Month: August 2021

Shocking footage from a security camera in Chicago’s expensive River North neighborhood (which hosts restaurants, shops and art galleries, among other businesses) explicitly reveals how bad the city’s crime problem has gotten. In the video, two men can be seen being viciously kicked and beaten by a group of young men, who strip them of their shoes, empty their pockets, and – before it’s all over – twerked over the victims’ unconscious bodies.

According to a local Fox affiliate, the two men were attacked on State Street near Kinzie at about 0130 local time on Saturday morning.

The first victim could be seen arguing with some of the attackers before a punch was thrown, and he was quickly knocked down and beaten.

Then, the video shows the second man walking by, minding his own business when he was sucker punched and beaten to the ground.

At one point, as the victims are laying in the street, some women block traffic just a few feet away so they can twerk.

The men were stripped of virtually all their belongings, with the attackers even taking their shoes.

Businesses say the security situation in the popular Chicago neighborhood, which is teeming with nightlife, has deteriorated substantially since the start of the pandemic. The manager of a cigar shop in the area told Fox 32 that they’re now forced to close before 2200 on Friday and Saturday, because the area becomes to dangerous to operate in.

A worker at a nearby Subway shop spoke to a news crew and demanded that the mayor “do something about this.”

Police say they’re racing to identify suspects from the video.

By  William Vantuono of Railway Age

The United States Surface Transportation Board—as expected by many industry observers and financial analysts—on Aug. 31, 2021, by unanimous vote, rejected the CN-Kansas City Southern voting trust whereby shareholders in KCS would be paid before the transaction had received full approval by the regulator, effectively killing the merger, and opening the door for Canadian Pacific to re-engage with KCS on the CPKC (“Canadian Pacific Kansas City”) deal it struck with KCS on March 21, albeit with a sweetened offer.

CN shares were up nearly 7 per cent in late Tuesday trade. CN and KCS could still choose to go ahead with the transaction without using a voting trust, but the regulator’s decision is likely to derail the deal altogether as shareholders of the US company are more likely to back an alternative union with rival railway group Canadian Pacific.

“The Board finds that the proposed use of a voting trust in the context of the impending control application does not meet the standards under the current merger regulations and therefore denies the applicants’ motion for authorization to establish and use the proposed voting trust,” STB said in Docket No. FD 36514 (downloadable below). “The Board has determined that the proposed voting trust is not consistent with the public interest standard under the Board’s merger regulations.”

Those merger regulation are the “new” ones established in 2001—new because they have thus far never been applied, and will not be in this case, provided that the CN-KCS deal is rejected by KCS shareholders on Sept. 3. A CP-KCS combination, if the two Class I’s rekindle their relationship, would be considered under the STB’s “old” (pre-2001) merger rules, with a CP-KCS voting trust pre-approved, and managed by the trustee—former KCS CEO Dave Starling—appointed by both Canadian railroads.

There were many factors STB considered in its decision. Several in particular stand out:

