Today his op-ed appears in the Wall Street Journal urging the Fed’s home office to lighten up on the interest rate hikes already. The President must be pleased.
Optimism Abounds, Dark Clouds Circle
The economy is great we’re told. Vote Republican and get more of it. “It” being--winning. However, the KBW Bank Index hit a 52-week low today. The index of small bank stocks is getting hammered. The index of European bank stocks continues to be bludgeoned by the market. And, the home builder’s index peaked in January, with big builders Lennar and DR Horton now making 52-week lows.
The Real Rialto
However, that’s not what Rialto is (or was) at all. Rialto Capital Advisors conducted day-to-day management and workout of 3.05 billion in loans the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) received after it closed down banks during the financial crash.
Tall Buildings, Mighty Crashes
Mark Thornton’s “The Skyscraper Curse: And How Austrian Economists Predicted Every Major Economic Crisis of the Last Century” couldn’t be more timely. As we slide from boom to bust, the thoughtful and curious will want answers. Thornton has them.
Housing Top is In
The interest rate which most influences mortgages is the 10 yr treasury which has increased nearly 200 basis points since it’s bottom in the summer of 2016. The latest 30-year mortgage rate per investing.com is now at 5.05% a huge jump from the 3.6% two years ago.
Kirk Kerkorian: Misesian Entrepreneur
Kerkorian began his art early, by necessity. “When you’re a self-made man you start very early in life…,” Kerkorian said. “You get a drive that’s a little different, maybe a little stronger, than somebody who inherited.” Unlike a certain president of the United States we know. Rempel starts his first chapter with a quote from Mark Twain, “Necessity is the mother of taking chances.”
An Anointed Son, A Reporter Scorned
Dana Gentry’s “The Anointed Son: A True Story of Greed, Power and Blind Trust” is a book, not about low rates, but high ones. While the prime lending rate was 4 percent in 2003, Las Vegas real estate developers would borrow at rates of 12 percent up to 15 percent in pursuit of cashing in on the real estate boom.
Housing: Rates Up, Demand Down
However, homebuyer mood has changed. Be it increased interest rates or Trump’s Tweets & Tariffs show, I’m told by those selling homes that buyers that were bullish with a capital B, a couple months ago. are now, not so much.
Dimwit Minimum Wage Logic
If Bernie were paying attention, there is a minimum wage experiment going in real time in Venezuela right now. Sure, there’s some serious money printing going on there and plenty of socialist schemes to keep the shelves empty. However, the fact there’s nothing to buy hasn’t kept Venezuelan president Maduro from hiking that country’s minimum wage 24 times since 2013 when he took office.
Las Vegas: How Long can the Expensive Drunk Last?
Las Vegas hotels are more in the space renting business than the games of chance business. Want a place to sit while you tan at Encore? Ms. Bond writes, “Prices can range from $5,000-ish for a daybed to $10,000 for a “water couch,” a 10-person table-sofa-lounge combo situated in a shallow part of the pool.”
Wage Earners Never Catch Up
U.S. Consumers and their lenders are seeing the world through Trump’s rose colored glasses. So much to buy and not enough time to save for it! Plus, the Fed’s inflation will chip away at their debts.
Musk's Tesla Trump Trick Flops
However, entrepreneurs and business people cannot lie around the market. If they make outlandish promises, the markets punish them. Ask Elon Musk, whose Tesla Trump trick recently flopped.
Tariffs to Socialism
Trade wars create winners and losers, at home and abroad. American consumers lose, as the prices are hiked while capital and labor are misallocated. This makes everyone, over time, poorer--even the tier two real estate developer.
Education: Expensive Signaling
Caplan explains, “Graduation tells employers, ‘I take social norms seriously--and have the brains and work ethic to comply’ Quitting tells employers, ‘I scorn social norms--or lack the brains and work ethic to comply.’”
Counterfeiting, Not Capitalism Squeezes
Quart claims members of the middle class are happy idiots, encouraged to do what they love, while being pummeled by capitalism, no union protections, and a frayed social safety net.
6 Hours in Old San Juan
With Royal Caribbean's business plan evidently to make sure its passengers have every opportunity to remain intoxicated for the duration of the entire voyage, it was the rare out-of-step, teetotaling cruiser who is up by 7:00 am to walk the narrow, cobblestone streets of Old San Juan.
Tariff Destruction Wrapped in the Flag
Actual free trade would be a brash approach, not going full blown Smoot-Hawley. But don’t try to convince the guys on the Banner shop floor of any economics 101 mumbo-jumbo .
Trump Channels Tricky Dick
There’s plenty of blather that Trump is breaking with presidential norms by criticizing Jerome Powell’s rate hikes, but, the Donald is merely channeling Richard Nixon. When Nixon appointed Arthur Burns to be Fed Chair in October of 1969, Burns was soaking up the applause during the announcement of his appointment when Nixon broke in, saying, “You see, Dr. Burns, that is a standing vote of appreciation in advance for lower interest rates and more money.” Later, in private, Nixon told his new Fed Chair, “You see to it: no recession”
Tax Evasion: Goooooaaaallll!
Ronaldo and Messi take elaborate steps to keep money they’ve earned away from the government of Spain. Bagus and his colleagues point out the benefits of their actions. “Lacking a removal or reduction in tax levels, evasion will allow for an at least partial reinstatement of individuals’ rights of association, with resultant improvements in ethical considerations as well as economic efficiency.”
Merger Malinvestment
The primary problem is size itself. Ludwig von Mises explained that socialism doesn’t work because there was no market to determine prices and thus calculate how resources should be used. Behemoth companies are no more immune than government bureaucracies.