patrick.net

tr6 says

Does this hurt CA bonds or it does not matter since the rest of the world is not raising wages? Trying to figure out if to get into NAC if dips into 14s.

I have no idea. With leveraged funds, the spread between the long term rates and the rate at which the funds borrow also matters.

My approach to muni closed end funds is - enter when the yield is above 6% (based on the market price) and there is a nice discount. When there is a large discount, the distributions are more sustainable. Recently many CA muni CEF's cut the distributions (a few years ago one could get yields about 7%). Some national munis are now more attractive. See for example. NZF, NEA, NAD, NVG. So, I switched some allocations to them. If prices continue to fall, I'll do some tax harvesting and will put some more $, gladly collecting 7% tax free income.

"Many people always expect a recession. If and when we have the start of one, the federal reserve will immediately push down interest rates to prevent a recession."

The fed funds rate is at 1/2 a percent.

It was at 5.25% during the onset of the 2008 downturn, allowing the fed to cut rates some 65 times between 2008 and 2012, down to 1/4 of a percent interest.

Since then, there's been ONE 0.25 hike, back in December of 15, up to a "lofty" .05 fed funds rate.

There's no ammo to cut rates meaningfully, as they are now nominally close to zero, and negative in real, inflation-adjusted terms already.

There is no more there there, and you speak nonsense.

You fail Economics 101.

Strategist says

the federal reserve will immediately push down interest rates to prevent a recession.

They can't push it down much lower than zero, maybe couple points NIRP, they haven't even raised them yet!
Bearish on housing from here on, though no crash in sight at this point I agree with (for that we need to see layoffs and defaults/increase in foreclosures and/or cash buyers exiting). Still worth considering a short here. SRS may have bottomed around $33 and may be a good hedge against a bear market.

well-considering other double digit lead polls- 4% means he is strengthening?

Are the news reports of a flattening/declining rents correct? If so, how does that affect investments? Or is the story just reporting on a temporary lull before another monster increase?

10-Year yields spike dramatically in 1986, dip, then spike even more dramatically in 1987 (which I realize is barely outside of your pre-ordained, narrow, convenient "1984 to 1986" equity bull market period).

Perhaps it is you who needs lessons on chart reading, even per the ones that you very selectively post.

The larger lesson that 1984-1986 and 2008 through present LITERALLY could not be more different remains intact.

Yep, not a big surprise. Ecuador's policy is no interference in other's elections, so letting Assange use their internet would make them look hypocritical.

Doesn't matter, and he was probably warned on the downlow. Not stopping the leaks.

Hillary's shit gets out, even if it's dumped illegally down a stormdrain.

He is absolutely correct that layoffs will be the trigger that will cause the next downturn, and we will see mounting layoffs (maybe en masse if conditions set up in historical patterns) should cost-push inflation drop end-user demand for finished goods and especially labor/services.

The U.S. sees mass layoffs in manufacturing and service sector industries in all recessions (Greater or lesser), but the real vulnerability now is that a) service sector is disproportionately sustaining consumption and aggregate-demand (however weak) compared to past cycles, and b) interest rates/yields are already pinned to-pegged at the lower bound (ZIRP), so there's nearly no monetary stimulus available as the fed reserve's main response tool in their emergency kit.

I did not even get into global macro eco events such as currency debasement wars (EU/Japan/China/etc) nor geo-political risks (which are always present, but are running really hot lately).

They must be getting desperate. The over sampling is getting worse.

Yes, price wise, Asian B people have competed local E people out of palo alto, and they will continue to compete them out of morgan hill. Those landscapers who saved to buy a morgan hill house will happily see the price go up until the new E buyers taps out like those in palo alto.

Rent wise, besides supply, it is driven by VC deals. 2016 may be the year VC start to get cautious.

Higher interest rate will hurt domastic, but strong dollar will hurt international more. or maybe somebody just tell fed to inflict some pain so that they can move some agenda? who knows.

but the key thing is that price/rent is close/over 30 for a lot of bay area towns. Where B people will park their cash, whether fed will raise rate, whether VC deals are cooling off are alll speculations over a bad fundamental.

you see a large pile of dry grass, but you can keep speculating that nobody will lit a match.

exfatguy says

Are the news reports of a flattening/declining rents correct?

Anecdotal data. For fun, last month I started following the rents of 3bd units offered by the 5 biggest complexes near me. Over the last 20 days, 4 of them have had multiple discounts. The fifth is now the most expensensive. The average rent has gone down almost 5%.

Could be a seasonal effect. Will see.

An ASSHOLE!

"What can I say. Eating pizza with my fingers makes them the wrong shade of orange. My orange is very important to me and has become the object of a great deal of banter."

