Friday, September 13, 2019
The contagion of the record low 10-year Treasury yield of July 2016 has spread to the 30-year in August 2019
The yield on the U.S. 10-year Treasury note settled at 1.367% Tuesday, breaching the previous close low of 1.404% set in July 2012 when investors rushed into haven debt amid the depth of the eurozone’s sovereign debt crisis. Yields fall as bond prices rise. ...
On an intraday basis, the U.S. 10-year yield touched as low as 1.357%. It was 1.446% Friday and 2.273% at the end of last year. The U.S. bond market was shut Monday for a holiday.
Traders say the 10-year yield still has room to fall. Investors and analysts say bond yields are in uncharted waters now and that it is hard to predict how low yields could go in this environment.
Few in the financial markets have foreseen a period of negative interest rates touching off globally. The total of sovereign debt with negative yields jumped to $11.7 trillion as of June 27, up $1.3 trillion from the end of May, according to Fitch Ratings.
The pool is likely to expand further in the months ahead due to ongoing purchases of government bonds by the European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan. ...
The 30-year Treasury bond has been the market darling, and the buying spree has pushed down its yield to record lows lately. The 30-year bond’s yield settled at 2.138%, falling below its record close low of 2.226% Friday.
The 30-year bond was usually the playground for pension funds and insurance firms. But it is now being bid up by a broader investor base due to the global hunger for income. Analysts say it wouldn’t surprise them if the 30-year yield falls below the 2% mark in the weeks ahead.
Three years later:
In late Wednesday trading, the yields on 30-year government bonds were 1.939%, down 2.2 basis points from late Tuesday. They hit an all-time low of 1.905% earlier Wednesday.
Last night's Democrat debate was so bad . . .
. . . I couldn't find one tweet mocking it worth reproducing here.
There's exhaustion out there, people.
Thursday, September 12, 2019
Atlantic article totally soft-peddles how Obamacare's architects made millions vulnerable to estate recovery under Medicaid
The only reason Obamacare can be called successful reasonably is that it threw millions onto Medicaid, except that what is spent on you in life for your healthcare under Medicaid ends up coming out of what's left of what you owned after you die, if anything, including from the sale of your house, and even from the sale of granny's hand-me-down quilts.
America's first black president, Bill Clinton, signed estate recovery into law, and the second one then sold that bill of goods to millions of America's uninsured poor. He just bought himself a $15 million mansion to celebrate.
For many participants, the program that provides health care to millions of low-income Americans isn’t free. It’s a loan. And the government expects to be repaid. ...
One lawyer in Tennessee recalled a case in which a woman went to her late mother’s Medicaid auction to buy back quilts that had been passed down for generations. ...
One of the few times estate recovery has made headlines was earlier this decade, during the rollout of the Obama administration’s Medicaid expansion. As more Americans considered Medicaid as a health-insurance option, more came across the fine print. At least three states passed legislation to scale back their recovery policies after public outcry.
Gasoline consumers continue to pay bubble-levels, $2.571/gal on average under 2.5 years of Trump, as oil company profits soar
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| https://www.wsj.com/articles/big-oil-companies-finished-2018-strong-despite-plunge-in-oil-prices-11549031069 |
Wednesday, September 11, 2019
Jeffrey Snider explains the decline in bond yields to The Wall Street Journal's Andy Kessler, tells a clueless Fed what must be done
The Fed Can’t See Its Own Shadow
Its asset purchases are squeezing nonbank lending and sinking long-term bond rates. ...
Shortages of long bonds—good collateral—are causing “relentless”
demand and therefore lower yields. That’s why German long bonds have
negative interest rates: not because losing money is a great investment,
but because negative interest is the cost of doing business to get
“pristine collateral” to use in repos.
This is how the global credit system—what Mr. Snider labels the
Eurodollar market—now works. The Fed has become the lender of last
resort for the global market, including banks and shadow banks. It’s
about time its governors figure that out.
So what should they do? Encourage the Treasury to issue more of the
long bonds the market is demanding: 30- or even 100-year. Feed the
beast. Then stop quantitative easing: It doesn’t work and soaks up
collateral. Next, stop paying interest on reserves. Maybe even create a
nontradable “Treasury-R” to act as reserve currency elsewhere, freeing
up more bonds. If history repeats, there are about 90 days until China
repos roll over again.
Tuesday, September 10, 2019
Peak Trump administration delusion: "Labor market hotter now than during any time in our history"
The Trump administration pointed to the poverty decline as evidence that its economic agenda is helping the neediest Americans. “Employment is the best way out of poverty, and President Trump’s policies have made the labor market hotter now than during any time in our history,” said Tomas Philipson, acting chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers.
Podshare: The Soviet future of housing
Comrade Kaprugina to Yuri: "There was living space for thirteen families in this one house."
