October 15, 2024

Letters from an American

After Trump’s bizarre performance last night in Oaks, Pennsylvania, when he stopped taking questions and just swayed to his self-curated playlist for 39 minutes, his campaign this morning canceled a scheduled interview with CNBC’s Squawk Box, according to co-host of the show Joe Kernen. The campaign did not, though, cancel a scheduled live interview today with Bloomberg News and the Economic Club of Chicago. That interview echoed last night’s train wreck. 

Trump showed up almost an hour late to the event with moderator John Micklethwait, editor-in-chief of Bloomberg News. When he arrived, things went downhill fast. Micklethwait asked real questions about Trump’s approach to the economy, but the former

– By Jasmine Cui and Matthew Danbury

NBC News

Across the country, the prospect of home ownership is slipping out of reach for the ordinary buyer.

The affordability gap — an estimate of the difference between an area’s median household income and how much income is necessary to afford payments on a median-priced home in that area — is near a 10-year high in the U.S., according to an NBC News analysis of housing data. The analysis and the latest numbers from the NBC News Home Buyer Index show what experts say is a housing market inaccessible to a growing number of people. 

NBC News’ analysis shows:A household earning the local median income would be able to afford a home in more than 60% of counties nationwide. Five years ago, it would have

While this is called Medicare, it is Medicare which has been commercialized. Medicare pays additional fees subsidizing the insurance plan companies (United Healthcare, WellCare, Script, etc. offering Medicare Advantage plans Not only have healthcare plans are cutting services, healthcare systems are also pulling out of Medicare Advantage Plans. Both Joel and I discussed twenty-something different healthcare plans dropping Medicare Advance.

34 Million Seniors in Medicare Advantage Plans Face Rude Awakening – Center for Economic and Policy Research (cepr.net)

October 15 marks the first day of open enrollment in Medicare Advantage (MA) plans – a time that will deliver chaos and confusion for many of the 34 million seniors who depend on these

I understand one has to like to read about what the upper courts are doing, how they decide, and why they make decide as they do. It is obvious why Roberts and the other five decide the way they do. I will let you figure out what the basis is for their decisions. Roberts lates has reaped a public whirlwind of well-deserved criticism.

Supreme Court analysis: John Roberts knows he lost the public.

– by Dahlia Lithwick

SLATE

You would be forgiven were you to find yourself suffering from some version of motion sickness when reading about Chief Justice John Roberts’ worldview at the start of this new Supreme Court term. The chief justice, or so the legend holds, was a moderate conservative until he became a moderate moderate, until he morphed

– by Bill McBride

Calculated Risk

NOTE: The tables for active listings, new listings and closed sales all include a comparison to September 2019 for each local market (some 2019 data is not available).

This is the second look at several early reporting local markets in September. I’m tracking over 40 local housing markets in the US. Some of the 40 markets are states, and some are metropolitan areas. I’ll update these tables throughout the month as additional data is released.

Closed sales in September were mostly for contracts signed in July and August when 30-year mortgage rates averaged 6.85% and 6.50%, respectively (Freddie Mac PMMS).

Active Inventory in September

Here is a summary of active listings for these housing markets.

If you did not figure out where I am going by just reading the title, then I will explain a bit. Stock buybacks do not trump Quality. It is that simple. When you sacrifice Labor so as to have funding to buy back stocks, you may have picked the wrong person to toss. The person who inspects the product or builds that particular portion of the product correctly. This issue was in assembly somewhere along the way and was missed as an essential assembly to be doubled checked. Not Labor’s fault. Management . . .

Did Stock Buybacks Knock the Bolts Out of Boeing? Les Leopold

On January 5th, a door plug blew out of the side of a Boeing 737 Max 9 plane flying for Alaska Airlines from Portland, Oregon, to Ontario, California.  (A door plug is a section of

By Lloyd Alter

Carbon Upfront

There is a sense of humor here being shown by Lloyd. He is asking Elon Musk to build differently than what he would do if planned by the market. Granted electric vehicles have been a part of what Tesla offers. Lloyd is asking Elon to go a step farther and build something smaller that the US car manufacturer behemoths have been building. Lloyd wants it even smaller and on a car suspension rack. It makes sense for many homeowners rather than what GM, Fords, and Stellanis’s are offering. It fills a niche not occupied by anyone else that I know of today (maybe I am missing something?).

I think it is a great idea for suburbia.

Years ago, when Elon Musk announced he was going to build a pickup truck . . . I

The issue of the Tax Cuts expiring will be arriving at everyone’s doorstep come the end of 2025. They do not give an exact date so i will go with EOM December 2025. Does someone making close to or more than $400,000 annually deserve a continuation into 2026 and beyond? Not sure. I think the 1 percenter should be paying more tax.

