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Post by mhbruin on Apr 16, 2023 8:10:08 GMT -8
About a month before he died, my uncle had his back covered in lard. After that, he went down hill fast.
Maybe America Doesn't Suck so Much After All. From The Economist:
If there is one thing that Americans of all political stripes can agree on, it is that the economy is broken. Donald Trump, who saw trade as a rip-off and his country in decline, came into office promising to make America great again. President Joe Biden is spending $2trn remaking the economy, hoping to build it back better. Americans are worried. Nearly four-fifths tell pollsters that their children will be worse off than they are, the most since the survey began in 1990, when only about two-fifths were as gloomy. The last time so many thought the economy was in such terrible shape, it was in the throes of the global financial crisis.
Yet the anxiety obscures a stunning success story—one of enduring but underappreciated outperformance. America remains the world’s richest, most productive and most innovative big economy. By an impressive number of measures, it is leaving its peers ever further in the dust.
Start with the familiar measure of economic success: gdp. In 1990 America accounted for a quarter of the world’s output, at market exchange rates. Thirty years on, that share is almost unchanged, even as China has gained economic clout. America’s dominance of the rich world is startling. Today it accounts for 58% of the g7’s gdp, compared with 40% in 1990. Adjusted for purchasing power, only those in über-rich petrostates and financial hubs enjoy a higher income per person. Average incomes have grown much faster than in western Europe or Japan. Also adjusted for purchasing power, they exceed $50,000 in Mississippi, America’s poorest state—higher than in France.
The record is as impressive for many of the ingredients of growth. America has nearly a third more workers than in 1990, compared with a tenth in western Europe and Japan. And, perhaps surprisingly, more of them have graduate and postgraduate degrees. True, Americans work more hours on average than Europeans and the Japanese. But they are significantly more productive than both.
American firms own more than a fifth of patents registered abroad, more than China and Germany put together. All of the five biggest corporate sources of research and development(r&d) are American; in the past year they have spent $200bn. Consumers everywhere have benefited from their innovations in everything from the laptop and the iPhone to artificial-intelligence chatbots. Investors who put $100 into the s&p 500 in 1990 would have more than $2,000 today, four times what they would have earned had they invested elsewhere in the rich world.
One retort to this could be that Americans trade higher incomes for less generous safety-nets. America’s spending on social benefits, as a share of gdp, is indeed a great deal stingier than other countries’. But those benefits have become more European and, as the economy has grown, they have grown even faster. Tax credits for workers and children have become more generous. Health insurance for the poorest has expanded, notably under President Barack Obama. In 1979 means-tested benefits amounted to a third of the poorest Americans’ pre-tax income; by 2019 these came to two-thirds. Thanks to this, incomes for America’s poorest fifth have risen in real terms by 74% since 1990, much more than in Britain.
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Post by mhbruin on Apr 16, 2023 8:14:25 GMT -8
Don't Follow the Money. Follow the Interest Rates
A wave of transfers is hitting US banks, as a sharp rise in interest rates after years of low borrowing costs creates more opportunity for savers - and new challenges for banks.
"It's a competitive market," Jeremy Barnum, chief financial officer of JPMorgan Chase told investors on Friday, as the firm reported that average deposits had fallen 8% from a year ago.
Roughly 30% of US bank customers moved money from their primary account to another bank in March, up from 27% in the previous year, according to a survey by consumer intelligence firm JD Power.
A third said they were making the switch for higher rates, up from a quarter a year earlier.
That's a "slow climb", says Paul McAdam, JD Power's senior director of banking. "But extrapolate this across millions of consumers and it makes a difference."
Questions about how banks will handle the change sharpened last month after the US was hit by the two biggest bank failures since the 2008 financial crisis.