Yes, these are the effemintate affectations plied by the Bloviating Twit.

Ironman says

Tim Aurora says

From all I know in 2012 , many polls

You didn't answer the question, do you think there is 14% more Dem voters in the country today like this poll claims?

After several decades of open borders, amnesties and "oops, we gave citizenship to people on deportation list, sorryaboutthat"? I wouldn't rule it out.

Tim Aurora says

From all I know in 2012 , many polls including Gallup was giving Romney the edge and he was nowhere close.

Give it up on Trump.You guys chose the wrong candidate and Its a done deal

Rosie O'Donell has not sung yet.

I had two courses in statistics in college as an undergrad, so I GENERALLY accept that rigorous, well-designed polling can lead to reliable projections (within stated margin of error).

With that said, this is a highly unusual year, which is shaping up to be a wave-turnout type year, but in almost opposite direction of the Obama 2008 wave election.

This year, I believe that white, working and middle-class turnout, with many such people previously apathetic & non-participatory in casting ballots, will be extremely energized, and sill turn out and cast ballots in unprecedented numbers; if their usual participation rate is a historical 63% in presidential elections, I'm going to guess it will ebb closer to 74% this year.

That's a 11% differential. Does that sound like much?

If one assumes that this demographic comprises roughly 60% of the demographic that typically casts ballots in POTUS elections, and that there are approx 107 million votes cast in such years, that's 64,200,000 such votes from this voting block in not al times.

However, if 11% more votes from this group are cast, that equals 7,062,000 additional votes.

Let's assume that 70% of these extra votes go to Trump (that's fairly conservative, but let's stick with it); he'll pick up 4,943,400 additional votes than what polls may be able to predict using conventional methodology.

That's a lot of % increase, not being able to be modeled accurately by the current polls.

Now, here's the other component that works against democrats this year. Hillary is having the opposite effect on the traditional dem base; this has been revealed by the rift between her and Sanders and other indicia.

So, dem turnout, which usually significantly trails republican turnout, will even lag further on a relative basis.

Also, Hillary may only receive 70% to 75% of the black vote that was allocated to Obama (as the 1st African American candidate for president), which will drop her numbers significantly (this is why Michelle has been reluctantly on the campaign trail for uninspiring Hillary).

Blacks represent 13% of the overall population, but probably close to 28% of the democratic voting base.

This also is a huge problem for Hillary, and coupled with lack of millennial turnout, could yield 3 million to 4 million fewer votes for Hillary.

Now the math gets big, if this is a wave election, in similar fashion to 2008, but with opposite demographics being e energized, where it's possible Trump could net a +7,000,000 gain in Republican votes versus 2008 (nearly +5 million R votes and Hillary's - 2 million (maybe 3 million) fewer votes.

This will matter hugely in Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania... where the election will be won or lost.

Maybe the bigger hidden issue is psychology. I'd bet a lot of Trump voters won't tell pollsters who they are really going to vote for, because they know all too well that having incorrect political opinions can result in the loss of a job (see the case of Brendan Eich at Mozilla) or other professional harm (see the case of Doug Crockford).

Or heck, look at Billy Bush, fired 10 years after interviewing Trump.

It depend on what your definition of "personal" is.

The shy Trump voter hypothesis has not been supported by the primary data. Trump underperformed his polling for most of the primary season.

It's at least as likely that his anemic ground game will be more important.

Do you think cherry picking data refutes my point?

Here is a image representation of how he's in the lead.

Sure.

You can see the median is -1.1, and that includes the very end of the primary where he outperformed polling because all the candidates had dropped out.

Good articles for you here:

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/trump-supporters-probably-arent-lying-to-pollsters/
http://www.ogdenonpolitics.com/2016/03/trumps-continued-underperformance-may.html
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-07-01/are-voters-too-embarrassed-to-say-they-support-trump
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/03/upshot/polls-were-way-off-on-donald-trump-heres-what-it-means.html

Nate said a lot that has never happened. Nate is whachu call a "Dreamer".

None of those articles were written by Nate Silver, but his polling analysis and demographic models were spot on for the entire primary season.

And, yes, I know. Every article that is the slightest bit negative towards Trump is because the author is biased.

JZ says

Asian B people have competed local E people out of palo alto,

Can someone translate this into English?

More political sodomy of America

The world wont last 2 years of it.

See Jabba no Badda.

Best meme all year!

Pantsuits will be the next fashion craze for females.

That's not a pant suit it's her mobile life support harness. She has IV drips, Colostomy bags, and concealed Bluetooth activated auto injectors.