My wife and I paid some high taxes (what we would call high) when we were under $200,000 annually after deductions. That was near the end of our careers so this was not lifestyle changing for us. Trump tossing a tax break to the one percenter through to the one-tenth of one percenter has to come to an end.

It should have also happened with the Bush tax breaks. They did not and Trump just added to the pile of deficit

By Stephen Nuñez

Roosevelt Institute

Excellent piece by Stephen Nuñez on SSI and it not adjusting or growing with the changes in economic needs from 50 years ago. Indeed, for the few dollars given out, SSI appears to penalize people rather than assist them. It is ripe for a change to be more supportive of the millions of beneficiaries using it.

This year marks the golden anniversary not just of Nixon’s resignation or the Happy Days premiere, but of a safety net program that’s been showing its age for a while now: The Social Security Administration’s Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program.1 Fifty years ago, SSI launched with the goal of offering aid to adults and children with disabilities, and to older adults with little to no income or

Catch some good articles in The Atlantic. Usually take this on a long flight to read. He is all set for Halloween. The Atlantic came out for Kamala Harris.

Guess they do not think much of the orange one. Scare the kids on Halloween and keep the candy. This is just a partial. If you like it, I can post the rest. It is a good read.

The Atlantic, for the fifth time in its 167-year history, is endorsing a candidate for president: Kamala Harris.

For the third time in eight years, Americans have to decide whether they want Donald Trump to be their president. No voter could be ignorant by now of who he is. Opinions about Trump aren’t just hardened—they’re dried out and exhausted. The man’s character has been in our faces for so long, blatant and

One of several articles I picked up on over the last few days. and decided to post at Angry Bear. Younger people are having to overextend themselves financially to buy housing. Not so different than a few decades ago. Except they are more in debt and more apt to go bankrupt due to a lost job, etc.

Income does not appear to be keeping up with the price of housing and loan interest rates. Or perhaps, mortgage increases have outstripped income? A brief introduction to a serious issue.

Due to my status as a veteran, I was able to get a VA mortgage at an ~2.6% with less than 5% down. What does this mean in terms of interest and costs to me. After three years of payments, half of my mortgage payment goes to equity and the other half to interest.

By Bill McBride

Calculated Risk Newsletter

NOTE: The tables for active listings, new listings and closed sales all include a comparison to September 2019 for each local market (some 2019 data is not available).

This is the first look at several early reporting local markets in September. I’m tracking over 40 local housing markets in the US. Some of the 40 markets are states, and some are metropolitan areas. I’ll update these tables throughout the month as additional data is released.

Closed sales in September were mostly for contracts signed in July and August when 30-year mortgage rates averaged 6.85% and 6.50%, respectively (Freddie Mac PMMS).

Active Inventory in September

Here is a summary of active listings for these early

I very much agree with these findings. With Trump, the nation and labor would have floundered. WE are lucky he had the wherewithal to act quickly with the right stimulus to support job growth. Two months after Dean’s post the nation is still going strong. Christmas maybe good for many.

U.S. Workers are Far Better Off Than Four Years Ago – Center for Economic and Policy

This is not a tough one.

First and foremost, workers are better off today because they overwhelmingly have jobs if they want them. They also are getting higher pay, even after adjusting for inflation. And they tell us they are much more satisfied at their jobs.

When President Biden took office, the unemployment rate was 6.4 percent. It is currently 4.3 percent. For most of

Introduction to how the Netherlands are going about to fix a housing shortage issue. Topping involves adding another floor or layer to an already existing building in the Netherlands for housing purposes. According to government officials, the results of such an effort is great: at least 100,000 homes can be realized with topping up.

Topping is also popular in the Netherlands according to the government. More and more municipalities, housing corporations and commercial parties are building extra homes on flat roofs. But topping up offers more opportunities than just adding homes.

For Neighborhood Developer BuurtBoost, a collaboration between VORM and Did Real Estate Development, topping up is one of the means to boost post-war neighborhoods

If you must know before you dive in, this is a long read. It is also a presentation of a report. Very little editing has been done to it. Editing which may have been done is to make it clearer in explanation. I believe it presents a clear explanation of healthcare in the US. My own experience with one group of doctors in the Phoenix was rather disheartening.

I was there for spinal and back issues. They were more interested in my blood pressure, my cholesterol, and my weight. I am not slim and neither am I overweight. My cholesterol is where many would hope to have theirs. And my blood pressure below what they call normal. Sixty-eight to seventy on the diastolic scale.

