Saturday, October 28, 2023
Weekend crew at CNBC has a hangover
CNBC front page runs both stories:
Search for Maine shooter continues (yesterday morning)
Search for Maine shooter ends (yesterday evening)
Friday, October 27, 2023
Speaking of neologisms, US House Democrat Cori Bush, member of the Hamas Wing, is a self-described "politivist"
"When the pro-Hamas wing occupies the Capitol it's not an insurrection".
Words mean whatever they say they mean, silly.
Core pce inflation at 3.7% yoy in September 2023: Two years and five months in excess of 3%
Overall pce inflation has been stuck at 3.4% yoy for three months running as of Sep 2023, which indicates to me the Fed will at the very least keep rates where they are, or possibly raise them again as progress has stalled.
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| core |
Today's ridiculous neologism is "mediatized" in a story about old-fashioned stock collapse of the bank which canceled Nigel Farage
Trading suspended apparently at 4.21 USD
Trading in NatWest shares was briefly suspended on Friday morning as the stock slid after a combination of lacklustre earnings and regulators flagging possible rule-breaking in a highly mediatized case. ...
A scandal erupted over the summer over the closure of the Coutts account of Brexit figurehead Nigel Farage, for which the politician said the lender did not initially provide a reason. Farage filed a subject access request to obtain a dossier that the bank held on him, which addressed his political views.
NatWest CEO Alison Rose then admitted to discussing Farage’s bank account with a BBC reporter, supplying information that was used in a story and later proved to be inaccurate. She eventually resigned in July, amid heavy criticism.
More.
Thursday, October 26, 2023
Hamas wing of the Democrat Party in Michigan divides its legislature
Differences over what’s happening in Israel and Gaza were laid bare in the Legislature, where Democrats have been divided over pro-Israel resolutions like those that some other state legislatures have passed with near unanimity.
In the state House, a pro-Israel resolution that was introduced with bipartisan support is no longer expected to pass due to objections from some Democrats.
Abraham Aiyash, the Democratic floor leader in the chamber, strongly opposed the resolution.
Aiyash, who grew up in Hamtramck after his parents immigrated from Yemen, said that “if we’re going to condemn terror, we must condemn the terror and the violence that the Palestinian people have endured for decades.”
The state Senate opted to write its own resolution after the House’s stalled for more than a week.
It was introduced by the chamber’s lone Jewish lawmaker, Jeremy Moss, and passed easily with bipartisan support.
More.
Tenure track Economics professor shocked to find out that corrupt college administrators have been improving poor grades FOR DECADES without telling the professors
But for an administrator to then change those final grades—behind my back—simply to appease them? How could that possibly be justified?
The response from my department chair, who has been at the college for 17 years, floored me: “This has been occurring ever since I started at Spelman.”
“That’s corrupt,” I blurted out. [In a statement emailed to The Free Press, a Spelman spokesperson wrote that “The College, its administrators, and faculty, exercise appropriate judgment in the delivery of our exceptional learning and living activities in order to maintain consistency across Spelman’s campus.” Spelman declined to comment on any of the specifics in this story.]
More here.
The poor guy got fired in the end, for naively believing that the commitment to excellence meant grading fairly according to long-accepted standards.
Exact same thing happened to me . . . in 1988, at a so-called world class institution of higher learning, where it's all wink wink.
The process got turbocharged in the 1960s by the draft dodgers. They fled to college, or to Canada. Liberal institutions gave them a pass on admissions, and once there relaxed standards to keep them enrolled to escape being drafted. These ne'er-do-wells stayed in school as the Vietnam war dragged on. Many went on to grad school as standards weakened some more. Rinse and repeat.
They are the ones who went on to educate today's hordes of complete lunatics now populating college campi.
Standards were lowered everywhere quite quickly from the 1960s, including at elite small religious colleges by the 1970s where stubborn professors with standards were already then not being renewed, the polite way of firing them.
We are reaping what we've sown.
The rot set in a long, long time ago, and it reflects why the country is in the sorry state it is.
It can't be fixed. The country as we know it will have to collapse first.
Three semesters of Latin used to be required to get into Harvard, let alone graduate from it. That standard was already under attack in 1917 in the name of "science". The widespread requirement of three semesters of college Latin was gone by the mid 1960s. Now you will be hard pressed to find any college requiring any foreign language at all to graduate. Princeton is now infamous for eliminating Latin and Greek for a degree in Classics, you know, the study of everything Greco-Roman.
The process has its own inertia producing this history. It's inherent in the thing we call America.
Tell me, Bwana: What mean GDP, why important?
Bureau of Economic Analysis this morning here:
3Q2023 nominal GDP, first estimate: $27.6235 trillion
Nominal increase year over year in 3Q: 6.27%
Compound annual growth rate since 3Q2000: 4.375%
Compound annual growth rate 3Q1947-3Q2000: 7.275%
Underperformance from post-war, last 12 months: 13.8%
Underperformance from post-war, last 23 years: 39.86%
Current S&P 500 ~ 4175
Current ratio of S&P 500 to GDP: 151
Median ratio of same 1938-2019: 81
Current overvaluation of S&P 500 from median: 86.4%
Current fair value of S&P 500: 2238
Wednesday, October 25, 2023
It's remarkable how backward and unimaginative Elon Musk's thinking can be
How many tanks, guns, and drones can you make relative to the other side? That's what it comes down to. And it may be the case, if not now, in the future it probably will be, that a Russia-China-Iran alliance can outproduce the Western alliance.
Here.
Monday, October 23, 2023
US Treasury yields making new highs for this cycle as of Oct 19, 2023
Massive Treasury issuance to pay for massive pandemic spending has driven yields higher.