If You're Not Getting Around 4%, Check Out Competing RatesMove Your Cash
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Post by mhbruin on Apr 16, 2023 8:17:07 GMT -8
And the Hits Just Keep on ComingAn Air National Guardsman was arrested and charged on Thursday after allegedly applying to be a hitman on a parody website, officials say. Josiah Ernesto Garcia, 21, came across www.rentahitman.com while searching for contract mercenary jobs to support his family, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office Middle District of Tennessee. The website was created in 2005 and used originally to advertise a cyber security startup, but when it failed, it would receive inquiries for hitman services -- so its administrator converted it to a parody site with false testimonials from individuals who claimed to have used its services. The Tennessee man applied via the website to get work as a hitman, submitting identification documents and a resume, as well as "indicating he was an expert marksman," earning him the nickname "Reaper," and employed in the Air National Guard since July 2021," according to the U.S. Attorney's Office. Garcia continued to follow up on the website and eventually agreed to kill someone for $5,000 while in conversation with an undercover FBI agent, authorities said. Gunmen attack Mexico resort, killing 6 adults and a child "On Wednesday, Garcia met the undercover agent at a park in Hendersonville, Tennessee, and was provided with a target packet of a fictional individual, which included photographs and other information about the individual to be killed, and a down payment of $2,500," according to the U.S. Attorney's Office. "After agreeing to the terms of the murder arrangement, Garcia asked the agent if he needed to provide a photograph of the dead body. Garcia was then arrested by FBI agents, who in a subsequent search of his home, recovered an AR style rifle." The site is still up
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Post by mhbruin on Apr 16, 2023 8:20:34 GMT -8
Mel A. Noma May Have Met His Match
A small clinical trial is testing a preventive vaccine that might possibly keep the disease from coming back.
The trial focused on a personalized vaccine using mRNA technology that used mutations to target mutations unique to a patient’s cancer but not the healthy cells in the body. All participants in the trial would receive the immunotherapy drug Keytruda (pembrolizumab), the standard of care for high-risk melanoma patients like Keblish. Two-thirds of the participants would also receive the vaccine.
To test the effectiveness of the vaccine, the international team of researchers recruited 157 melanoma patients whose tumors had been surgically removed and who were at high risk of experiencing a recurrence of their cancers. Fifty patients received only the immunotherapy medication and 107 also got the personalized vaccination.
One of the ways cancer evades the immune system is to fool the body into thinking the threat is over, at which point the natural braking system that prevents the immune system from staying constantly on kicks in. Weber compares the way pembrolizumab works to cutting a stuck brake cable on a car so it can go forward.
Once the system’s braking system has been partially disabled, “the immune system works really well,” Weber said, adding that the downside of “cutting brake cable” is that the immune system stays turned up and some people end up with inflammation and something that resembles an autoimmune disease.
One other way cancer can avoid being destroyed is through mutations, so the immune system’s soldiers cease to recognize it as a threat.
That’s where the personalized mRNA vaccine comes in. After a patient’s tumor is removed, doctors identify proteins that are specific to that person’s tumor and no other cells in the body. As many as 34 proteins from a patient’s tumor were then the target of the vaccine.
In the trial, 40% of the patients who received only the immunotherapy drug had a recurrence of their cancer during the two-year follow-up. In comparison, 22.4% of patients who got the drug plus the vaccine had a recurrence, leading to a difference of 44% between the two groups.
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Post by mhbruin on Apr 16, 2023 8:23:37 GMT -8
Who's the Real Trailer Trash?
It wasn’t long after residents of a mobile home senior community in Ohio were told that their property had been bought by a new owner, with the help of financing from federally-backed Freddie Mac, that their costs started going up.
Kathy Bebout, who at 66 gets by on her late husband’s Social Security benefits, said the rent for the small lot her home sits on at Navarre Village went up $55 last fall to $425 a month — far from the $5 to $10 a year increases she was accustomed to under the family that previously owned the property. She said she’s had to pick up extra work cleaning houses to afford the bigger bill.
“Everyone’s scared about what’s going to happen, what’s going to come. It has caused so much stress,” said Bebout, who said many of the community’s residents are in their 80s and unable to take on extra work to cover the higher costs. “These poor people in here, they’re not buying food or eating properly, everyone looks terrible, they’re so worried about the rent.”
