Don’t worry. As long as you don’t need to eat, drive a car, or heat your home in the winter, there is no inflation. Just listen to Yellen, the MSM and the BLS. Inflation is well contained.
The report from RealtyTrac last week proves beyond the shadow of a doubt the supposed housing market recovery is a complete and utter fraud. The corporate mainstream media did their usual spin job on the report by focusing on the fact foreclosure starts in 2013 were the lowest since 2007. Focusing on this meaningless fact (because the Too Big To Trust Wall Street Criminal Banks have delayed foreclosure starts as part of their conspiracy to keep prices rising) is supposed to convince the willfully ignorant masses the housing market is back to normal. It’s always the best time to buy!!!
The talking heads reading their teleprompter propaganda machines failed to mention that distressed sales (short sales & foreclosure sales) rose to a three year high of 16.2% of all U.S. residential sales, up from 14.5% in 2012. The economy has been supposedly advancing for over four years and sales of distressed homes are at 16.2% and rising. The bubble headed bimbos on CNBC don’t find it worthwhile to mention that prior to 2007 the normal percentage of distressed home sales was less than 3%. Yeah, we’re back to normal alright. We are five years into a supposed economic recovery and distressed home sales account for 1 out of 6 all home sales and is still 500% higher than normal.
The distressed sales aren’t even close to the biggest distortion of this housing market. The RealtyTrac report reveals that all-cash purchases accounted for 42% of all U.S. residential sales in December, up from 38% in November, and up from 18% in December 2012. Does that sound like a trend of normalization? There were five states where all-cash transactions accounted for more than 50% of sales in December – Florida (62.5%), Wisconsin (59.8%), Alabama (55.7%), South Carolina (51.3%), and Georgia (51.3%). In the pre-crisis days before 2008, all-cash sales NEVER accounted for more than 10% of all home sales. NEVER. This is all being driven by hot Wall Street money, aided and abetted by Bernanke, Yellen and the rest of the Fed fiat heroine dealers.
Source: Realty Trac
The fact that Wall Street is running this housing show is borne out by mortgage applications languishing at 1997 levels, down 65% from the 2005 highs. Real people in the real world need a mortgage to buy a house. If mortgage applications are near 16 year lows, how could home prices be ascending as if there is a frenzy of demand? Besides enriching the financial class, the contrived elevation of home prices and the QE induced mortgage rate increase has driven housing affordability into the ground. First time home buyers account for a record low percentage of 27%. In a normal non-manipulated market, first time home buyers account for 40% of home purchases.
Price increases that rival the peak insanity of 2005 have been manufactured by Wall Street shysters and the Federal Reserve commissars. Doctor Housing Bubble sums up the absurdity of this housing market quite well.
The all-cash segment of buyers has typically been a tiny portion of the overall sales pool. The fact that so many sales are occurring off the typical radar suggests that the Fed’s easy money eco-system has created a ravenous hunger with investors to buy up real estate. Why? The rentier class is chasing yields in every nook and cranny of the economy. This helps to explain why we have such a twisted system where home ownership is declining yet prices are soaring. What do we expect when nearly half of sales are going to investors? The all-cash locusts flood is still ravaging the housing market.
The Case-Shiller Index has shown price surges over the last two years that exceed the Fed induced bubble years of 2001 through 2006. Does that make sense, when new homes sales are at levels seen during recessions over the last 50 years, and down 70% from the 2005 highs? Even with this Fed/Wall Street induced levitation, existing home sales are at 1999 levels and down 30% from the 2005 highs. So how and why have national home prices skyrocketed by 14% in 2013 after a 9% rise in 2012? Why are the former bubble markets of Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco and Phoenix seeing 17% to 27% one year price increases? How could the bankrupt paradise of Detroit see a 17.3% increase in prices in one year? In a normal free market where individuals buy houses from other individuals, this does not happen. Over the long term, home prices rise at the rate of inflation. According to the government drones at the BLS, inflation has risen by 3.6% over the last two years. Looks like we have a slight disconnect.
This entire contrived episode has been designed to lure dupes back into the market, artificially inflate the insolvent balance sheets of the Too Big To Trust banks, enrich the feudal overlords who have easy preferred access to the Federal Reserve easy money, and provide the propaganda peddling legacy media with a recovery storyline to flog to the willingly ignorant public. The masses desperately want a feel good story they can believe. The ruling class has a thorough understanding of Edward Bernays’ propaganda techniques.
“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. …We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.”
Ben Bernanke increased his balance sheet by $3.2 trillion (450%) since 2008, and it had to go somewhere. We know it didn’t trickle down to the 99%. It was placed in the firm clutches of the .1% billionaire club. Bernanke sold his QE schemes as methods to benefit Main Street Americans, when his true purpose was to benefit Wall Street crooks. 30 year mortgage rates were 4.25% before QE2. 30 year mortgage rates were 3.5% before QE3. Today they stand at 4.5%. QE has not benefited average Americans. They are getting 0% on their savings, mortgage rates are higher, and their real household income has fallen and continues to fall.
