What in the hell is going on in Utah?
The shooter is still at large.
Wednesday, September 10, 2025
Housing affordability is up for a second year in a row in 2024, which is better than a sharp stick in the eye
Housing affordability hit a record low 17.22% in 2022.
That is to say, median household income bought 17.22% of the median sales price of a house sold in the United States in 2022.
The 2024 figure is 19.98%, which is just a little lower than in 2013, when it was 20.12%. Affordability also is about where it was in the middle of the Bush 43 administration, the height of the previous housing bubble.
As you can plainly see, houses were much more affordable in the 1990s, and even more affordable before that. It's a picture of declining affordability overall since then.
Housing did get briefly more affordable in 2009 . . . when 5.5 million people lost their jobs and completed foreclosures were on their way to 6+ million.
Median household income in this data is updated but once a year, and for 2024 that was yesterday.
Core producer prices, not seasonally adjusted, were up 2.827% year over year in today's report for August 2025
The climb-down from last month's report for July 2025 at 3.655% year over year was YUGE.
The numbers have been quite volatile for the last four months.
In today's release, the yoy numbers for Nov 2024 through Mar 2025 remain unchanged from last month's report. The five month average of these for the yoy increase in core wholesale prices has been 3.711%.
Last month the average for April through July came in lower, at 3.144% year over year, but that has now been revised even lower in this month's report, by 2%, to 3.081% yoy.
Combined with the fresh August reading at 2.827% yoy, clearly the trend for the rate increases has been lower overall.
But these levels are far higher than the average 1.629% which prevailed 2012-2020 inclusive. Our new lower August reading is a rate still nearly 74% higher than that.
The wholesale price environment remains highly inflationary compared with the pre-pandemic era.
Thanks to Trump/Vance appeasement of Putin, NATO ally Poland is starting to look just like Ukraine
Poland says it shot down Russian drones that violated its airspace during attack on Ukraine
The Polish military accused Moscow of an "act of aggression" early Wednesday. The incident marked a first for a NATO member state since the Kremlin invaded its neighbor.
Poland said a number of Russian drones entered its airspace during an attack on Ukraine early Wednesday and were shot down with the help of NATO allies, a first since Moscow's full-scale invasion of its neighbor. ... Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said his country was dealing with "a large-scale provocation,” and that his military recorded 19 drone incursions overnight, four of which he said were shot down. ... The E.U. called it the “most serious European airspace violation by Russia since the war began.” ...
Tuesday, September 9, 2025
The Wall Street Journal: Just 35% of high school seniors in 2024 were proficient in reading, and only 22% in math
... Twelfth-graders’ average math score was the worst since the current test began in 2005, and reading was below any point since that assessment started in 1992. The share of 12th-graders who were proficient slid by 2 percentage points between 2019 and 2024—to 35% in reading and 22% in math. ...
More.
And they can vote.
Monday, September 8, 2025
Sunday, September 7, 2025
Let's cut to the chase: They need the National Guard to protect ICE from the people
If Trump were really serious about deportations, he'd be going after the employers, which would be far easier than going after eleventy million illegals or whatever it is.
That's how you know this is all fake, all performative.
It is deportation theatre, from beginning to end.
The goal is 3,000 deportations a day, which over four years is only 4.3 million.
It is unserious policy, for an unserious country, but it is going to cost serious money.
Saturday, September 6, 2025
Friday's bad job report spooked Treasury buyers big time, pushing yields down 4.5% in the aggregate from the August average in a flight to safety
Average US Treasury yields by duration Fri Sep 5, 2025:
Bills 3.96
Notes 3.69
Bonds 4.75
Aggregate 3.98 (down 4.5% from Aug average).
The aggregate was already down 6.5% from January in August. The only yields still holding up had been in bonds, which gave up 11 basis points on Friday, yielding 4.75 vs. the August average of 4.86, down about 2.2%.
The rosy scenario, which isn't rosy, is for stagflation. The worse scenario is for recession, possibly signaled by the revision to June payrolls, now down 13k.
You know, like in January 2001, but past performance is no guarantee of future results.
The point is, people are spooked.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)