24 Comments

The Federal Reserve's low interest rate policy for much of my adult life has led to yield farming in every nook and cranny in the economy/life. Every need a person must have has been cornered, controlled, made scarce, and is being farmed for cash flow by wealthy investors.

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Case-Schiller index up 20% between 3/2021 and 3/2022. Up 17% annually the past two years. Oh, and between 3/2012 and 3/2020 the annual increase in the CS Index was 5.8%. All the while the FED was demonstrably concerned that inflation was running below target. Yea ,The FED is lying and they don't care. They even publish the lie on their website.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CSUSHPISA

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And none of the above numbers go in CPI/PCE. The Fed uses a nonsense owner-equivalent rent number, which has run about 5%. CPI/PCE very understated. We are worse than the 1970s.

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For the last few years I've been replying to any post that supports the corporate-owned housing model, seems there should be some regulation of an expense that costs over 30% of HH cash flow. This was a post from a couple months ago where institutions were being defended as altruistic benefactors for those that can't afford to buy:

"Misleading: institutions do flip some homes but a large % are bought to lease which decreases resale inventory and increases average selling price, driving affordability lower for both homes and rentals. We're adding less than 1% of new homes into the market annually and institutions are buying 13% of all home sales. With easy monetary policy flowing to institutions, we have never addressed the societal impact of such a large % of homes pulled off the market. Good or bad for society?"

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I wonder what if at some point these guys decide to sell 200 or 2,000 or 20,000 homes? (I'm in the lower house prices are a GOOD thing camp.)

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Equality means Enron accounting for all!

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The multi-family market in these low interest rate lending times has become a race to put more of that cheap $$ into real assets with a specific yield. That $$ has driven prices up astronomically over the past 10 years. People who manage apartments know that as rents go up, the number of people who can qualify drops, under the old standard of 1/3 of monthly pay going to rent. It's much closer to 50% now & as inflation increases people are just being squeezed more & more. All of this to create the yield that pension funds & others want/need. Once again, the retired generation is feeding off of the current employees. But there's more to it than that.

In addition, some of the buyers are going back to interest only loans with minimal amount down to buy large complexes. Keep an eye on evictions for non-payment of rent. They were stopped because of Covid policy, but might come back.

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"Once again, the retired generation is feeding off of the current employees."

Like piranha, right? Retirees spent their working years watching guaranteed rates float above 5% and when it was their turn, central banks were competing to see how negative they could go. Passbook savings that couldn't keep up with the service fee, or a 5% yield tied to real estate - which would you have chosen?

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I'm not talking about individuals, I'm talking about the pension funds, but I get your point.

It's been interesting watching the big funds drive other investors out of the market and overpay for assets. When they buy existing apartment complexes they bid the prices up so that buyers (landlords) must push the rents as much as they can to get ROI.

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Hard to avoid the conclusion that the average American earring say $60K w/ a savings account of say $60K is NOT down shit a creek called Niagara Falls on the way to bankruptcy. Just asking because I’m convinced many around the world don’t recognize the SHIT SHOW these poor souls are about to experience in full force.

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Rudy.. there was a promoted tweet today, group photo of presidents from Clinton to to Biden, miss ya bro..

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Just excellent work!

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Spot on as always.

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Can't help me, can't refute the factual statements issued or can't cease politically biased comments? 🤔

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I just don't think you're someone looking for rational debate.

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Yeah, because my comments have been irrational - NOT.

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Your use of the Fascist label is misplaced. The Fascists in America are the MAGA supporters of the wannabe dictator, #45.

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No.

Fascism is a partnership of big government and big corporatists, like we've had with every President this century, with bipartisan attempts to destroy the Bill of Rights, combined with an economy centrally planned by a private bank cartel and guys like Larry Fink. You must get out of the cable news D vs R mindset. It's a dead end.

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I'm neither D not R. However, #45 is a clear and present danger to America's democracy. Unless that threat is removed, capitalism itself is threatened. Financial success will depend on your political connections, not your ability to correctly assess financial facts.

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Why do you think #45 was elected? Because of the horrible policies of his predecessors, particularly Bush Jr. and Obama. It was during their administrations that what was left of "capitalism" was destroyed. Please - turn off the TV.

The Iraq War alone dwarfs any damage Trump has done, and Obama let the 2008 crooks get away with it after Bush enabled the theft.

It's fine to loathe Trump, but please - open your eyes - history did not begin in January 2017.

https://web.archive.org/web/20220516194814/https://twitter.com/RudyHavenstein/status/1176991418516041728

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#45 was elected because conservative Fascist leaning American oligarchs have propagandized against popular programs initiated by FDR. Bush, Obama and the Fed were and in the case of the Fed are useful, yet unwitting , unintentional accomplices, imho Ever since those popular policies with the majority of American voters were passed by Congress, conservative oligarchs have been planning, propagandizing and trying to subvert government programs popular with the American public. They want to return is to the cost business government coalition similar to the 1920s. They lie, they buy politicians that lie and they get away with those lies under the house of free speech. Interesting it's illegal to lie in a court of law but otherwise, meh. America is being destroyed from within by American oligarchs! If we don't contain and discredit the American Fascist, Radical Right, like we did with Joe McCarthy & friends in the 1950s, that has taken over the Republican party, America will soon become Amerika. Mark my words as my grandmother used to say!

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Speaking about housing and real estate in Rothschilds' "green" sharing circular economy from their recent "Reinventing Globalization" weekly edition...

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2022/06/16/the-property-industry-has-a-huge-carbon-footprint-heres-how-to-reduce-it

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So sick of the private jet crowd talking about "carbon footprint"

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United Nations (Rothschilds’, again) Agenda 2030 is all about decarbonization, Net Zero, green energy and “Sustainable” Development Goals.

What nobody talks about when it comes to climate change (less appealing terminology of Global Warming introduced by NASA in 1998) is century-long climate geoengineering/weather modification operations ran by the same cabal (the discussion on Global Warming cannot be held w/out these interventions), who owns weather broadcasting & finance Military Defense Contractors like Raytheon and Lockheed Martin conducting them. The methods could be easily narrowed to aerosols (to mimic volcano eruptions) and microwave radiation, on global scale. What these Ops do is temporarily cool the surface short-term at the expense of intense prolong warming long-term, and they did trigger positive feedback loops of Venus Syndrome. These clowns want to save themselves w/ depopulation measure and so-called decarbonization, but it’s quite too late for anything.

It’s all so tiresome…

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