Adding to residents’ frustration over the rising costs is who helped finance the sale of the property to Legacy Communities LLC, which runs dozens of mobile home parks across the country. The loan for the acquisition was financed by Freddie Mac — a government-sponsored enterprise that has been mandated to help support housing for low-income Americans since it was taken over by the federal government during the 2008 housing crisis.
But rather than preserving one of the last bastions of affordable housing, the role that Freddie Mac and its peer Fannie Mae have played in the market has done the opposite in some instances, affordable housing advocates and lawmakers say. They say the access to relatively cheap, low-risk capital provided by the federally-backed entities has contributed to a surge in mobile home park acquisitions where new owners are raising rents and fees.
“Fannie and Freddie have added fuel to the fire. There’s just no question,” said Paul Bradley, president of ROC USA, which helps residents finance the purchase of their communities. “This competition to provide the lowest cost loans to park investors and their grab for market share helped fuel this.”
Acquisitions of mobile home communities have been growing over the past decade with private equity firms and real estate investment trusts acquiring about a quarter of the lots available for manufactured homes in the U.S. between 2015 and 2021, according to data compiled by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.
But the activity has surged since 2020 as investors looked to mobile home communities as a relatively stable source of passive income amid a volatile economy. In 2022, there was $4.3 billion spent on acquisitions of mobile home parks affecting 60,000 units, according to real estate firm JLL.
As a result, residents across the country have reported spikes in their rents after their communities were acquired. The properties have also become a target for investors looking to redevelop the land, like in Phoenix where three mobile home parks are set to be closed in the coming weeks after they were sold to private developers. Because mobile home residents often own their home but not the land it sits on, they have few options when their lot rents get too high or the owner decides to redevelop the land.
At the Navarre Villages, Bebout was told it would cost $25,000 to move her 1,300 square foot manufactured home and then she’d have to buy a new piece of land to put it on or find an opening at another park.
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Post by mhbruin on Apr 16, 2023 8:27:52 GMT -8
If I Were Putin, I'd Worry About Prigozhin Launching a Coup.
Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of the Wagner Group and an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, urged the Russian leader to end his ongoing "special military operation" in Ukraine and focus instead on strengthening his country's grip on the territories it occupied in the Eastern European country.
"For the [Russian] authorities and for society as a whole, today it is necessary to put a decisive end to the special military operation. The ideal option is to announce the end of the special military operation, to inform everyone that Russia has achieved the results that it planned, and in a sense we have actually achieved them," Prigozhin wrote in a blog article posted on Telegram on Friday that was shared and translated by Ukrainian news outlet Pravda.
The Wagner Group is a Kremlin-backed private military company led by Prigozhin, who is contributing to Russia's military operations in Ukraine.
If I Were Putin I'd Be a War Criminal
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Post by mhbruin on Apr 16, 2023 8:31:08 GMT -8
Follow the Money Away From Gov DeathSentence
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is fielding harsh reactions from fellow Republicans after signing a six-week abortion ban into law on Thursday, with top GOP donor Thomas Peterffy being the latest to criticize the governor's law.
DeSantis, who is widely viewed as a leading contender for the GOP's 2024 presidential nomination, but has not yet announced any plans to run, signed the controversial bill on Thursday after it was passed by the Republican-dominated Florida legislature. The bill, SB 300 or the "Heartbeat Protection Act," does contain some exceptions, however. In the case of rape or incest, an abortion is permitted up to 15 weeks if the woman can provide documentation such as a restraining order or a police report. According to NBC News, the new bill doesn't change existing exemptions for life and the health of the mother up to 15 weeks.
Speaking on Saturday with the Financial Times, Peterffy, a Hungarian-born American billionaire, said, "I have put myself on hold," while discussing financing DeSantis' possible presidential bid. "Because of his stance on abortion and book banning...myself, and a bunch of friends, are holding our powder dry."
Shouldn't All Powder Be Kept Dry?
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Post by mhbruin on Apr 16, 2023 8:31:57 GMT -8
Who Won the Week?
Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis, for sanctioning Fox News and Fox Corp for withholding key evidence in the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit against the propaganda network
The Justins, as Reps. Pearson and Jones are reinstated by their communities to the Tennessee state House as Republicans reel from the blistering backlash over their expulsion
The green energy revolution, as record growth in wind and solar pushed worldwide electricity generation to its cleanest level ever in 2022
President Biden: charms Ireland; gets decent Feb. inflation report; announces strongest-ever vehicle pollution standards; expands abortion privacy protections; unlike his predecessor, doesn't make kids cry at WH Easter Egg Roll
Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg, for suing Rep. Jim Jordan of the MAGA cult for attempted obstruction of his legal action against Trump
ProPublica, for cracking open another Clarence Thomas scandal involving the justice's luxury goodies-drenched relationship with that Billionaire Nazi-stuff collector
Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer (D), for signing into a law a bill requiring background checks for all gun purchases and storage requirements in homes with kids
Chicago, which won bragging rights for the 2024 Democratic National Convention
Egg lovers---biggest price decline in 36 years!!!
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Post by mhbruin on Apr 16, 2023 8:33:30 GMT -8
They Also Might Want to Get Their Foot Looked At.
Fox News has formally apologized to the judge in the Dominion Voting Systems defamation case, referring to a “misunderstanding” over Rupert Murdoch’s role at the network and claiming it had “not meant to mislead the Court or evade the question” over his position, according to reports from CNN and ABC News.
The apology follows network lawyers’ repeated previous claims about Murdoch — who they said didn’t have an official role at Fox News — before an admission this past week that he was an officer at the network.
The Foot THey Shot Themselves In.
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Post by mhbruin on Apr 16, 2023 8:36:08 GMT -8
This is Dumb
With voters set to cast key presidential primary ballots in less than a year, one key ingredient has become scarce in the Republicans’ first-in-the-nation primary: visits from presidential contenders.
By mid-spring 2011 and 2015, the last two times there was no incumbent Republican in the White House seeking re-election, candidate visits were a near-daily occurrence, with campaigns making regular announcements of staff hires to develop on-the-ground teams for turning out voters.
“There’s none of that going on. Just none,” said Fergus Cullen, a former state party chair.
A one-week span in April 2015 saw visits from Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker — not counting a candidates’ forum the state party staged in Nashua.
Today, candidate visits are dramatically down in comparison. South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott made his first visit Thursday. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ appearance at the state party’s fundraising dinner Friday was his first to the state. Of the candidates and potential candidates, only former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy have been making frequent trips.
“We’re 10 months out from the primary, and this is unrecognizable compared to what we’ve seen before,” Cullen said.
And as with so many things involving the Republican Party in recent years, the reason for the change is their de facto leader, coup-attempting former President Donald Trump.
Eight years ago, as the other candidates scurried around the early-voting states meeting with handfuls of activists in their living rooms and headlining county party dinners, Trump did almost none of that. Instead, he “campaigned” by riding his elevator down from his office in Manhattan’s Trump Tower to the atrium where he appeared on Fox and other cable networks. As the summer progressed, he began adding a large rally once a week or so in cities nationwide.
Despite the lack of traditional “retail” politicking, Trump came a close second in Iowa in 2016 and won New Hampshire easily.
“Donald Trump changed how you campaign. The myth was you had to go almost door to door,” said Matt Mayberry, a former vice chair of the state party.
None of the Other Candidates Will Get the Gazillion Dollars in Free Media Coverage that Previous Guy Does
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Post by mhbruin on Apr 16, 2023 8:39:28 GMT -8
What Sound Does a Duck Make? It's Not "Aflac". It Sounds a Lot Like Other QOP Candidates
Tim Scott Avoids Talking Trump As He Ducks And Dodges NBC News' Questions
Sen. Tim Scott (S.C.) found several ways to swerve away from talking about Donald Trump during a sit-down interview with NBC News’ Ali Vitali last week. (You can watch a clip of the interview below)
The Republican launched a committee to explore a 2024 presidential campaign on Wednesday.
