Blue Light Special - Aisle 666

Yet another bit of data which supports the assertion that interest rate and prices, home prices specifically, must be correlated inversely in order to 'clear the market'. As offered here many times: capital, on credit, household expenditures are constrained by the nut needed to service the note. IOW, no one really cares what the interest rate and price are; what matters is the monthly nut. If the nut is within bounds, as set by the lender and/or seller, then the 'asset' can be bought. If not, then NOT. When interest goes high, the price must shrink in order to move the stock. Homebuilders will simply stop building if they figure that better times, lower interest, are nigh when they can boost price.

Data from the National Association of Home Builders showed that 22% of builders cut homes prices in April, down from 24% in March. Meanwhile, the share of builders who offered a sales incentive edged lower to 57% in April from 60% in March. Sentiment among homebuilders in America held steady in April, NAHB said.

Again, as mentioned in these essays since time immemorial, what was in my callow youth the 36 month car note has been stretched out to as much as 96. Will we bust triple digits? Only They Shadow knows. For the arithmetically challenged, that's 8 years. Your buggy ends up with a huge total cost, but a monthly nut that fits your income.

You can test the difference.

Dee Feat is in Dee Flation - part the forty eighth

There's been a bit of a flurry from The Right that on-shoring manufacturing and supporting better wage jobs (the kind the sub-GED crowd don't qualify for), will just increase inflation pressure. The assumption being that inflation is always and only sourced from wages. We know that ain't be true, just look at how Covid kicked the shit out of Supply.

While it's not been front-of-mind by the econ pundit class (IMHO, because it contradicts the Right Wingnut class) for some time, looking at the economy from the perspective of input-output analysis leads one to see that having a balanced, self-sufficient economy demands that the majority have to have the majority of the moolah in order to 'clear the market' for each sector. If an economy devolves into the 99% producing solely for the 1%, it doesn't take much disturbance to knock the whole shootin match into a cocked hat. The Great Depression is just the most recent event. The USofA's 19th century experience was one Great Depression after another.

It's notable that UAW pulled off a major upset in Tennessee and VW. It could be that some of the sub-GED clan are finally figuring out that MAGA only serves the 1% overseers.

Shortly after 11 pm ET on Friday the National Labor Relations Board, the federal body that oversees such votes, announced that 73% of the 3,600 workers at the plant who cast ballots had voted in favor of joining the union. There was an 84% turnout among eligible voters.

That's the sort of landslide that the Orange Jesus can only lie about.

May be that Boeing will accept reality and on-shore their Plastic Plane production back to Seattle from South Carolina?

Musk Ox - part the third

It bears repeating: Tesla/Musk really and truly aren't doing anything new and amazing. Do you know how long ago electric cars (battery division) came to be? The 1880s at the latest. What they didn't have then, that we have now, is the Li-ion cell. And, just to remind: Musk didn't invent any part of such. Nor did he create Tesla; he bought it, just like X. May haps both will expire.

The problem is, as Musk is finding out, that there exists no moat (to use MBA-speak) for him to exploit. Any large scale manufacturer of autos can switch to Li-ion propulsion without much trouble. And they are. All Musk did was create a meme. Kind of like the Orange Jesus. The Big Auto Industry should send him a candy-gram on his birthday for the next hundred years.

It's likely too much to say that Tesla is imploding as we watch. But the bloom is surely off the rose.

oops

One of the base themes of these missives: thou shalt not estimate beyond the range of the data set. Of course, the corollary is also mentioned in stride: time series analists do so as a matter of course. Getting the future right based on past experience is fraught with danger. If you're in the investing venue, you're told, as a matter of course, "past experience is not predictive of future returns" in various words. And, of course once again, the monetary authorities (esp. the Big Economies) use just such 'modeling' to set policy in such a way as to extrapolate the past data experience into the future data experience in the way that implements the desired policy objectives. Keeping employment 'high' and inflation 'low' at one and the same time is the authorities' walk down the razor's edge. It should come as no surprise that the authorities reflexively adopt policies their constituents (aka, Big Bidnezz) prefer irregardless of what the data says.

Some times it just goes sideways. Well, here is the tale of the Bank of England. It's sordid. And, highlights not only 'past is not necessarily future' theme, but (not explicitly, alas) that macro data is almost wholly sample data, and of unknown quality. Now, governments could, with simple legislation, enforce data collection of interest in signficantly larger, more stratified, samples. Or go Full Monty with census data. Doesn't happen, for the most part (there are, in the USofA, 'census' of some sectors). The reason that doesn't happen isn't cost, but rather that The Powers That Be at any time (whether left or right wingnut) want the 'flexibility' to implement some policy with the excuse that more granular data just isn't conclusive or up-to-date. The prime fig leaf for liars.

[The Bank] added that it would need to put in "substantial investment" to develop the data, modeling and staff to support the forecasts. The changes will take a while to put in place, and the bank will provide an update on its progress before the end of the year.

This is the report of the Review. Further, if you feel up to it, I don't right now, here's the Review.

Thought For The Day - 12 April 2024

Keep in mind: without a FISA with Teeth, Mad Dictator Don and his traitors in the Putin Wing of the GOP would be free to sell out any and all state secrets to Vlad, Xi, Erdogan, Orban, or other dictator-of-the-moment for pennies on the dollar. There is, of course, no other reason for him to tell Congress to kill 702. The Orange Jesus will need the moolah to pay his lawyers and judgments. While we voters don't get the chance to get rid of him knowing what he's done (and would do on steroids if he gets back in), at least the intelligence community knows what's passed between the Putin Wing and the dictators, and can take steps to mitigate the damage.

wannaBePresident Huey Long 2024 is scared shitless that, someday, NSA will release the Kraken, meaning he and the Putin Wing will spend what's left of their sorry, treasonous lives in baggy orange jumpsuits. Guilty as sin.

