Affordable Child Care? Inflation Tepid, Manufacturing Slow
Bidenomics – 3 Economic indicators from Biden’s plan: Affordable Child Care – Canada recently enacted a program that offers $10 a day childcare ($7 US). Biden and Harris are looking to provide a similar program as well as free pre-school for four-year-olds. Currently American’s pay approximately $15,000 annually or roughly $60 per day. Credits for […]
Tax Credits for Buyers & Sellers? Home Values Strong
Biden addresses housing in his State of the Union, calling for a $10K credit/rate buydown for middle class buyers and a $10K credit for middle class sellers who sell homes below the local median price point. Additionally, Biden announced a proposal to provide tax credits for builders to construct or preserve 1.2M affordable rental units […]
CFPB Targets Medical Debt, Inflation Update, Home Values Increase
The Financial Regulator known for going after banks who lend unfairly, is going after Medical Debt? When Obama founded the agency in 2010 he said they should be “looking out for people, not big banks, not lenders, not investment houses.” Approximately 100M Americans are dealing with Medical debt. CFPB researchers found that medical bills are […]
Inflation Update, Housing Starts, Retail Sales
Mortgage Rates – the price of Mortgaged Backed Securities (MBS) continued their decline this week in response to higher than anticipated inflation reports. Mortgage rates are up by 0.5% from this time last year. Inflation – the Producer Price Index (PPI), which measures wholesale or producer inflation, rose 0.3% in January. Year over year inflation […]
Superbowl Spending, Contrarian Investing, Long Term Value
Increased Super Bowl Spending - 100M People are expected to watch the Super Bowl and the average fan is expected to spend $43 on food – up 23% from last year. Wages are now up more on a year over year basis than inflation and food prices have moderated. Wings prices have fallen for the second […]
Maritime Salvage Rights, Home Values Improve
Salvage Law – at 1 a.m. on the morning of November 15th, 1994, Captain ‘Skip’ – a sailor since the age of 5, answered a distress call. He successfully maneuvered a 688 foot oil tanker carrying 10M gallons of heavy fuel oil near shallow water close enough to rescue tow a tugboat and barge. Once […]
Feeding Everyone, Inflation Mellows, Pending Sales Increase
Global Food Economics: How to feed 8 Billion People – in her new book Hannah Ritchie investigates how to feed 8-10B people without destroying the planet. Currently 10% of the global population is undernourished or 800M people (2.5X the US Population). Looking at caloric production, global farms produce the equivalent of 5,000 calories per person […]
Algorithmic Cartel, Inflation Mellow, Values Improve
Rents – a lawsuit against Texas-based company RealPage is putting increased attention on how algorithms influence the rental market. In this lawsuit, RealPage is accused of facilitating a cartel between major property manager which results in higher prices for renters and higher profits for landlords. In 40 markets in the US RealPage controls anywhere from […]
Disinflation, Jobs Update, Loans Perform
What a pot of gumbo can teach us about disinflation – while the CPI Index is a good measuring stick for the overall economy, a pot of gumbo has specific ingredients from different regions of the U.S. and can shed insight on ‘disinflation.’ Inflation causes prices go up; deflation causes prices go down. Disinflation means prices […]
Corporate Zombies, Current and Future Home Values
Why Corporate Bankruptcies rose in 2023 – According to S&P Global Intelligence there were 591 corporate bankruptcies in 2023, which is the highest number since 2011 if you remove the notable Covid outlier of 2020. Many of these bankruptcies were Chapter 11 which is aimed at restructuring a firm and not totally shutting down (something […]