Putin attacks Kyiv after call with Trump:
Friday, July 4, 2025
Thursday, July 3, 2025
The GOP House bowed down and worshipped before the GOP Senate and voted for its reconciliation bill lock, stock, and barrel today at 2:30pm, including all the clowns of the House Freedom Caucus
The roll call vote is here.
The $36 trillion national debt will soar.
The interest payments on that debt were $639 billion fiscal year to date at the end of May, and they will soar, too.
The so-called fiscal conservatives of the House Freedom Caucus could have stopped this monstrosity, but they all backed down save for Massie and Fitzpatrick, and they aren't even members.
The entire House Freedom Caucus voted for it.
You can't win: State and local government employment is up 175k since January, which more than offsets federal employment down 69k
The swamp is everywhere lol.
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| down 69k |
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| up 119k |
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| up 56k |
Pressure on the House GOP reconciliation bill holdouts got them all, save one, to flip at 03:23 this morning, finally allowing the bill to come to the floor for debate
Thomas Massie was originally for bringing the bill to the floor for debate, then switched to against that after Trump got testy with him lol, and then switched back to for again after getting Trump to stop criticizing him, at least temporarily.
He'll still vote against this damn thing, and will probably be the only one.
The debate phase started at 03:30 and is still ongoing.
Hakeem Jeffries is trying to outdo Kevin McCarthy with a marathon floor speech in opposition longer than eight hours and thirty-two minutes.
In education news, the once great Indiana University has turned its back on Western civilization and purged its traditional degree programs because the children of the barbarians don't enroll in them anymore
A victory for the mouth breather, Marco Rubio, fellow servant of Mammon.
Donald Trump has managed to fire a measly 69,000 federal employees since January, state government employees up 56,000 lol
Looks like a lot of federal workers found new jobs lol.
We had a record average number who were eating but not working in the United States in 1H2025, not seasonally adjusted: 102.65 million
The seasonally adjusted figure is also a record high: 102.50 million in 1H2025.
Trump's own government says he has 103.2 million eating but not working in June 2025
I don't make the rules.
Rush Limbaugh makes the rules.
Full time employment in June 2025 rises to 49.83%, first half of 2025 falls to 49.30%, as bad as 2021 or 2017
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| Full time was 49.83% of civilian population in June 2025 |
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| Full time was 49.30% of civilian population in 1H2025 |
Wednesday, July 2, 2025
House GOP can't agree to proceed to debating Senate reconciliation bill, vote stands at 206 Yea, 216 Nay (4 GOP against), with 10 GOP not voting
Yikes.
Even if all not voting GOP vote Yea, there's a tie. Not good enough.
And moments ago Thomas Massie changed his Yea to Nay lol.
Trump’s megabill is in real trouble; House GOP leaders need to flip a ‘no’ vote to a yes
Deane Waldman argues Medicaid cuts of 20 million new Biden enrollees who don't belong there would save lives by shortening wait times for care which have swelled to 132 days
Medicaid cuts could save thousands of lives
... Reduced enrollment and cuts to nonclinical spending could shorten wait times, make care more accessible, and reduce death-by-queue. No one in the media has reported this potential benefit from cuts to Medicaid. ...
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.
... 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.
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.
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