Why would a doctor want to do such? It is called coding. The more codes, the

Former Bear Bill McBride at Calculated Risk is sharing another of his excellent commentaries. This time his focus is on rising homeowner insurance costs. Timely for sure. Helene has gone through the southern states and another hurricane is coming. Insurance costs were up then and will more-than-likely increase again for states bordering the Atlantic. I have noticed our HO Insurance taking a jump also.

CalculatedRisk Newsletter

by Bill McBride

Press Release: ICE Mortgage Monitor: Average Payment Hits All-Time High; Spiking Insurance Costs Rising at 3X the Rate of Principal, Interest, and Taxes

The average monthly payment (principal, interest, taxes and insurance, or PITI) among active mortgages hit a record $2,070 in August; up $140

Economist David Zetland at The one-handed economist blog offers up another interesting book review detailing life in Ukraine during the nineties.

David Zetland, The One Arm Economist’s Book Review: “Death and the Penguin“

This 1996 novel by Andrei Kurkov tells the story of a failing writer who suddenly finds himself with a full-time job writing obituaries. He also has a penguin, Misha, who he “rescues” from Kyiv’s Zoo when they run out of money to feed their animals.

The book’s most interesting “contribution” is its description of the weirdnesses of 1990s Ukraine. It was hard for anyone to count on anything, as the Soviet world turned upside down.

You’d have to read it, but here are some characteristic passages:

“Am I ill?” he

Taken from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Gross Domestic Product (Third Estimate), Corporate Profits (Revised Estimate), and GDP by Industry, Second Quarter 2024 and Annual Update

Partial Report: Real gross domestic product (GDP) is increasing at an annual rate of 3.0 percent as shown in the second quarter of 2024 (table 1). This is according to the “third” estimate released by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the first quarter, real GDP increased 1.6 percent (a revised report).

The GDP estimate released today is based on more complete source data than available for the “second” estimate issued last month. In the second estimate, the increase in real GDP was also 3.0 percent. The update primarily reflected upward revisions to private

A history lesson of what not to do and yet may still come to pass.

October 5th, 2024

by Prof. Heather Cox – Richardson

Letters from an American

More politics rather than economics. Some of it does fit. The concept is political for an upcoming election.

William McKinley is having a moment (which I confess is a sentence I never expected to write). 

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is elevating McKinley, a representative from Ohio from 1877 to 1891 and president from 1897 to 1901, to justify his plan to impose new high tariffs. 

Trump’s call for tariffs is not an economic plan; it is a worldview. Trump claims foreign countries pay tariff duties and thus putting new tariffs of 20% on all imports, and as much as 60% on

R. J. Sigmund

September 29, 2024

The major Covid demographic metrics we track continued to trend lower this past week, but we have a new recombinant mutant out there that is multiplying quite rapidly and is forecast to become the dominant strain, probably just in time for the annual winter holidays infection wave.

Among the CDC’s “early indicators” “test positivity”, or the percentage of tests for Covid that were positive, fell to 11.6% during the week ending September 21st, down from 13.4% positive during the week ending September 14th, which had not been reported a week ago, test positivity was last reported at 14.9% during the week ending September 7th. Meanwhile, Covid cases accounted for 1.4% of hospital emergency room patients during

By Lloyd Alter

Carbon Upfront

Scope 4 emissions help me justify my flight to New Zealand and compensate for its carbon footprint.

I apologize for my posts not showing up at the usual times; I got back from Australia and New Zealand with a crushing jet lag that I still haven’t recovered from, with a cold thrown in as well. I hope to be back to my usual programming shortly.

Everyone is talking about “Scope 4” and “avoided emissions” these days. Joel Mackower of Trellis (formerly GreenBiz, it is sad that everyone is running from “green”) defines them:

In simple terms, Scope 4 refers to greenhouse gases never emitted due to a product’s cleaner production or attributes. Or, more precisely, “the difference in total lifecycle GHG emissions

Interesting read as written by Attorney Joyce Vance.

by Joyce Vance

Civil Discourse

On Wednesday, Judge Tanya Chutkan unsealed a redacted version of Jack Smith’s immunity motion. Now we have a clear view of what Smith believes is still on the table after the Supreme Court’s decision. The short version: just about everything. Smith acknowledges that the Court took Trump’s interactions with DOJ officials out of the case, but he argues that everything else is either private conduct that is fair game or official conduct that he can overcome the presumption of immunity for by demonstrating prosecution won’t harm the presidency—as if it’s not Trump who’s harming the presidency. Smith is going to make the courts tell him no, if they are of a mind

Somewhere, there is a correlation between the two . . .

The Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico dockworker strikes are over.

The strike by tens of thousands of dockworkers on the East and Gulf coasts has been called off, after the International Longshoremen’s Association and the U.S. Maritime Alliance, representing ocean carriers and port operators, reached a tentative agreement on wages.