It's the law of supply and demand: Increase the supply of US Treasury debt and the price goes down.
Previously issued securities paying lower interest rates drop in price because they are much more plentiful in comparison with the new issues paying higher rates which investors demand.
Who wants 'em?
Banks are estimated to be stuck with these dogs in quantities approaching what the Fed has let roll off, which is what they also must do. The collateral backing banks, insurance companies, pension funds, et cetera et cetera et cetera, suffers.
The Federal Reserve Bank's role as a big buyer in the bond market has been curtailed since 2Q2022, removing its big price support role. As of 3Q2023 the balance sheet is down $768 billion as securities mature. That's about $51 billion rolling off per month, and no net buying to replace it.
The Fed has also raised the Federal Funds Rate to an average of 5.33 to combat inflation.
So yields have risen for such reasons to these records for this cycle to date, but it's all predicated on the US Treasury having to dilute the supply:
1MO 6.02 5/26/23 (debt ceiling disagreement)
3MO 5.63 10/6/23
6MO 5.61 8/25/23
1Y 5.49 9/27/23
2Y 5.19 10/17/23
3Y 5.03 10/18/23
5Y 4.95 10/19/23
7Y 5.00 10/19/23
10Y 4.98 10/19/23
20Y 5.30 10/19/23
30Y 5.11 10/19/23.
In the aggregate as of Oct 20 yields are up a net 22% year over year to an average of 5.25692 from 4.30846 when all the wizards of smart said they couldn't possibly go any higher without breaking something.
They're still saying that.
US pandemic debt orgy described as fiscal slippage lol
It's so indicative of our degeneracy how economic profligacy must not be described that way in this day and age where anything and everything is great, awesome, and epic but that.
Oh well, at least they still pay a modicum of respect with huge, swelled, and deluge.
If only all that cash were a tsunami, inundating the shore with ruinous inflation.
CNBC, here:
. . . investors are also pricing in surprising economic resilience alongside fiscal slippage.
The U.S. federal government ended its fiscal year in September with a fiscal deficit of almost $1.7 trillion, the Treasury Department announced on Friday, adding to a huge national debt totaling $33.6 trillion. The country’s debt has swelled by more than $10 trillion since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in the first quarter of 2020, prompting a deluge of fiscal stimulus to help prop up the economy.
Sunday, October 22, 2023
Josh Boswell speculates the $5.2 million discrepancy in Joe Biden's 2017-2019 income is Burisma money of which $2.744 million was used in 2017 cash purchase of Joe's beach house
DailyMail.com has discovered that then-private-citizen Biden, who had spent virtually all his adult life in public service, bought the home for slightly under $2.75million – in cash. And making the transaction even stranger it was within weeks of a highly questionable text that Hunter had sent to Runlong 'Raymond' Zhao, an associate at Chinese oil giant CEFC asking to seal a deal worth $10 million a year. ...
Property records show Joe's six-bedroom second property was purchased on June 8, 2017 for $2,744,001 – just seven weeks before his son's shakedown messages. ...
An analysis published last year by DailyMail.com shows a $5.2 million discrepancy between his IRS filings and his Office of Government Ethics disclosures for the same period. ...
The figure is surprisingly similar to the $5 million Joe was allegedly bribed by Mykola Zlochevsky, the owner Ukrainian gas firm Burisma, according to information received by a trusted FBI informant.
The whole thing is here.
Friday, October 20, 2023
Left wing attorney Ken Chesebro pleads guilty to one felony count in Georgia election interference case, Sidney Powell to six misdemeanor counts
Kevin Breuninger for CNBC calls Powell a right-wing attorney, but to him long time left-wing ally of Laurence Tribe Ken Chesebro is just a Trump campaign attorney.
They both face fines and long probationary periods in exchange for rat-finking on the others.
Vanguard's long term Treasury fund, started in 1986, set a new all time low price record yesterday: What a coincidence
VUSTX fell to $7.37 yesterday, October 19, 2023.
Until the bond debacle of 2022, the lowest price ever was set way back in 1987, also on October 19, aka Black Monday, when the S&P 500 crashed 20.47% in its worst single day ever.
2022's new all time low for VUSTX at 8.16 had occurred on October 24, missing the anniversary of the old all time low by just three days. Also a very odd coincidence.
The debacle has only continued in 2023, and VUSTX prices haven't seen $8 since September 22nd.
ZIRP since the Great Recession is ultimately to blame for the current mess in long term Treasury securities. The clamor it created for yield drove bond investors long, culminating in the highest nominal prices ever paid for long term UST in March 2020, and the lowest yields. 30Y UST yield crashed to 0.99% on March 9, 2020, 20Y to 0.87%. Yields across the board in 2023 for 2Y to 30Y have set records for this cycle in October. Yesterday 20Y demanded 5.30%, 30Y 5.11%.
No one wants that 2020 and prior junk now, so wherever it sits it's causing collateral problems, at banks, insurance companies, pension funds, et cetera. And on the Fed's balance sheet: As of October 18th the Fed has $1.503922 trillion of UST maturing in more than 10 years on its balance sheet. It basically has to keep it until it matures, and it pays it very little to return to the Treasury as it does.
Are prices done falling?
Confident pretenders said so a year ago this month, and now here we are with $TLT investors down another 12.22% since then.
Given the obscene overvaluation of stocks, and the demand for higher yields by bond investors, cash still seems the safest place to be. VMRXX, Vanguard Cash Reserves Federal Money Market Fund Admiral Shares, has returned 4.00% ytd. You continue to lose to inflation, however.
Nothing is ever perfect.
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| 1987 high and low |
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| 2022 high and low to the left, all time high and low to the right |
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