“I think that one of the open questions here is you look at the polls, you look at the fact that in this Republican field, President Trump is sort of the man to beat. Why should he not be the nominee of the party again?” asked Vitali.
“One of the things I’m hearing a lot on the Faith in America Tour is that they’re concerned about the most important issues in their lives is what’s driving their decisions,” replied Scott, who remarked on his written contributions to Trump’s 2017 tax code overhaul.
“But that was a Trump bill,” Vitali responded. “I mean, where are you different from him because innately by running you’re saying, ‘I think I could be a better president than him.’”
“Actually, I think it’s very simple,” Scott added before bringing up the tax bill again.
Vitali later asked Scott about Trump’s praise for North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“All what we know is that you look at the new axis of evil, it starts with China and President Xi includes President Putin, and you certainly see the role of Iran as well,” replied Scott, who said America needs leadership to push back against an “adversary” like China.
“But Trump’s not pushing back on that,” Vitali noted.
“Well, we’re talking about what I want to do, and you’re talking about what others want to do. So I want to keep talking about what I can control and not what others control,” Scott said.
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Post by mhbruin on Apr 16, 2023 8:41:01 GMT -8
Oh Goody! Just What We Need. Reports. Lots of Reports.
It’s that time of year when throngs of taxpayers are buckling down to file their income tax returns before Tuesday’s filing deadline. Many often pay to use software from private companies such as Intuit and H&R Block.
Almost one-quarter of Americans wait until the last minute to file their taxes.
There could be a new, free option in future years. The IRS has been tasked with looking into how to create a government-operated electronic free-file tax return system for all. But that doesn’t sit well with the big tax-prep companies.
The idea has been batted around and hotly debated for a long time. Congress now has directed the IRS to report in on how such a system might work.
The order came as part of the $80 billion infusion of money for the tax agency over the next 10 years under the Democrats' flagship climate and health care measure, known as the Inflation Reduction Act, that President Joe Biden signed last summer. It gave the IRS nine months and $15 million to report in on how it might implement such a program and how much it would cost.
Next month, the IRS will release the first in a series of reports looking into how it might be done.
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Post by mhbruin on Apr 16, 2023 8:45:10 GMT -8
Russia is Braggiing About How Good They Are at Lying. Should We Believe Them About This?
Russians boasted that just 1% of fake social profiles are caught, leak shows
The Russian government has become far more successful at manipulating social media and search engine rankings than previously known, boosting lies about Ukraine’s military and the side effects of vaccines with hundreds of thousands of fake online accounts, according to documents recently leaked on the chat app Discord.
The Russian operators of those accounts boast that they are detected by social networks only about 1 percent of the time, one document says.
That claim, described here for the first time, drew alarm from former government officials and experts inside and outside social media companies contacted for this article.
“Google and Meta and others are trying to stop this, and Russia is trying to get better. The figure that you are citing suggests that Russia is winning,” said Thomas Rid, a disinformation scholar and professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies.
My barber is the shaves all those, and those only, who do not shave themselves. Does the barber shave himself?
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Post by mhbruin on Apr 16, 2023 8:47:04 GMT -8
Here Comes the Sun
Spring has offered California a welcome reprieve from the record rains and historic snowfall that hammered the state in recent weeks, but a new danger wrought by the warming weather looms large. The state’s enormous snowpack will soon begin to melt – and communities are bracing for waters to rise yet again. Trillions of gallons of water packed within the record level of snow blanketing the Sierra Nevada range are expected to rush into rivers and reservoirs as the weather heats up, heightening flood risks in areas already saturated by the state’s extremely wet winter.
The snowpack, which stands at 233% of the 1 April average, contains enough water to fill downstream reservoirs “multiple times over”, said climate scientist Daniel Swain in an online briefing this week. “That’s a big deal,” he added.
Conditions could be perilous even without a big heatwave or late-season warm rain, Swain said. The combination of spring’s warmer weather and sunny skies could be enough for a rapid runoff.
