This housing bill will not help people become homeowners by freeing up existing supply

 House passes affordable housing bill, sends it to Trump’s desk

The U.S. House voted Tuesday night 358-32 in favor of a sprawling housing package designed to lower costs for homebuyers and increase supply. ...                                       

The broad bi-partisan support for the bill tells you it won't do much for very many people anytime soon.

But expect the politicians to brag on it as silly season ramps up. 

A key provision of the bill caps institutional investor ownership of single family homes at 350 from here on out.

Investors already owning single family homes, however, at whatever level, are grandfathered in. Blackstone, for example, owns approximately 58k such homes. It is thus prevented from buying number 58,001 under the bill.

That means that the approximately 530k+ homes currently owned by institutions, which is only about 4% of the single family housing rental pie, will not be forcibly sold into the market.

About 87% of the pie is individual investors who own in the neighborhood of 1-5 homes. There will be no change mandated there either, which is where most of the available single family housing stock is. 

There are 46.4 million renter-occupied housing units in the United States in the first quarter. Of those, approximately 11.3 million are single family homes. That means that the number of owners of those rental homes ranges roughly between 9.8 million and 2 million individual investors, probably living in a rich suburb right near you.   

The bill does prevent umbrella companies from owning multiple small entities created by individual investors to beat the 350 cap, with stiff penalties, so that is good.

The problem is this bill entrenches the status quo of the rich preying on both ends of the housing spectrum.

Mobile homes in parks are not considered single family homes under the bill. They are considered multi-unit commercial real estate. Private equity investors are notorious for buying up these parks full of affordable housing and jacking up lot rents on approximately 4.3 million homesites to the moon. Up to 12 million mostly low income Americans live in such parks.

The bill eliminates the mobile chassis rule for new manufactured homes, marginally reducing their cost. But imagine parking one in one of those parks and being unable to move it while the landlord holds a rent gun to your head. There are other provisions in the bill to help these existing park owners, and the mobile home owners who live there to borrow more to pay the greedy bastards.

11.3 million hostages to the rich on the front end, 12 million on the ass end. 

The bill had passed in the U.S. Senate 85-5 on Monday. 

Since the beginning of the 21st century in the United States, growth of renter-occupied housing continues in the ascendant while growth of owner-occupied housing continues south.

We still live with the deleterious effects of the Great Recession, when more than 6 million residences were completely foreclosed in the United States, and this is the best our elected representatives can do almost two decades on. 

Congress is already getting Mamdanied as this goes to Trump for his signature.

 

 

 

See, we're living in his brain rent-free

 Trump claims Iran deal is ‘unconditional surrender,’ says his power has ‘no limits’: Axios 

... Asked what he had learned from the war about the limits to his power, Trump said that “I haven’t learned that lesson yet. I know there are, but there are no limits.” ... 

Nemesis is coming. 

Andrew Sullivan makes Trump subhuman the way Mark Levin and Michael Savage have made their enemies subhuman, says the American people no longer want to govern themselves

They shoot wild boar in Texas from helicopters, don't they?

 

 The Permanent Stain

 ... Trump is conservatism’s actual nemesis: a wild boar — psychologically incapable of understanding anything but dominance and revenge, with no knowledge of history, crashing obliviously and malevolently through the ruined landscape of our constitutional democracy.

This very Greek tragedy — conservatives killing the Constitution they love because they hate the left more — is made more poignant by Trump’s utter cluelessness: he doesn’t even intend to end the American experiment in self-government and individual freedom. He isn’t that sophisticated. He is ending it simply because he knows no other way of being a human being. He cannot tolerate any system where he does not have total control. Character counts, as conservatives once insisted, and a man with Trump’s psyche, when combined with his demagogic genius, is quite simply incompatible with liberal democratic society. Unfit. ... 

I recall that when I first wrote that I didn’t believe Trump would concede an election he lost, and thereby provoke a constitutional crisis, I was also told I was hyperventilating. But it happened. And Americans rewarded it four years later by re-electing the man who tried to destroy their democracy. That’s exactly as the ancient political philosophers predicted: as democracies enter their late, chaotic stage, the people want an autocrat. They yearn for one. And in America, they voted for one twice. The forces we are up against are far beyond Trump. They’re called the cycles of history and a critical mass of the American people, who no longer want to govern themselves, who are sick of this republic and no longer want to keep it if it means sharing power with those they despise. ...

 

Andrew Sullivan intimately knows all about not governing oneself. If only the Democrats did, who relentlessly persecuted and prosecuted Trump while in office and out. That's why we are here.

Nemesis is coming, Draco is coming

 

Nemesis comes for old soldiers Tom Brady, 44, and Aaron Rodgers, 38

 Both quarterbacks were defeated in the NFL divisional playoffs by field goals in the closing seconds of their respective contests.

Pure poetry.