But you’ll be happy to know banking profits are at all-time highs, Blackrock and the rest of the Wall Street Fed front running crowd have made a killing in the buy and rent ruse, and record bonuses are being doled out to the men who have wrecked our financial system in their gluttonous plundering of the once prosperous nation. Their felonious machinations have added zero value to society, while impoverishing a wide swath of America. Bernanke, Yellen and their owners have used their control of the currency, interest rates, and regulatory agencies to create the widest wealth disparity between the haves and have-nots in world history. Their depraved actions on behalf of the .1% will mean blood.
Just as Greenspan’s easy money policies of the early 2000’s created a housing bubble, inspiring low IQ wannabes to play flip that house, Bernanke’s mal-investment inducing QEternity has lured the get rich quick crowd back into the flipping business. The re-propagation of Flip that House shows on cable is like a rerun of the pre-bubble bursting frenzy in 2005. RealtyTrac’s recent report details the disturbing lemming like trend among greedy institutions and dullard brother-in-laws across the land.
Source: Realty Trac
The easy profits just keep flowing when the Fed provides the easy money. What could possibly go wrong? Home prices never fall. A brilliant Ivy League economist said so in 2005. The easy profits have been reaped by the early players. Wall Street hedge funds don’t really want to be landlords. Flippers need to make a quick buck or their creditors pull the plug. Home prices peaked in mid-2013. They have begun to fall. The 35% increase in mortgage rates has removed the punchbowl from the party. Anyone who claims housing will improve in 2014 is either talking their book, owns a boatload of vacant rental properties, teaches at Princeton, or gets paid to peddle the Wall Street propaganda on CNBC.
Reality will reassert itself in 2014, with lemmings, flippers, and hedgies getting slaughtered as the housing market comes back to earth with a thud. The continued tapering by the Fed will remove the marginal dollars used by Wall Street to fund this housing Ponzi. The Wall Street lemmings all follow the same MBA created financial models. They will all attempt to exit the market simultaneously when their models all say sell. If the economy improves, interest rates will rise and kill the housing market. If the economy tanks, the stock market will plunge, creating fear and killing the housing market. Once it becomes clear that prices have begun to fall, the flippers will panic and start dumping, exacerbating the price declines. This scenario never grows old.
Real household income continues to fall and nearly 25% of all households with a mortgage are still underwater. Young people are saddled with $1 trillion of government peddled student loan debt and will not be buying homes in the foreseeable future. Dodd-Frank rules will result in fewer people qualifying for mortgages. Mortgage insurance is increasing. Obamacare premium increases are sucking the life out of potential middle class home buyers. Retailers have begun firing thousands. The financial class had a good run. They were able to re-inflate the bubble for two years, but the third year won’t be a charm. In a normal housing market 85% of home sales would be between individuals using a mortgage, 10% would be all cash transactions, less than 5% of sales would be distressed, and 40% would be first time buyers. In this warped market only 40% of home sales are between individuals using a mortgage, 42% are all cash transactions, 16% are distressed sales, 5% are flipped, and only 27% are first time buyers. The return to normalcy will be painful for shysters, gamblers, believers, paid off economists, Larry Yun, and CNBC bimbos.
We already know the national propane shortage has driven propane prices up by close to 100% in the last month. Now we’ve seen natural gas prices spike by 16% in the last month and 55% above the level of last year. Oil prices of $97 per barrel have kept gas prices near all-time highs for this time of year. Another round of global warming has hit the Midwest and will hit the East Coast tomorrow. Temperatures will be 30 degrees below normal. Wind chills well below zero will result in massive demand for natural gas and propane. But be thankful to Janet Yellen and her banker owners. They are worried about deflation. The BLS will conclude that natural gas and propane prices didn’t really go up by 55% to 100% because you froze to death and no longer needed heat. They call this deathonomic adjustments. Obama will be using a similar adjustment to healthcare premiums as people die waiting for Obamacare to cure them.
I know you are desperately worried about deflation, so be happy when you get your next heating bill.
Now our nerves are settled. We can sleep at night. There’s nothing more to worry about. Christine Lagarde, head of the IMF, has reassured us.
Madame Lagarde tells us that further scaling back of QE won’t mean a thing, as long as the Fed goes about its tapering in a gradual, measured way, which of course it will.
“We don’t anticipate massive, heavy and serious consequences,” she said.
But wait…
She must be wrong about that. If the Fed were to continue to cut back its bond-buying, the stock market and the economy would go into withdrawal shock. The economy would wobble. Stocks would fall. And Janet Yellen would promptly go into a huddle with other Fed governors and come out with an announcement: more QE!