Yuri: "Yes. Yes, this is a better arrangement, comrades . . . more just."
Feminism is a mental disorder: Democrat Congressman's wife upset Obamacare covers her husband's pregnancy but not their marriage counseling
Which they're going to need a lot more of.
Unaffordable No Health Care Act: Health insurance premium increases pre-Obamacare 10%, post-Obamacare 60%
Yes, It Was The 'Affordable' Care Act That Increased Premiums:
It turns out that across the
board, for all ages and family sizes, for HMO, PPO, and POS plans,
premium increases averaged about 60 percent from 2013, the last year
before ACA reforms took effect, to 2017. In same length of time
preceding that, all groups experienced premium increases of less than 10
percent, and most age groups actually experienced premium decreases, on
average.
John Simon Bercow quits as UK Commons Speaker after 10 years in the job
Commons Speaker John Bercow expressed his displeasure at Parliament’s suspension, saying “this is not a standard or normal prorogation.”
“It’s one of the longest for decades and it represents an act of executive fiat,” he said. ...
Bercow, whose control of business in the House of Commons has made him a central player in the Brexit drama, announced he would step down after a decade in the job.
The colorful speaker, famous for his loud ties and even louder cries of “Order!” during raucous debates, told lawmakers he will quit the same day Britain is due to leave the EU, Oct. 31.
Throughout the three years since Britain voted to leave the EU, Bercow has angered the Conservative government by repeatedly allowing lawmakers to seize control of Parliament’s agenda to steer the course of Brexit.
He said he was simply fulfilling his role of being the “backbenchers’ backstop” and letting Parliament have its say.
“Throughout my time as speaker, I have sought to increase the relative authority of this legislature, for which I will make absolutely no apology,” he said.
Monday, September 9, 2019
Charlie Kirk is an ignoramus: The Gates of Janus were open continuously from 227BC-29BC
Almost 200 years of continuous war under the Roman Republic, and maybe 400 continuous years before that, to 235BC. Perhaps you've heard of it.
Sunday, September 8, 2019
"Trump Dynasty": This is even funnier than that last post of that guy dumping his fat girlfriend
The Trump family is so incompetent it can't even run the State Department.
Kamala Harris laughed at immigrant calling Trump mentally retarded, proving once again that Democrats' best friends are the world's wretched refuse
The immigrant isn't quite fully assimilated yet, but there's hope his descendants will graduate to Rahm Emanuel's retarded level within a generation or two.
Saturday, September 7, 2019
Just tried White Claw for the first time tonight: Tastes like it needs alcohol in it, except it's already in there
No "mouth feel" or complexity of flavor and smell like you get from a proper cocktail, glass of wine or beer. A trifle with a kick.
President Pocahontas would ban fracking everywhere, making it cost much more to heat the tepee
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I think I'm gonna get me a beer.
How soon they forget, even Ann Coulter: Trump squandered his victory momentum in the first six months on repealing and replacing Obamacare, and got BUPKIS, then took the Republicans' corporate tax cuts for his own because he needed a victory
It took Trump until the end of June 2017 to realize clean repeal should have been his gambit instead of repeal and replace, and by the end of July it was all over. The Senate went on summer vacay and came back to give Trump their own tax bill, not his (but did he ever have one?). Republicans hung Russia-conspiracy-embattled Trump out to dry, and played his hubris like a fiddle.
Having lost the House, Trump unwisely turned again, this time to trade war, which if he were going to fight one he should have saved for his second term. There are always casualties in war, as we're seeing with farmers and small businesses tied to the China supply chain. It's stupid to kill your voters.
Ann Coulter has repeatedly said solving immigration solves every other problem, including jobs, which is what Trump should have made his first term focus. But as we've come to see, Trump can't focus.
Infrastructure spending is a side show compared with all the money saved by fixing immigration. It seems Ann Coulter's forgotten this, too.
Friday, September 6, 2019
Just 3,000 full-time jobs created in Aug 2019 as Trump bump runs out of steam
Full-time increased to 132.156 million in Aug 2019 from 132.153 million in July, an increase of just 3,000.
Average full-time in 2019 at 50.3% of population is still well below the average two-decade experience of Americans between 1987 and 2008 when full-time averaged 51.8% of population. We can't even yet match the average cyclical high of 51.1% prior to 2008.
In August 2019 51.8% working full-time instead of the actual 50.9% would mean 2.23 million MORE people working full-time right now than actually do.
The spread between the 2019 average of 50.3% and the 1987-2008 average of 51.8% is even higher: 3.9 million MORE who could be working full-time on average this year but are not, simply because whatever broke after 2008 still isn't fixed, not by Trump, not by Obama, not by Republicans, not by Democrats, not by Bernanke, Yellen, Powell or by anybody else.
It's busted, I tell ya, but they still let legal immigrants in by the millions, not to mention illegals.
It's insanity.
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