• “Many rail users said they are concerned that the 45% price premium CN has offered to acquire KCS, and the related debt burden it will incur to finance the purchase, would create incentives for CN to charge higher prices to current customers or decrease investment in CN’s network in order to improve financial performance; these commenters note that these incentives would arise whether or not a divestiture was ultimately required, because CN would be unable to rely on any of the merger “synergies” it plans for several years. They also argue that these risks would be increased if divestiture were required, both because CN would be unlikely to obtain a price that approaches the premium it paid for KCS, and because the economic climate in 2023 may be less favorable.”
• The Department of Justice, which has a statutory right to intervene through the Attorney General in Class I merger proceedings … filed comments on May 14, 2021, stating that the proposed acquisition ‘raises sufficient competition concerns on first blush that the CN should be prohibited from using a voting trust.’ DOJ argues that, even though the terms of the CN and CP voting trusts are similar, ‘the Board has good reason to hold CN’s proposed voting trust to a higher bar,’ because the diminished competitive incentives that arise from the unity in ownership created by a voting trust are heightened due to the direct parallel competition and overlapping routes in the CN and KCS networks. DOJ asserts that these threats to competition would be present immediately after the voting trust is consummated, and states that ‘[t]hese specific competitive concerns presented by CN’s proposed transaction magnify the general risks associated with voting trusts’ described in DOJ’s filing in Docket No. FD 36500, such that its concerns about the use of a voting trust in the proposed CP transaction ‘apply with greater force to CN’s proposed acquisition of KCS.’ 
• “DOJ also asserts that ‘[l]ike any other buyer that competes with its target, CN voluntarily assumed the risks associated with the regulatory review of the proposed transaction.’ DOJ argues that there are viable alternatives to the use of a voting trust that ‘better protect both firms’ incentives to compete vigorously’ while addressing regulatory risk, and asserts it is ‘particularly important to protect these incentives to compete where, as here, CN and KCS appear to compete head to head on multiple parallel routes.’ DOJ contends that ‘a strategic buyer should not be permitted to structure the deal in a manner that could give rise to anticompetitive effects simply because the alternative would be more expensive.’”
• “Applicants have not demonstrated that their use of a voting trust would have public benefits, and further finds that there are public interest risks to competition and divestiture associated with the use of a voting trust in the context of the impending control application. Accordingly, the Board finds that the use of a voting trust would not be consistent with the public interest and will deny Applicants’ motion for voting trust approval.”
• “Prevention of Unlawful Control: Applicants’ motion and supporting documents fail to address the subject of communications between KCS and CN during the trust period … Applicants make no provision for  … an explicit acknowledgement that the trustee is responsible for implementing measures to monitor and assure that the information exchanges that occur between the carriers do not compromise the independent management and operation of the acquired company (Kansas City Southern) during the duration of the voting trust … Regardless of the deficiency described above regarding CN-KCS communications, which might otherwise be curable, the Board has determined that Applicants’ proposed use of a voting trust, in the context of their impending control application, is not consistent with the public interest.”
• “Applicants contend that they have shown that the proposed voting trust ‘would achieve substantial public benefits’ while presenting ‘no risk of harm to the public interest,’ and that their showing ‘overwhelmingly supports approval’ under the public interest standard established in 49 C.F.R. § 1180.4(b)(4)(iv) … [T]he Board finds that neither claim is persuasive and that it would not be consistent with the public interest to allow CN to acquire and place KCS into trust during the pendency of this control proceeding.”
• “Applicants’ … contention that a voting trust would serve the public interest by allowing CN and CP to compete to acquire KCS ‘on an equal footing’ fails to recognize two critical and related points. First … the two transactions are substantially different: The proposed CP-KCS transaction … is an end-to-end merger, whereas, here, the CN system overlaps with that of KCS. Second, the Board—after considering the overlapping routes and presently existing direct competition—agreed with CN’s commitment to file an application under the current regulations and thus placed the CN-KCS transaction under a different regulatory standard with respect to both approval of the transaction and use of a voting trust. These differences, particularly the heightened regulatory standards the CN-KCS proposal must meet, necessarily place CN’s proposal to acquire KCS on a different footing from Canadian Pacific’s proposal. Thus, the use of a voting trust for the CN-KCS transaction raises different and greater risks with respect to both competition and divestiture. Accordingly, Applicants’ contentions that approval is required because CN and CP are ‘two similarly situated potential acquirers, or because they may be ‘identically situated’ with respect to some factors pertinent to the Board’s consideration of a voting trust … are misplaced. To the extent the CN-KCS proposal is not on an ‘equal footing’ with the CP-KCS proposal, that is attributable to the differences in the governing regulatory standards and the proposed transactions themselves, and not the Board’s prior approval of a CP-KCS voting trust.”