Anal cancer cases and deaths explode in USA 16 years after Supreme Court overturns anti-sodomy laws in Lawrence v. Texas

The United States is experiencing a “dramatic and concerning” rise in the rate of new anal cancer cases and deaths from the disease . . . The incidence of squamous cell carcinoma of the anus — the most common type of anal cancer — rose 2.7 percent PER YEAR over a recent 15-year period, while anal cancer mortality rates increased 3.1 percent PER YEAR during that time [emphasis added]. At this rate, the disease can be considered as one of the fastest accelerating causes of cancer incidence and mortality in the U.S. ... “It’s really hard to understand what might be causing the rise in incidence and mortality,” [the study’s lead author Ashish Deshmukh] added.

Political correctness kills, as does Nemesis. They might actually be the same thing.

More here.

The current secular bear market in stocks matched the length of the Reagan secular bull in September 2018

Average investors since August 2000 have underperformed the great Reagan secular bull market by nearly 70% annually through September 2018, but the current secular bear marches on.

Average investors aren't just severely underperforming the Reagan bull, however. The average 5.77% per annum return since August 2000 also underperforms the S&P 500 annually from 1871-1982 . . .  by 29%.

When the current secular bear ends is anyone's guess. While already long in the tooth, there's nothing that says it can't last even longer.

But you'll know it's over when stocks are universally shunned, as they were in the summer of 1982. Unfortunately, that would mean the S&P 500 would have to fall, and fall hard and deep, from here. In a worst case scenario that would mean to a level of, say, 283, which is today's inflation-adjusted level of the S&P 500 in July 1982, 89.6% south of yesterday's close at 2728. That's what it would take to match that buying opportunity, not just of a lifetime but of the whole history of the S&P 500.

On an inflation-adjusted basis a more likely future washout range would include a level something well north of 283, however, say between December 1987 at 527 and March 2009 at 898. The feeling has always been that the catastrophe of 2009 was arrested by draconian interventions, and that the market wasn't allowed to do its work and destroy the weak as it should have.

The Reagan secular bull was an extreme outlier in the history of the market. Nemesis is still lurking out there somewhere in its relentless quest to revert to the mean. Best not to stand in its way. 

A very small John McCain reduced to role of courier for the Trump opposition fake news machine

From the story here:

"Late last year, I received sensitive information that has since been made public. Upon examination of the contents, and unable to make a judgment about their accuracy, I delivered the information to the Director of the FBI. That has been the extent of my contact with the FBI or any other government agency regarding this issue."

Gold bug Ralph Benko thinks Richard Nixon had to resign over the closing of the gold window!

I like Ralph Benko. Ralph Benko often makes important arguments on behalf of the gold standard. But when he tries to force everything in the universe to be interpreted through the lens of it you know you have met an ideologue who has become unhinged from reality. Which is why Forbes is a good place for him.

His latest screed here is a mere flight of fantasy, imagining Richard Nixon was forced to resign over the closing of the gold window in 1971. Had he presented it as such, it would have entertained and illumined, even pleased. Instead, its talk of correlation only annoys, the way a chart reader plots two things on a graph and yells 'See! See! They both go up together!' Against Benko, Pat Buchanan may be forgiven for ignoring what didn't exist, just as Nixon's enemies ignored it, except in the fever camps of utopianism.

Benko makes Thomas Paine's opinions about gold a prophecy reaching 200 years into the future where gold becomes Nemesis and the end of Bretton Woods Hubris. Covering up Watergate? Well, simply an instrumental little detail:

"The House Judiciary Committee’s charges and the Connally indictment uncannily fulfill a prophecy by Tom Paine. ... Connally was acquitted on the charges of graft and perjury.  Later he underwent bankruptcy before dying in semi-disgrace.  Nixon resigned rather than undergoing impeachment, also living out his life in disgraced political exile.   The spirit of Paine’s declaration was fulfilled in both cases. Connally and Nixon engineered this violation, abandoning the good, precious-metal, money contemplated by the Constitution. Nemesis followed hubris. The closing of the 'gold window' was based, by Connolly, on deeply wrong premises.  It was sold to the public, by Nixon, on deeply false promises."

Methinks Tom Paine himself would be a little embarrassed at the almost religious regard with which some of his present day followers come to what he has left behind for us on paper.

He'd probably call them Burkeans.

Yves Smith, Stalinist Heroine Of Naked Capitalism, Comes Out For Michael Mann Never Once Mentioning His Nemesis Mark Steyn And National Review

The opponents of what is "right" do not exist, you see: If they were in the picture they'd remove them, but it is better to never have them in the picture in the first place.

She's got an Occupy Wall Street Movement sash on the right of her page, might as well put up a Joe Stalin sash on the left.

Here.

Moochelle Shovels It In At Inaugural Lunch Like She Hasn't Eaten In Days

Mabel, Mabel, strong and able, get your elbows off the table. This is not a horse's stable, but a first class dining table.

And shouldn't the First Lady finish chewing and swallowing before shoveling in the next fork full?

Meanwhile everybody else is talking about the eye-rolling, while the president seems genuinely affable toward his nemesis.

