.9% instead lol

 

Hey, they're only off by a factor of 4.5x.

Low inflation expectations based on June were clobbered by the facts, but to hell with the facts. $SPX is down only 0.07% at this hour.

The market cheerleaders desperately cling to the belief that the Fed must lower interest rates in September. When the numbers come in 0.1 below expectations, they go wild and drive up stocks like madmen believing they must be right. When the forecast misses like this they just hold.

On a year over year basis, the forecast was for +2.5% for overall wholesale prices, but they got +3.3% instead, seasonally adjusted.

For core wholesale prices the consensus forecast was for +2.9% year over year, but they got +3.7% instead, again seasonally adjusted.   

Wholesale prices rose 0.9% in July, much more than expected

Wholesale prices rose far more than expected in July, providing a potential sign that inflation is still a threat to the U.S. economy, a Bureau of Labor Statistics report Thursday showed.

The producer price index, which measures final demand goods and services prices, jumped 0.9% on the month, compared with the Dow Jones estimate for a 0.2% gain. It was the biggest monthly increase since June 2022.

Excluding food and energy prices, core PPI rose 0.9% against the forecast for 0.3%. Excluding food, energy and trade services, the index was up 0.6%, the biggest gain since March 2022. ...

It's not a potential sign of inflation, you idiots. It's a real sign.

The year over year numbers, not seasonally adjusted, for core wholesale price increases in the July report are oddly unchanged from the June report in no respect, for the increases since October 2024. In fact, the figures are exactly the same to five decimal places. It's like everybody went on vacation and just copied and pasted and went to the beach: 

Nov 2024: 3.35987

Dec 2024: 3.74962

Jan 2025: 3.92532

Feb 2025: 3.73239

Mar 2025: 3.78846

Apr 2025: 3.07652

May 2025: 3.21542

Jun 2025: 2.62853

and Jul 2025: 3.65568.

The average of these Nov thru May is 3.54965. July looks like that, but June sure the hell still does not.

I smell a rat.

Meanwhile . . . 

Core cpi inflation yoy averaged 2.9% in the first half of 2025, but 3.1% in July.

Core pce inflation yoy averaged 2.8% in the first half of 2025 (July numbers come Aug 29th). 

But core wholesale prices were up 3.4% in the first half on average, and 3.7% in July according to today's report.

How long can producers not pass that along? Or do we have a broader issue here with trustworthy numbers, because Mad King Ludwig is in charge?

The Treasury Secretary is such a kiss-ass and knows damn well that the Fed's so-called full employment mandate was a set of handcuffs put on the Fed in 1978

And why did the Congress do that to the Fed?

So the Congress could evade responsibility for high unemployment as well as for high inflation, that's why.

A bunch of cowards six ways to Sunday they are.

Besides, core personal consumption expenditures is the Fed's key metric, as everyone knows, and that is an inflation metric, not an employment metric. 

And The Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act specifically recognizes that reducing inflation is the Fed's main job, actually mandating ZERO inflation, not 2% inflation as widely misinterpreted. 

Meanwhile there is another report of employment besides the total non-farm payrolls report which the Fed can consult, and it shows employment continues near all-time highs in July.

No change to DFF was the appropriate response of the Fed to persistent core inflation way above 2%.  

 

Bessent: How Can The Fed Set Rates When Jobs Data Is This Broken? "This Was A Five Standard Deviation Mistake"

 

 

 

 

 

This is the same administration which complains the Fed is building a palace for itself

 

The Fed was right yesterday, voting 9-2 to make no change to interest rates, as core pce inflation comes in at 2.79% year over year in June, a tick up from May's 2.75%

 Core personal consumption expenditures year over year have been stuck in a range of 2.78% year over year for eighteen long months.

This is shaping up to become the regrettable new normal.

Core pce had averaged just 1.50% year over year for twelve years from 2009-2020 inclusive. The rate has been 85% higher than that for a year and a half now on an average basis.

The 2.78% rate is but little lower than the 2024 average of 2.81%, and the 2.75% average for the first six months of 2025 still rounds up to 2.8%.

You remember 2024. Joe Biden was president, and so far in 2025 he might as well still be.