A New Depression?
We don’t know whether Madame Lagarde is aware of it or not. Fed economists must be. They must know that the only thing keeping the economy from slipping into recession is the Fed’s EZ credit.
The following figures were shown to us by economist and author of The New Depression: The Breakdown of the Paper Money Economy, Richard Duncan. He spelled it out for us…
Since the 1980s, we have had an economy that grows on credit. In 1964, the global economy owed only $1 trillion. By 2007, total global credit had expanded to $50 trillion. The global economy depends on it.
But instead of stimulating a real, healthy recovery, the Fed has only been able to simulate one.
When credit growth slows, so does the economy.
How much credit growth does it take to keep the economy chugging ahead? Duncan says it needs an increase of at least 2% after inflation, or the economy goes backward. Every time credit growth has fallen below 2%, he says, we have had a recession. No exceptions.
A growing, expanding economy naturally leads to more credit. Households borrow for new homes and appliances. Businesses borrow for new plants and machinery. Investors borrow to finance startups and speculations. Government borrows, too, to cover deficits. And all this borrowing is what leads to new demand, new jobs and new output.
But instead of stimulating a real, healthy recovery, the Fed has only been able to simulate one. The real economy limps along. Real per capita disposable income has risen just 0.7% a year over the last five years. The personal savings rate is only 4%. (It was 10% in the 1980s.) And although the consumer deleveraging cycle is over (for now) much of the new credit creation is once again in the subprime category. (Last year, Wall Street secured $20 billion in subprime auto loans!)
Although the Fed has been unable to do much about the real economy… in the financial economy it’s wrought wonders! That’s the secret to understanding the markets, Duncan explains. It depends on the difference between how much credit the economy needs and how much it gets. The excess is what drives up asset prices.
The Rich Get Richer
That’s why the rich have gotten so rich lately…
The markets take excess credit and use it to bid up asset prices. Stocks rise. Real estate prices go up. (The average house price is back at over $200,000.)
Household net worth – heavily concentrated in the upper reaches of the socio-economic pyramid – rose $8 trillion in the last 12 months. It’s now greater than it was in 2007. And that huge increase appears to be the only thing keeping the economy from sinking.
Take away the QE, and you take the biggest single buyer out of the bond market. Bond prices fall (and yields rise). Stocks fall. Housing prices fall. And the economy, no longer buoyed up by the phony “wealth effect,” is suddenly pulled under by a real “poverty effect.”
Duncan tells us that all borrowers put together are likely to ask for $2.2 trillion worth of credit this year. That is a 3.8% increase. But that’s before inflation. Take off 2% for rising prices, and the real increase falls short of the 2% needed to avoid recession.
So, here’s what happens. The Fed has to keep peddling cheap credit, or the economy falls into recession. Some of it is absorbed by the bond market (mostly US federal deficits). Anything more than is needed to fund credit demands is the “excess liquidity” that drives the asset markets. Stocks soared in 2013 because the Fed overfunded US credit demands (the US budget deficit declined).
“The Fed is driving the economy,” says Duncan.
The feds broke it. Now, they own it.
Over the next six months, Duncan sees no problem. There will be enough excess liquidity to keep asset prices moving up.
But then, watch out.
Regards,
Bill
Using four well known valuation methods, the stock market was overvalued by 55% when Bernanke took office in 2006. The stock market ultimately plummeted by 50%.
According to these same exact valuation methods, the stock market is currently overvalued by 67%. I wonder what the ultimate outcome will be?
I know. This time is different.
Ben Bernanke’s last Federal Reserve meeting concludes today. His reign or error is over. The man never saw the housing bubble. The man never saw the 2008 crash coming. The man’s solution to our debt problem has been to encourage the addition of trillions in debt to our existing mountain. The man’s solution to every problem is his printing press and helicopters. He will now write a book about how he saved the world and eventually be hired as a “consultant” by his Wall Street bank puppeteers.
At 2:00 pm today he will announce the monetary policy of the Federal Reserve. Will he announce a tapering of the $85 billion per month to just $75 billion per month? The MSM is attempting to create a frenzy of interest, but the country just yawns. At least 98% of the morons in this country don’t even know that Bernanke is buying $1.2 trillion of debt per year in order to prop up the stock market and this joke of an economy. If you asked the average shmuck on the corner about the taper, they’d think it was Justin Bieber’s new hairstyle. Does Bernanke have the balls to disappoint his Wall Street owners? Or does he want to go out with the stock market hitting all-time highs? I believe he will not announce a taper, setting Yellen up for the fall that will happen in 2014. Bernanke is a cowardly toady for the ruling elite.
But this is TBP, where the people are awake. So let’s have a multi-part poll.