Video here.

Whatever Ann Coulter is, it isn't Conservative

Whatever Ann Coulter is, it isn't conservative.

At least since her endorsement of Hillary Clinton in 2008 we've had, on the other hand, some good clues about what she in fact is.

For example, she was willing to endorse Hillary Clinton and campaign for her were Hillary the candidate for the Democrats for president. The reason? Because Senator John McCain, the Republican, was determined to end the practice of waterboarding prisoners of war at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Now she has endorsed John McCain's one time nemesis from 2008, Gov. Mitt Romney. And Gov. Romney has just put his foot in it twice only days after winning the very same Florida primary McCain won four years ago, and shown us thereby that he isn't a conservative, either.

Proclaiming himself content with the social safety net for the very poorest Americans, Gov. Romney pledged on one day to expand it in the event it becomes inadequate to the task.

On the very next he announced his commitment to the federal minimum wage, and indexing it to inflation.

This is the same Gov. Romney Ann Coulter predicted would lose to President Obama, and therefore the Republicans had better nominate Gov. Chris Christie instead. Also the same Gov. Romney now endorsed by . . . Sen. John McCain.

Thus Ann Coulter is on record in support of a vigorous and muscular government, one which tortures prisoners of war, further entrenches entitlements which create a class dependent on the dole, and interferes in the free marketplace so that the unemployed, and especially the young, gather no useful work experience because employers cannot afford to pay large numbers of them the minimum wage.

In keeping with this unlimited government philosophy, Ann Coulter now defends RomneyCare in Massachusetts on the grounds that government compulsion is quite American:

States have been forcing people to do things from the beginning of the republic: drilling for the militia, taking blood tests before marriage, paying for public schools, registering property titles and waiting in line for six hours at the Department of Motor Vehicles in order to drive.

To the likes of Ann Coulter, "government is" evidently means "government ought."

Nevermind that conscription was resisted and unsuccessful from the beginning of the country. Fewer than 9 percent of Civil Warriors were drafted. The vast majority were volunteers. And volunteers alone comprise our Armed Forces today and have since 1973.

No one is compelled to marry, only to fulfill certain basic requirements if they choose to. Those who remain single aren't obliged to get blood tests. And those who cohabit forego them entirely without fear of the blood test police knocking down their doors.

Yes "we" pay for public schools, that is, we who own property, but the non-propertied classes do not. But no one forced me to buy a house which is taxed to fund schools.

It's in our interests to comply with government which clearly secures our interests, which is why we support property laws which guarantee clear title and oppose shortcuts which undermine them, like the Mortgage Electronic Registration System, a colossal assault on the most basic of all rights we look to government to safeguard but hasn't.

We also expect government to regulate banking to protect the integrity of our savings and of our currency, but it has done neither.  

And no, I didn't have a six hour wait at the DMV. I mailed my check and got my driver's license renewal in the mail. So what if the picture is four years old? But my mother killed the neighbor's prize sow with a car when she was 16, and never drove again. From then until she died at the age of 93 no one forced her to stand in line at the DMV to get a license she would never need.

To hear Ann tell it, we might as well castrate and sell our young, or even eat them because these things were said to be the custom once upon a time, as adultery, incest and sodomy manifestly ever are:

Be it then, as Sir Robert says, that anciently it was usual for men to sell and castrate their children, Observations, 155. Let it be, that they exposed them; add to it, if you please, for this is still greater power, that they begat them for their tables, to fat and eat them: if this proves a right to do so, we may, by the same argument, justify adultery, incest and sodomy, for there are examples of these too, both ancient and modern; sins, which I suppose have their principal aggravation from this, that they cross the main intention of nature, which willeth the increase of mankind, and the continuation of the species in the highest perfection, and the distinction of families, with the security of the marriage bed, as necessary thereunto.  -- John Locke

Is this the reason Ann Coulter is friendly with sodomites today? Because they exist? Or should Thomas Jefferson's advice to castrate sodomites carry more weight?

Did someone hit Ann Coulter with a rock? And is she now living under it? More than half of the country hates ObamaCare because it is compulsory.

The animus against compulsion is as old in America as the revolt against taxation without representation. And older still for refugees from religious compulsion.

If Ann Coulter were alive in 1776 with her present views she'd be a loyalist who would have ended up fleeing to Canada. And in 1861 she'd have gladly plunged the country into a war which killed hundreds of thousands of fathers and brothers because some South Carolinians killed a Union mule at Ft. Sumter.

Ann Coulter's way of thinking has a long pedigree. It's called tyranny.

The Answer: Because He's Going Golfing For The Rest Of His Life For Free

The Question: Why Is Obama So Calm Right Now?

Jonathan Cohn for The New Republic has a different answer, however, here:

"I keep thinking back to that email that circulated in late 2008, when Obama was behind in the polls. It had a picture of him speaking at the convention with the caption 'I’ve got this.' Part of me thinks he still does. And part of me doesn’t."

Meet Nemesis Jonathan, starting today.