Inflation is the worst tax. Unfortunately it's the Uniparty's policy.

 

  

The future looks bright for gold

 Trump ‘likely’ will fire Fed Chair Powell ‘soon’: White House official

These people are nuts.

Trump's stupid bullying of Jerome Powell is analogous to his stupid bullying of Canada's Justin Trudeau and now Mark Carney

Jerome Powell doesn't set interest rates.

 

The Federal Open Market Committee sets interest rates. That's why the release of the committee's prior meeting minutes is always keenly awaited and is by itself a major market mover. Powell's is one vote among many on the FOMC:

 

Where interest rates should be today, and when they should be reduced, is already a topic of debate inside the Fed, a decision, it should be noted, that cannot be made unilaterally by the chair. Powell’s leadership and professionalism does not appear to be a concern within the halls of the central bank. Certainly, none of his colleagues, present or past, have made the case that he is incompetent. 

 

 

Similarly the Canadian Prime Ministers' control over trade decisions is also muted, deferring as they must to provincial and territorial authorities.

 

Trump bullies people like this who cannot make unilateral changes to policy in order to make himself look like an assertive leader to his equally stupid followers.

 

That's why people like Larry Kudlow disgust me. He knows what I am writing is true, but he joins in on the pig pile nonetheless. 

 

Greater things are at stake in this than interest rate policy. Trump is playing with fire. 

  

Now the disgusting Larry Kudlow piles on Jay Powell

 

Can Jay Powell Make It Through the Weekend?

Larry Kudlow, New York Sun

This dope who works for Trump can barely speak English, is just looking for any way he can to oust Fed Chair Jay Powell

These people make me sick.

 

The renovations were approved in 2021 and won't be finished until long after Powell leaves next May. 

 

Trump budget chief Vought ramps up criticism of Powell, vows investigation into Fed renovations

It's an investigation with a pre-drawn conclusion, that's all.

... “When you go to the nation’s mall, you see the construction of this palace ... upwards of $2.5 billion massive cost overrun, and we want to make sure we have facts as to the largesse and the extent to which it’s overrun,” Vought said during a “Squawk Box” interview. “I think it just points to the fundamental mismanagement of the Fed under the chairman.” ... 

″The problem with Chairman Powell is he has been late at every turn,” Vought said. “It’s time to lower rates. You have a problem there. But again, this is about the largesse and the fact that he has systemically mismanaged the Fed, and that is evident by what we’re seeing with regard to this monstrosity, this Palace of Versailles, on the National Mall.” ... 

“This certainly has to do with the fiscal mismanagement of the Fed, of which [interest rates] is one aspect of it,” he said. “We are going to zoom in over the last several days on this. We have new commissioners at the National Capital Planning Commission who are asking very tough questions.” ...

Ron Insana: Why Trump’s new attack on Powell should be so troubling to investors

... If I were a foreign investor witnessing the ouster of a Fed chair, replaced by a presidential supplicant, I’d sell the dollar and U.S. bonds and head for the hills. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.

Housing in a Fed stress test scenario

The median price of houses sold in the United States in March 1963 was $17,800.

Adjusted for inflation to March 2025, that would be $186,600.

But in fact the median price of houses sold was $416,900, 123% higher.

A 36% shock to that as contemplated by the Fed's recent bank stress tests could bring the median price of houses sold down to $266,800, dialing the clock back to 2013, which is still 43% higher than what the long term price would be merely adjusted for inflation.

A large number of homeowners who have purchased homes from 2020 when prices skyrocketed by 31% could be instantly underwater in this scenario. There have been 4.73 million new large bank consumer mortgage originations since 2Q2020.

Add losing a job and boom, you could have another foreclosure crisis all over again.

The 2007 shock to the median price of houses sold was only 19% 1Q2007-1Q2009, with prices not recovering until 1Q2013, but many millions of foreclosures were completed over the period.

A mitigating factor for homeowners generally today is owners' equity in real estate, which was almost 62% in 2005, but in 2025 is almost 72%, ten points higher. We haven't seen a level like that since 1960. 

Owners' equity had crashed by a quarter to 46% by 1Q2012, the lowest on record in the post-war.