Thought For The Trials - 11 April 2024

Another trial delay, another failure. So, here's a thought:

We know that the Orange Jesus nearly always loses.

So, what's malignant narcissist to do? As you know, if you watch enough L&O: cut a deal!! There's already rumours of the Orange Jesus willing to plead down to a misdemeanor. He cuts his losses. A lot.

That's, still, a long way from taking a plea on the felony. A long, long way. I sure wouldn't take it if I were Bragg.

Thought For The Trials - 10 April 2024

As I type, the first of the Orange Jesus trials remains on track for next week, so it seems necessary to provide some pre-trial testimony. Herewith.

Prosecutor: Ms. Daniels, please describe for The Court any identifying marks (scars, tattoos, moles, etc.) on the Orange Jesus's body that are not shown in known photos, videos and the like. If you do know of any.

Ms. Daniels: Yes, there are. In particular, the Orange Jesus has a severely bent Johnson, in the downward direction. The Orange Jesus would frequently brag that, in times when extramarital (or marital as oft times happened) companions were not easy to hand (job, he he!), he would fuck himself in the ass. I found that a disgusting statement, and activity.

Prosecutor: I ask The Court that the Orange Jesus be directed to the well and display his Johnson to confirm its conformance. He need not demonstrate fucking himself in the ass.

Hang John Scopes

Well, the knuckledraggers are at it again. The Lost Cause continues to pollute the USofA.

"Many of the claims made in this video are not aligned with scientific fact, but rather reflect the biased and ideologic perspectives of the extremists who created the video. ACOG is strongly opposed to the spread of misinformation about reproductive health."

And, of course, all anyone needs to know about anything is to be found in the Bible. The Old Testament, really. No need for that new-fangled stuff in that other Testament. The MARF^™(party like it's 1829) will never be happy until there's a Time Machine designed to run only backward, and we all are marched into halls to be sent back to those idyllic times, when men were men, women were women, darkies tended to the rich white folk, the population was minuscule (about 11,000,000 Free Whites and 2,000,000 Darkie slaves), and making babies was the prime directive. And they all pissed and shit in the creek.

The Wisdom of Carole King

I feel the earth move under my feet.
-- Carole King/1971

Was drinking my cuppa Joe in my local greasy spoon when the booth shook a bit. It's happened before when one of the local Jaba the Huts fell into the abutting seat. Nothing to write home about. Of course, when I got back and clicked on the pc, there was the news. 4.8 magnitude about 50 miles west of NYC, about 150 miles as the crow flies from where I type these missives. Reported to be felt in DC and Boston; Feuerstein's X feed was where I found out.

Who knew that NE got earthquakes? Turns out, with some regularity, but so small in magnitude that they're rarely felt. Here's why

Quakes on the East Coast can still pack a punch, as its rocks are better than their western counterparts at spreading earthquake energy across far distances.

For the NYC-philes, this comes as no great surprise. Although the fact that there is a distinct fault (not responsible for today's tremor) through the city might. Does to me. Years ago I saw some documentary on NYC, Manhattan in particular, which started with an across-the-Hudson profile of the skyline. It was obvious that it didn't make much sense. Lower on the island is a line of really tall buildings, moving north there's mostly rows of townhouse types, and then still farther north back to tall ones again. Why is that? Turns out that the tall ones are possible because the bedrock pokes up to the surface near the south end of the island, then heading north it dips down for some distance, then up again. It would be very expensive to put piles deep to the bedrock along the dip. So no one bothers.

If you live in NE, or remember your junior high (middle) school social studies (back when you could be taught that, of course), then you know that the Northeast has about the rockiest soils in North America. Getting crops to grow is a major chore. All those neat rock fences you see outside of cities aren't ornamental, they exist because those rocks had to be pulled out of the ground in order to have a semblance of a farm field. Rather than haul them away someplace (the front-loader didn't yet exist in the 1600s), pile them up as a fence.

And, of course the MARF^™(party like it's 1829) lunatics will blame the woke folk for pissing off the Christian God, who punished us with the tremor. I know, I know. We'll just sacrifice a few nubile virgins on a barge in Boston Harbor. God will be mollified.

By The Numbers - part the fifty second

A few times in these essays, I've complained about the socialism/welfare for the rich, in particular the drug industry. They take the work of academia and NGOs and leverage same into about the most profitable sector in the economy. And we, the sick, get to pay more for those drugs than anywhere else on earth.

Now comes new reporting that the gravy train may soon come to a screeching halt. Where does much of this research come from? Who pays for it? In large part, the USofA taxpayer.

According to the National Institutes of Health, the number of postdoctoral fellows supported by NIH grants has been steadily falling for more than 20 years, with a significant dip after 2020. The number of postdocs in the biological and biomedical fields has declined 9% between 2018 and 2022, and those in health-related fields have fallen by 8%, according to a survey published on March 20 by the National Science Foundation.

PhRMA bitches that they don't get enough credit for turning this basic research into sellable drugs. They sure don't seem to care all that much.

By using that technology to develop their mRNA vaccines for Covid-19, pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer and Moderna made a windfall in profits. Between 2020 and 2021, Pfizer saw its revenue nearly double. In the same period, Moderna's total revenue skyrocketed from $803 million to $18.5 billion, astounding growth the company said was "primarily due to commercial sales of (the) COVID-19 vaccine."

The golden goose ain't dead yet, but it's on life support. It's long been my contention that smart people do what they do just because they do what they do; they don't want to do anything else. If we're lucky, those in bio/chem/medicine who choose to skip straight to Big Pharma big bucks jobs are the dumb ones who don't really care about doing smart work. One hopes.