Free Republic

Three years into Joe Biden’s presidency, reporters who cover the administration know what to expect when first lady Jill Biden appears: nothing. The president, 81, has held the fewest press conferences or formal interviews of any modern commander-in-chief — leaving Biden’s jaunts across the White House South Lawn to and from his Marine One helicopter as the best chance for the press corps to get some face time. When Biden is alone, he is far easier to bait with shouted questions, sometimes shuffling over around midnight for a give-and-take — despite the unflattering overhead TV lights forcing him to hold...

Embarking on a narrative journey that transcends time, we unravel the captivating parallels between Nvidia’s meteoric rise and the cautionary tale of Cisco in 2000. If projections hold, Nvidia could transform into a $7.5 trillion behemoth within a year, evoking haunting memories of the Dot Com bubble. March 2000 witnessed a similar saga with Cisco, and as history beckons, we ponder the unheeded warnings of the past. The charts, valuations, and a sense of unstoppable growth—all echo a familiar tune. Is this a prelude to another tech bubble burst?

Signs of a potential market peak are emerging as the technology sector, which peaked in July, shows renewed vulnerability. This week, marked by the largest shooting star for Tech since July, is seen as a significant indicator. JPMorgan Chase & Co. quant strategists are raising concerns about the concentration of the market, drawing parallels with the dot-com bubble and emphasizing the risk of a substantial selloff. The dominance of the 10 largest stocks in U.S. equity markets is a focal point of concern. The strategists note that highly concentrated markets pose a clear and present risk to equity markets in...

Including NVIDIA playing the role of Cisco Systems. Electric vehicles playing the dotcom game. Irrational exuberance in the face of a clearly faltering economy. In the mid to late 1990s it was the second expansion of the ghettos into the second ring suburbs that caused thousands of business to die. Now we have another expansion of the ghettos fueled by millions of illegals making it ten times worse.

Where is the website? "DOWNSIDE LEGACY at two degrees of Bill Clinton" does it still exist?

In my sub-40 years of existence, I’ve witnessed multiple market bubbles and collapses that in hindsight were predictable, but the warning signs of inevitable failure were obviously ignored. People disregard the few naysayers because their desire to be a part of an in-vogue fad outweighs any common sense.

The Biden administration, the media, Democrats, and Republicans are all either willfully ignorant or blithely unaware of the looming economic crisis that's about to hit. Inflation is part of the problem, but we're going beyond job creation reports and the fallout from Silicon Valley Bank. It's a crisis that could cause all the dominoes to fall, and it doesn't help that we have a president who gets outright exhausted after a few days of work. A looming real estate crisis threatens to nuke the whole system. The bleeding has already begun, and it could take decades for some "superstar cities"...

MADISON, Wis. -- As the average home cost in Madison soars to $424,000 in 2023's latest city assessments, experts say new homeowners are unlikely to face decreases in value in the near future despite the rapid increase. President Melissa Bjerke Markgraf and CEO Ruth Hackney from the Realtors Association of South Central Wisconsin joined Naomi Kowles on For the Record to explain the impacts of Madison's red hot housing market after city assessments rose 13.5% from the previous year. "The last three years, even during the pandemic, were record-setting volume years," Bjerke Markgraf said. "It's shocking double digits going up....

Black Knights December Mortgage Report is out and the house price graphs show the west is a mess. While much of the US is down from 2022 peaks in home price. but it is The West where home prices are down the most (just like 2008 where the Inland Empire of California, Phoenix and Las Vegas crashed in term of home prices). At least Columbus Ohio is down only -2.1% from the 2022 peak. While Austin TX is down almost -10% from 2022 peak. US inflation numbers are out tomorrow. Let’s check on home price and rent growth tomorrow.

Alarm! Yesterday’s PUT/CALL ratio was the highest in history at 1.46. That is higher than 2001 and 2008. REAL M2 Money YoY has crashed to its lowest level since 1980 and Jimmy Carter. And the train keeps on rollin’. Instead of Little Games, The Federal Reserve is making this BIG GAMES.

The London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) is the world’s largest silver exchange. For the last nine consecutive months, the quantity of silver held in LBMA vaults have declined. The August 2022 report states that the vaults now hold only 916.5 million ounces of silver, the lowest total since July 2016. In November 2021, the LBMA vaults held 1.170.6 billion ounces of silver. Since then, inventories have fallen 21.7 percent. As dramatic a drop as that is, it becomes even more extreme when you consider only the LBMA inventories not owned by 13 silver exchange traded funds (ETFs) and the private...