Every major bank passes stress test from the US Federal Reserve

507 banks failed in the United States 2008-2014 inclusive, costing the Deposit Insurance Fund nearly $90 billion. Many millions of homes went into completed foreclosure.

 

Big banks all pass the Federal Reserve’s less vigorous stress tests

 

... All 22 banks tested this year would have remained solvent and above the minimum thresholds to continue to operate, the Fed said, despite absorbing roughly $550 billion in theoretical losses. ...

 

Under this year’s hypothetical scenario, a major global recession would have caused a 30% decline in commercial real estate prices and a 33% decline in housing prices. The unemployment rate would rise to 10% and stock prices would fall 50%. In 2024, the hypothetical scenario was a 40% decline in commercial real estate prices, a 55% decline in stock prices and a 36% decline in housing prices. ...      

 

The 2024 benchmarks are a mixture.

 

Commercial real estate prices year over year fell more than 11% in 4Q2008, and more than 30% in 4Q2009. Planning for a future 40% decline seems appropriate.

 

The 2007 shock to the median price of houses sold was only 19% 1Q2007-1Q2009, with prices not recovering until 1Q2013. But since the median price of houses sold has jumped by about 31% just since 2020, planning for a future 36% decline is more than appropriate.

 

Unemployment peaked at 10% in October 2009. The civilian employment level contracted by almost 7 million 2007-2010 on an average basis, and did not recover until 2014, seven long years later. Pandemic unemployment peaked at 14.8% in April 2020. We got as high as 10.8% in November and December 1982. Great Depression unemployment peaked at 25.59% in May 1933. This one is a crap-shoot. 

 

The average price of the S&P 500 fell 50.8% between October 2007 and March 2009, but in 2007 the S&P 500 was valued about 26% above the long term mean, not 130% as in 2024.

 

That's the datum that worries me. Just to get to its historical median value of 81, the S&P 500 today would have to fall 61%, to about 2425.

 

Imagine the howls. 

 

 

 

  

 

Methinks J. D. Vance doth protest too much about Jerome Powell

 

It backfired on Powell, though.

 

Yields climbed in response. 10Y went from 3.63 on Sep 16 to 4.37 by Nov 1. And core PCE inflation shot back up.

 

It's proof yet again that the Fed has next to no control over interest rates. It's one of the great myths of our time that it does, a myth Vance believes.

 

If Powell had cut and Kamala won, irrespective of what rates or inflation did, Vance might have an argument. He should quit complaining and take the win.

 

Meanwhile core PCE inflation was 2.66 in Sep 2024, same as it was in Mar 2025.

 

You'd think twice about trying that again, too, if you got burned like that, especially if you're being hectored by the tag-team wrestlers of the Oval Orifice.

 

 

 

It's stupid for Trump to riff off today's producer price report and call Jay Powell names because the number is likely to be revised higher, and besides, that's just poor form, old boy

 

 May 2025 core producer prices, aka core wholesale prices, were reported today up 3.02% year over year. That will doubtlessly be revised up, especially as we get farther away from May.

Today's chart indicates April was up 3.18% yoy, but was originally reported at 3.1%. The latter was already rounded up, but the former rounds up to 3.2%. We'll see if that gets revised higher in coming months as well.

March was up 3.91% yoy we are told today, but originally it was reported at 3.3%.

February was up 3.74%, but originally reported at 3.4%.

January was up 3.92%, but originally reported at 3.6%.

December was up 3.74%, but originally reported at 3.5%.

The average up revision, including April, has been 0.3. 

Be that as it may, we have in the May report nine consecutive months with core producer prices up in excess of 3% year over year.

Meanwhile for the nine years 2012-2020, the average increase was 1.62% yoy. I don't call producer prices rising at a rate 85% higher than that in May 2025 good news. It may be "less bad" news, but that doesn't make it good news.

Trump's a jerk to Powell. Vance is a very polished jerk. Remember his treatment of Zelenskyy? Stephen Miller is a jerk to Rand Paul. If you've seen the Trump cabinet in action, many of whom are political losers, you've seen even more insulting jerks. They may be descendants of the people of Jerkola for all I know, but I can only speculate.