The two sides also agreed to extend the existing contract until Jan. 15, 2025. In the meantime, they will return to the bargaining table to negotiate all other outstanding issues, including the union’s demand on a ban on all automation at the ports.

The International Longshoremen’s Association had been seeking $5-an-hour raises in each of the next six years,

I am not sure I would call this similar to Chicago politics. Which is something I lived with or observed for a number of years. It is a bit of crooked mixed with a bit of silly. Read on . . .

Low move by high court may nullify Arizona votes on Make Elections Fair Act, AZCentral

The Make Elections Fair Act would flush Arizona’s partisan primary election system down the toilet. It will be on the ballot in November.

And we all will vote on it.

And our votes … may not get counted.

The Arizona Supreme Court is doing something that no other court in Arizona has done before. Something nullifying the votes of millions of Arizona citizens. The court would also negate the work of those who collected the 550,000 signatures to put the initiative

Largely speaking direct labor is not the issue of costs have I have presented in another post. It is the overhead such as healthcare insurance which can better handled in another manner. Inflation grows and minimum wage income is stagnant.

Studies have found little or no job loss due to Minimum Wage Laws, Economic Policy Institute

There is always political heat around minimum wage increases, largely driven by concerns about job losses. The story goes, after a minimum wage increase many employers will not be able to afford to pay their workers the new higher minimum wage. They will then shrink their payrolls. If these job losses are large enough, they could even swamp the higher wages and lead to lower overall wage income for the entire group of

As Category 4 Hurricane Helene approached the Florida Panhandle, a number of Republican senators and representatives voted against supplementing disaster relief in a government funding extension which was passed by both houses of Congress.

Many of the Republican lawmakers voted against the provision of additional necessary funding to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) represent states that were hit particularly hard by Hurricane Helene.

Obviously not the full list below. More Details and Sources Below.

Partial list of Republicans Who Voted Against FEMA Relief Before Helene Battered Their Home States, MSN

North Carolina:

Representative Dan Bishop, NC 8th District

Senator Ted Budd

South Carolina:

Representative Jeff

Another take on J.D,’s and Tim’s debate last night. Tim came off the line rather slow last night. This is like the gearing in some automobiles where you are slow off the line and gain greater speed as you go along. It was pretty clear Tim owned J.D. at the end.

Will it change votes, probably not. “A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.”

Joyce Vance at Civil Discourse. Walz versus Vance

Governor Walz seemed nervous starting out but closed strong. He scored points when J.D. Vance refused to disavow family separation and pretended that his ticket would support shaking hands and “coming back together” if they lost the election. But Vance was slick, rehearsed and had a good presentation. He had obviously been coached to

In addition to what you will hopefully read below. Repubs and Dems went to court and presented their reasoning for and against new laws allowing for a “reasonable inquiry” to be conducted before election certification and gives election workers the ability to “to examine all election related documentation created during the conduct of elections.”  You can surmise who was for and against this..

New Georgia Law Spurs Bogus Challenges to Voter Eligibility

by Andrew Garber

Brennan Center for Justice

A new law went into effect in Georgia this month that makes it easier for people to attempt to kick their neighbors off the rolls through voter challenges. Georgia already made voter challenges far too easy. Now, voters in the state face increased

Over the last 6 months, the seasonal adjusted index has increased at a 1.5% annual rate.

by Bill McBride

@ Calculated Risk

Note: The Freddie Mac index is a repeat sales index using only loans purchased by Fannie and Freddie and includes appraisals. See FAQs here. Freddie has data for all states and many cities. For house prices, I’m currently following Case-Shiller, FHFA, CoreLogic, ICE, the NAR median prices, and this Freddie Mac index.

Freddie Mac reported that its “National” Home Price Index (FMHPI) increased 0.11% month-over-month on a seasonally adjusted (SA) basis in August. On a year-over-year basis, the National FMHPI was up 3.7% in August, down from up 4.5% YoY in July.  The YoY increase peaked at 19.1% in July 2021, and for this

I did not know this. In Phoenix, etc. The subject of this commentary, “Invitation Homes” has approximately 7300 available homes for rent at prices which would equal a mortgage payment, property taxes, and the required homeowner’s insurance. I am sitting in the middle of all of this in AZ.

The only reason I can think of for not buying is poor credit, bankruptcy, no funds to pay for a realtor, closing, etc. Even so, why would you mess with rental properties? Miscellaneous fees . . .

FTC Takes Action Against Invitation Homes for Deceiving Renters, Charging Junk Fees, Withholding Security Deposits, and Employing Unfair Eviction Practices, Federal Trade Commission

Proposed settlement would require the rental property company “Invitation Homes”