As China’s property crisis deepens and Chinese homeowners across 100 cities refuse to pay their mortgages, some local government officials are taking matters into their own hands. Deng Bibo, a county party secretary of China’s Hunan province, encouraged everyone to buy multiple homes during his opening speech for a real estate exhibition fair in Shimen, a county of Hunan, on Tuesday. “I hope that today all comrades will take the lead in buying property,” Deng said. “Buy one property, then buy a second one. If you purchased a second one already, then buy a third. Bought a third? Then buy...

As The Fed raises rates in their attempt to wrangle inflation, we are seeing an about-face in the US housing market. The pandemic-related Fed monetary stimulypto begat a housing boom that is careening to a halt as the fastest-rising mortgage rates in at least half a century upend affordability for homebuyers, catching many sellers wrong-footed with prices that are too high. It’s an astonishing turnaround. Just a few months ago, house hunters felt pushed to make offers within days, waive inspections and bid way above asking. Now they can sleep on it and maybe even shop for a better deal....

I’ve never escaped Watergate,” says John Dean, as once again he allows the years to melt away, the old faces to crowd in and the secret tapes to whirr in his mind. “There’s just no choice. I’m living in the bubble. It’s become a fact of life.” America has never escaped Watergate either. The biggest political scandal of the 20th century, and the only one to cause a presidential resignation, has become a byword for lost innocence and lost faith in institutions. Along with the Vietnam war, it marked the end of an era in which a president’s words were...

All I can say is “Wow.” Tobias Peter and Ed Pinto of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) released their April housing report and it was a doozy. The AEI’s home price appreciation index came in at a blood curdling 17.3% YoY. The reason why home prices are still raging at 17.3% YoY? The Fed’s monetary stimulypto is STILL in place! The Fed’s balance sheet (green line) is still staggering, and The Fed Funds target rate (white line) is a measly 1%. Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic is talking about a pause in Fed tightening. Fed Chair Jerome Powell is really...

The Fed has barely started raising interest rates but the air is already seeping out of the housing bubble.New single-family home sales plunged by 16.6% from March and were down 26.9% year on year. New home sales dropped to the lowest level since the lockdown in April 2020.New home sales are often viewed as a leading indicator of the state of the overall housing market.The unsold inventory of new homes spiked by 34,000, a historic month-to-month leap. There were 440,000 unsold new homes (seasonally adjusted), the highest level since May 2008 in the midst of the housing bust. Both, the...

US Existing Home Sales were 5.61M SAAR in April, down -2.4% from March’s -3.0% MoM reading. But median prices YoY for existing home sales printed at 14.85%, still hot, hot, hot. With 3 consecutive declines in MoM existing home sales, how can prices still be raging at 14.85%? First, inventory for sale in April remains low compared to 2010 (yellow line). Second, The Federal Reserve’s Stimulypto (excessive monetary easing) is still out there in force despite Jerome “Slowhand” Powell signaling rate increases (green line). 30Y mortgage rates are still rising. Where do we go from here? 30 year mortgage rates...

Washington never learns. Never. Politicians are like collective Alzheimer's disease patients. They have no short-term memories. Does anyone remember 2008? It was only 14 years ago. Then, America suffered through one of the most significant and most painful financial crises in our nation's history -- and the worst losses since the crash of 1929. Millions of people lost their jobs. Hundreds of thousands defaulted on their mortgages and lost their homes. Trillions of dollars of lifetime savings and wealth evaporated. Central billion-dollar banks and investment houses that were thought to be invincible were swept away like straw huts in the...

“2000 showed you can just about skate through a stock market event, but Japan and 2008 showed you can’t skate through a housing crisis,” Grantham says. Wall Street titan Jeremy Grantham has been warning of a “superbubble” in the U.S. since last year, arguing the S&P 500 is set to be cut in half as an era marked by exceedingly risky investor behavior begins to fade. Now, the cofounder and chief investment strategist of the Boston-based asset management firm Grantham, Mayo, and van Otterloo (GMO) is warning the U.S. may be headed toward a housing crisis as mortgage rates soar,...

Its Saturday and I am dreading markets opening on Monday. But here is where we sit today. The 30-year mortgage rate has soared to 5.29%, the highest level since 2009 at the beginning of Obama’s Presidency. Since 2009, we have seen the purchasing power of the US Dollar decline further (orange line) while inflation (blue line) has soared. M1 (yellow) and M2 (green) has been growing since the financial crisis, but really took-off with the Covid outbreak in 2020 and The Fed’s massive overreaction coupled with Federal government stimulus. Since the creation of The Federal Reserve System under President Woodrow...