When will Helicopter Ben and the other Fed goons begin a taper?
If Bennie Bucks announces a taper, how much will it be?
If Bennie announces a taper, the stock market will…..
If Bennie delays the taper until sometime in the future, the stock market will……
When the ultimate result of Bernanke’s reckless policies is the destruction of the American economic system, he should be…….
Our government and financial “leaders” tell us that things are back to normal and we are well on our way to economic recovery. They report rising GDP, declining unemployment, and record corporate profits. The legacy media propaganda machines, controlled by corporations dependent upon the government and Wall Street to funnel them advertising dollars in return for reporting falsehoods and mistruths, have been informing the masses that all is well. Just go back to staring at your iGadgets and tweeting your every thought to your followers, because the best and brightest in D.C. and Wall Street have it all figured out. The new normal is here to stay.
I guess my interpretation of normal deviates slightly from our glorious leaders’ definition. During the long-term bond bull market, from 1982 until 2007 the 10 Year Treasury steadily declined from 16% to 5%. This was normal because inflation declined at the same rate. Inflation declined from 13% to 3% over this same time frame according to the BLS. In reality, measuring inflation as it was measured in the 80’s and early 90’s would have yielded an inflation rate closer to 6% in 2007. During the decade prior to 2007, which consisted of supposedly strong economic growth, the 10 Year Treasury ranged between 4% and 7%. Even during the 2001 recession, it never dropped below 3.5%.
In a normal world an investor in a 10 Year Treasury bond would require a yield 2% to 3% above the rate of inflation. If the yield was below the rate of inflation they would be guaranteed to lose money. Only a fool, Federal Reserve chairman, or a CNBC bubble headed bimbo would buy a bond yielding less than the inflation rate. The BLS reported inflation rate has been between 2.1% and 3.2% over the last two years. Over this time frame, the 10 Year Treasury yielded 2% or below until the threat of tapering reared its ugly head this past summer. Would this happen in a normal free market? If things are back to normal, why aren’t supposedly free markets acting normal? The Chinese and Japanese reacted normally. They stopped buying Treasuries with a real negative yield.
The only fool willing to buy negative yielding Treasuries is none other than Ben Bernanke. He thinks they are the investment of a lifetime. He is so sure they are a can’t miss investment, he buys $2.5 billion of them per day, which just so happens to be the government deficit per day. Ben now has $3.8 trillion of bonds on his books, versus $900 billion in 2008. His balance sheet is leveraged 60 to 1, versus the 30 to 1 of Lehman and Bear Stearns prior to their implosions. When even the hint of reducing bond purchases from $85 billion per month to $75 billion per month caused 10 Year rates to jump from 1.5% to 3% in a matter of weeks, you realize how “normal” our economy and financial system is functioning.
If our financial system was functioning normally and free market capitalism was allowed to operate according to true supply and demand, the 10 Year Treasury would be yielding 4% to 5% and 30 year mortgage rates would be 6% to 7%. Think about that for a minute. This scenario was normal from 2002 through 2007. That is what normal looks like. Now open your eyes and observe what your owners are telling you is normal. The slight increase in mortgage rates from 3.5% to 4.5% has brought the Wall Street buy and rent housing recovery scheme to it knees. Imagine if mortgage rates were allowed to rise to their true market rate. Housing would collapse in a heap.
Allowing Treasury rates to adjust to a true market rate, based on true inflation, would double or triple the annual interest expense on the $17 trillion national debt and blow a gigantic hole in Obama’s already disastrous $1 trillion annual deficits. Does this sound like “normal” to a rational thinking human being with the ability to understand simple math? Luckily, there are very few rational thinking Americans left and even fewer with the ability to understand simple math. We have been programmed to believe rather than think. As long as the stock market continue to rise, then everything is normal.
Do you think Ben Bernanke and his cohorts at the Federal Reserve worry about the average person who doesn’t own stocks, has to fill up their gas tank, feed their kids, make the mortgage, auto, and credit card payments, and figure out Obamacare, while working two part time jobs? Quantitative Easing (MONEY PRINTING) has one purpose and one purpose only – to further enrich the owners of the Federal Reserve – Wall Street banks. The .1% own most of the stocks in this country and their greed and avarice can never be satisfied.
This artificial prosperity plan for Wall Street has the added benefit of allowing the captured politicians in Washington D.C. to continue their $1 trillion per year deficit spending with no consequences for their squandering of future generations’ wealth. Bernanke and Yellen will never taper, because they can’t. The Fed balance sheet will continue to grow by at least $1 trillion per year until they crash the financial system again. Except this time, there will be no money printing solution. We are all trapped like rats in this monetary experiment being conducted by evil mad scientists. No one will get out alive. Welcome to the new normal. Now eat your cheese.
