For the first half of Bernstein’s very readable, and richly footnoted, book, Hearst was either bankrupt or rich, there was no inbetween. He made and lost fortunes, but nothing slowed him down. He had a natural nose for finding gold and silver.
Rising Rents & Cheap Money Flowing, Apartment Prices are Soaring
Fannie Mae announced today it provided nearly $70 billion in multifamily financing last year. Fannie Mae apartment loan pricing and terms are attractive: the 5-year fixed rate starts at 2.74% to the 30-year fixed starting at 3.81%. The larger point is with the CPI at 7% in December, the real interest rate on these Fannie Mae loans is negative.
Elon and NFL play LVCVA for a Sucker
For $50 million Musk’s company is contractually obligated to move 4,000 people per hour for 13 hours a day during major trade shows, but recent data showed it’s moving more like 1,300 people per hour.
When Higher Prices are Not Inflation
“You have this huge imbalance of supply and demand which is causing the prices to skyrocket,” Sundaram told CNBC Make It. The question is, is this inflation? Austrians would say no. These price increases are the normal process of a market clearing when supply, for whatever reason, isn’t satisfying all of the demand. Consumers who can and most desire the product will pay more for the limited supply.
RIP Betty White: Good in Match Game's "Hard Seat"
The author describes the last seat occupant as “a strong character,” women celebrities “with an offbeat imagination whose function on the panel [was] to conclude with an original remark.” Betty White was perfect for the role, being “game show royalty” having appeared in numerous Mark Goodson-Bill Todman shows over the years.
Will Artificial Intelligence Create a Socialist Paradise?
Victor Shvets believes computing power has caught up and “technology could soon create an environment where state planning might be able to deliver acceptable economic results while simultaneously suppressing societal and individual freedoms.”
Speculation, on Earth and the Metaverse
Mark Twain and Will Rogers are both credited with “Buy land, they're not making it anymore.” Both men have passed. But, has their land wisdom left us as well? Ms. Kamin writes, presumably with a straight face, “real estate investing in the metaverse still is highly speculative.”
The Public Drowns in Dollars, while Bitcoin is the Monetary Lifeboat
If Bitcoin is our lifeboat, indeed, as Ms. Demirors emphasizes, “Not owning Bitcoin is now irresponsible.”
Housing Hubris
Mari’s piece chronicles the trials and tribulations of millennials (who are now the largest generation) simply trying to buy a home. In some cases, the offers are made long distance on the basis of images from their computer screens. Nationwide home prices have soared nearly 25 percent. But, where the jobs are, in medium-size metropolitan areas such as Boise, Phoenix, Austin, and Salt Lake City, prices have soared 46 percent; 36 percent; 35 percent; and 33 percent, respectively.
Biden is Not at Fault for Higher Gas Prices...Yet
Gas prices increased considerably during the last few months of the Trump regime and have continued during Biden’s term. Why? That annoying economics thing, supply and demand. Americans are driving more since the pandemic has abated, like, for instance, to work. Vehicle miles driven has nearly doubled from a low of just over 160 billion miles in April 2020 to 290 billion in July of this year.
With Government Common Sense Not Required
The book, authored by vice president of distressed debt and convertible securities trading at Lehman Brothers Larry McDonald, with Patrick Robinson provides an eye-witness account of the nation’s largest bankruptcy, a tripped domino which provided some semblance of an Austrian Theory style malinvestment flushing.
The Fed and Opioids
While the U.S. press harps on inequality, there is no mention of Marx’s 5th plank, i.e. The Federal Reserve. “The creation of money out of thin air, or legal counterfeiting, by central banks,” wrote Frank Hollenbeck for mises.org. creates “undesirable and unjustified source of income inequalities.” He continued, “It should be no surprise the growing gap in income inequalities has coincided with the adoption of fiat currencies worldwide.”
The Gray Lady Vs. Bitcoin
The who or they known as Satoshi published a white paper and Bitcoin was born, opening the floodgates to a Hayekian competitive currencypalooza. Let the best government, bank, or crypto developer win.
The Nightmare of Bureaucracy
the federal government makes the simple process of disposing of government properties into a kafkaesque nightmare. “The federal government has long owned more real estate than it knows what to do with — buildings that sit empty and sites that are underdeveloped — but it must jump through hoops before it can sell its holdings,”
Preserving Capital through Bankruptcy
“Bankruptcy fulfills the crucially important social function of preserving the available stock of capital. And it plays this role in all conceivable scenarios: when it results from fraud, when it results from insolvency, and when it results from illiquidity.”
Overcoming the Endowment Effect
We all want to be right, thus, we’re willfully blind about the accuracy of what we know and learn. “When you’re highly confident, your brain becomes more receptive to information that confirms your original view,” Zweig explains, “while the processing of other data that could disprove it is ‘abolished,’ a recent neuroscience study found.”
Fantasy's End
Although famous for his business acumen, for Trump, numbers were not a fixed thing, “for him they were surprisingly, even magically elastic.” Elections, like bets, lie in the fickle hands of the Goddess of Wagering and as the aforementioned Axthelm wrote: "The Goddess must be appeased, soothed, tithed. She must never be affronted by statements hinting that a gambler has taken fate into his own firm grip."
The End of the Sound Economy
The US economy has become hyper financialized, says Pal. If the S&P 500 goes down, employees are laid off. And, we all know that one of the Fed’s mandates is maximizing employment. “It's like nothing will last long because the Fed will not allow it to.”
Cryptocurrencies D.C.'s Latest Roadkill
Republicans and Democrats have identified a pocket they both agree on to pick to fund their spendapolloosa: cryptocurrency brokers. The Senate, at the last minute, figured it can raise $28 billion with a “large-scale increase in the requirements for crypto brokers and investors to report their transactions to the Internal Revenue Service.
It's not Charmin's Fault, It's the Fed's
A Charmin spokeswoman, when confronted by reporters at WBUR about shrinking the size of their toilet sheet squares, pulled an explanation out of her you-know-what, suggesting it was the result of "innovations" allowing “consumers to, basically, wipe their butts more efficiently.”