It’s a challenge facing many states across the west, which have all had to grapple with an extreme shift in conditions after years of devastating drought. The climate crisis, which intensifies extremes, is expected to fuel broad swings into the future.
A rapid spring snowmelt is already wreaking havoc from the south-west to the Rockies. Emergency crews in New Mexico have had to perform water rescues from submerged vehicles as Arizona residents spent days working to stave off flood waters from their homes.
Officials have been left to navigate the challenges without a playbook. These types of disasters are increasingly difficult to predict.
The climate crisis has made models and forecasts that rely on historical data less reliable. Even with good data, the intel only goes so far, according to officials with the California department of water resources.
“We don’t actually know how the snow will melt,” said Jenny Fromm of the US army corps of engineers at a briefing on Tuesday. Small shifts in solar radiation and groundwater flow can make a big difference in outcomes.
“Climate change has had other plans for us these last ten years,” said David Rizzardo, manager of the California department of water resources hydrology section, explaining how the increase in outlier events has rendered statistics and models less reliable.
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Post by mhbruin on Apr 16, 2023 8:51:03 GMT -8
Tonight We're Gonna' Palrty Like Its 2008
While offices have been going through a paradigmatic shift as more workers do their jobs remotely, apartment buildings have experienced robust demand from tenants.
But fault lines have emerged for investors who paid top dollar for assets that depended on substantial rent increases and persistent low interest rates to achieve profitability.
Those kinds of optimistic projections became increasingly necessary in the booming markets of 2021 and 2022, when investors grew voracious for apartment-building acquisitions, boosting competition and prices. In those years, investors purchased $355.5 billion and $299.2 billion worth of apartment buildings, according to MSCI — unprecedented sums that far surpassed the previous $194 billion record of multifamily sales in 2019.
2022 wreaked havoc on the housing market: Mortgage rates rose at a fast clip, bidding wars cooled, the Airbnb market shifted, and some high-flying proptech darlings crashed back down to earth.
"To win a deal in that hypercompetitive market, investors needed to make ambitious predictions how they could grow rents and control expenses," said Will Mathews, a mutlifamily-investment-sales broker at Colliers. "What they've found is that rents have plateaued or have even come down in some markets and expenses have skyrocketed."
The problems could mushroom as more mortgages expire at properties where fix-and-flip strategies have stalled, throwing a growing number into default.
Collateralized loan obligations look shaky
Some of the most speculative investment deals were done with mortgages shoveled into a riskier part of the securitized-loan market known as commercial-real-estate collateralized loan obligations, or CRE CLOs. These loans generally stretched two or three years, had floating interest that rose sharply as the Federal Reserve hiked its benchmark rate, and featured higher leverage levels that covered a larger portion of an asset's purchase price.
CRE CLO delinquency rates have been low, but observers expect an uptick.
"It's early, but it's going to become a bigger story, especially if interest rates stay high and lending standards are tight," said Alan Todd, the head of commercial-mortgage-backed-securities strategy at BofA Global Research. "Right now the water is in the pot, the heat is on, but we're waiting to see when it comes to a boil."
There are signals of stress. A Trepp analysis found that in Washington DC, for instance, 71.9% of multifamily properties financed with CRE CLOs didn't earn enough rent to cover their debts. Trepp attributed some of the pain in that pool of troubled loans, which totals about $1 billion, to the remote-work policies among federal government offices — the dominant tenant base in the city — which have allowed workers to migrate and work from afar, weakening the local rental market.
Falling property prices have compounded the problems for investors. MSCI estimated in February that apartment-building prices had fallen on average by about 8.7% year over year. In April, Green Street estimated they'd declined by 21% from a year ago.
As these short-term debts come due, they will be difficult to swap with commensurately sized loans today, because of the falling values, higher interest rates, and lender caution.
That could force landlords to pour in millions of dollars to pay the difference — cash they may not have.
They Are Still Issuing CLOs and People Are Buying Them? I Know People Have Short Memories, but the Housing Collapse Was Only 15 Years Ago.
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