You know it was the Republicans before the frist debate that gave lip service about accepting the outcome. They ddin't accept the outcome and support the candidate either.
Besides let's not forget the Libs gave us contesting elections.

justme says

Can someone translate this into English?

lol, nope.

The candidate whose campaign planted people to start riots at her opponents rallies is not Donald Trump.

Disputing a rigged election system is righteous.

Gore was a pussy, not a hero, for not fighting harder.

Thunderlips Russian Agent 0069 says

Disputing a rigged election system is righteous.

Claiming that a very fair election system is rigged in an effort to save face and delegitimize his opponent at the expense of the country is not righteous. The stupid birther thing was in the same ballpark, but was a single. This is a home run in shameful stupidity.

They don't care. They want Thunderdome. Trump's entire plan is simple and it follows his overarching credo in life: If you can't spend it or fuck it then shit on it.

What will you do if Obama tries to enact a No-Fly Zone in the next weeks to create some wind for Hillary? What will you do if Hillary, frustrated the Russians don't trust her, says fuck it and starts a No-Fly in January?

What will you personally do to stop a Nuclear Winter at that point?

Thunderlips Russian Agent 0069 says

Yes, the Establishment wants Thunderdome.

Have you already given up? Another 300 threads might make you feel better. You only have 20 days to devote to this particular #TimeSuck (20 days oughta about do it) before moving on to whatever the next one will be.

#TrumpTimeSuck #LoserDoucheBag #BannonNeedsThunderdome

neplusultra57 says

Have you already given up?

You guys are being dangerously unserious. Your "hypothesis" are the kind of rhetoric seen in the bottom ranks of the internet, like Free Republic in 2000 suggesting Clinton wouldn't leave office and use the FBI and "Magic Lantern" to round up everybody's guns.

We are "Sleepwalking" into a potential Nuclear War and Hillary is not playing with fire, but nuclear holocaust.

Sleepwalking isn't my term, but those of William Perry, long time Defense Positions in two administrations.

Perry does not use his memoir to score points or settle grudges. He does not sensationalize. But, as a defense insider and keeper of nuclear secrets, he is clearly calling American leaders to account for what he believes are very bad decisions, such as the precipitous expansion of NATO, right up to the Russian border, and President George W. Bush’s withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, originally signed by President Nixon.

In his foreword to the book, George P. Shultz describes Perry as a man of “absolute integrity.” His record is remarkable: Ph.D. in mathematics, vast technical training and experience in high-tech business, management of research and weapons acquisition as an undersecretary of defense under President Carter, and deputy secretary and then secretary of defense under Bill Clinton.

No one I have known, or have even heard of, has the management experience and the technical knowledge that William Perry brings to the subject of nuclear danger. Few have his wisdom and integrity. So why isn’t anyone paying attention to him? Why is fear of a nuclear catastrophe far from the minds of most Americans? And why does almost all of official Washington disagree with him and live in nuclear denial? Perry himself may provide the answer:

Our chief peril is that the poised nuclear doom, much of it hidden beneath the seas and in remote badlands, is too far out of the global public consciousness. Passivity shows broadly. Perhaps this is a matter of defeatism and its cohort, distraction. Perhaps for some it is largely a most primal human fear of facing the “unthinkable.” For others, it might be a welcoming of the illusion that there is or might be an acceptable missile defense against a nuclear attack. And for many it would seem to be the keeping of faith that nuclear deterrence will hold indefinitely—that leaders will always have accurate enough instantaneous knowledge, know the true context of events, and enjoy the good luck to avoid the most tragic of military miscalculations.

While many complain of the obvious dysfunction in Washington, few see the incomparably greater danger of “nuclear doom” because it is hidden and out of public consciousness. Despite an election year filled with commentary and debate, no one is discussing the major issues that trouble Perry. It is another example of the rigid conformity that often dominates public discourse. Long ago, I saw this in the Vietnam War and later in the invasion of Iraq: intelligent people were doing mindless—and catastrophic—things. “Sleepwalking” is the term historians now use for the stupidities that got European leaders into World War I and for the mess they unleashed at Versailles. And sleepwalking still continues as NATO and Russia trade epithets and build their armies and Moscow and Washington modernize their nuclear overkill. A new cold war.

Fortunately, Bill Perry is not sleepwalking and he is telling us, in My Journey at the Nuclear Brink, to wake up before it is too late. Anyone can begin by reading his book.

Thunderlips Russian Agent 0069 says

You guys are being dangerously unserious.

No, your candidate idol is, obviously. By the way, your temple has a poll running on who won the debate tonight. You're on breitbart 24/7 so go check it out, right now it's Clinton 62% Trump 38%. Oh well, in three months the #DoucheBag will launch #DoucheBagTV and you'll have another reason to forget the outside world. Enjoy.