• “Applicants’ related arguments—that the use of the voting trust ‘is crucial to place the CN-KCS transaction on a level playing field for KCS shareholders,’ and that ‘it would be fundamentally unfair for the Board to approve CP’s voting trust, and then to deny CN’s identical voting trust’ because ‘[t]his would effectively override KCS’s judgment about its preferred merger partner’—are equally misplaced. To be clear, the Board’s responsibility under these circumstances is to assess whether the proposed CN-KCS voting trust is ‘consistent with the public interest,’ … and not—as Applicants appear to argue—help private parties realize their transactional preferences regardless of that broader assessment. Like any rail carrier (or other bidder in a potential acquisition that requires regulatory review), CN had a choice about how to structure its offer; CN voluntarily assumed the risk that the voting trust might be rejected when it chose to make a voting trust an essential element of its offer, knowing that a CN-KCS proposed transaction presents geographic network overlap and that voting trusts must meet a heightened public interest standard for approval in major control proceedings under the current regulations. Similarly, KCS, as the potential acquiree, is in a position to weigh (among other things) the potential benefit of shorter or less burdensome regulatory review against potential benefits that a different proposal (with more demanding regulatory requirements) might provide, such as a higher purchase price … Accordingly, it is neither ‘fundamentally unfair’ nor does it improperly ‘override KCS’s judgment about its preferred merger partner’ to deny approval for the CN-KCS voting trust. KCS was not only aware of the regulatory risks associated with the proposed use of a voting trust in a CN-KCS  transaction; it also appears to have engaged in negotiations with CN on that very issue before deciding to accept CN’s offer.”
• “The explanations Applicants offer to support their final claim—that a voting trust is necessary to serve the ‘undoubted’ public interest in ‘ensuring that merger decisions are made by capital markets, not by the Board’—also lack merit. As discussed above, their arguments that a voting trust is ‘essential’ to a competitive bid that would allow their transaction to go forward, and to respect KCS’s choice of a merger partner, are both unpersuasive as factual matters … Applicants essentially claim that there is a public benefit in allowing them to use a voting trust because they should be able to make merger decisions unfettered by regulatory requirements or uncertainty, or specific analysis of a transaction that may be distinguishable from that of other transactions. The Board disagrees. Applicants have failed to explain how their request to allow CN to acquire and place KCS into a voting trust would result in any material public benefit. … [P]lacing KCS in trust would insulate KCS and CN from the regulatory risks and uncertainties associated with the heightened scrutiny that the proposed transaction would face under the current major merger regulations and the heightened possibility of divestiture—an advantageous scenario for KCS shareholders and CN at the expense of the public interest in mitigating risks to competition and the stability of the rail network … Further, negotiation choices by private parties cannot control agency decision-making. CN’s choice to make a voting trust an element of its offer to acquire KCS cannot nullify an established regulatory standard that requires the Board to conduct an independent assessment of public interest considerations pertinent to the proposed use of a voting trust in a particular case.”
• “[T]he competition between CN and KCS via overlapping routes is apparent at this juncture, as the Applicants acknowledge for at least one route, and the potential harms to this competition constitute an important reason the transaction is subject to the new regulations and, in turn, the heightened voting trust standard. These are the exact harms (among others) the Board is tasked with preventing, or at least minimizing, as part of its public interest review.  … For these reasons, in light of the overlap in Applicants’ networks, the Board finds that the use of the proposed voting trust creates competitive risks that are inconsistent with the public interest.” 
• • “The Board emphasizes that it is not making a final determination regarding the extent of these competitive issues or whether they can be resolved. It is simply finding that, in view of the heightened scrutiny that both the use of a voting trust and the proposed transaction face under the current major merger regulations, it would not be in the public interest to allow CN to own KCS until the competitive issues have been thoroughly examined.”
• • “The possibility that a CN-KCS transaction would trigger downstream effects and, potentially, further consolidation initiatives, creates additional risks and uncertainties during the voting trust period.”

“[T]he Board finds that Applicants have not demonstrated that their use of a voting trust would be consistent with the public interest,” STB said in its conclusion. “Applicants have shown no benefit from the use of a voting trust to stakeholders other than KCS and CN. At the same time, the use of a voting trust, in the context of the impending control application, would raise risks that threaten to undermine the public interests the Board considers … These risks can be avoided, without preventing Applicants from continuing to seek approval for their merger plans, by not allowing the acquisition to take place until regulatory review of the transaction—the first to be considered under the Board’s current major merger regulations—is complete. 

“It is ordered: Applicants’ joint motion for approval to use a voting trust is denied.”

Next Moves

As analyst Wolfe Research—without speculating on whether the voting trust would be approved or rejected— noted on Aug. 30, there are now two possible scenarios:

“CN could try and raise the bid for KCS yet again to try to convince KCS to wait out full merger approval to get a higher price. Alternatively, if the voting trust is rejected and CN doesn’t raise the bid again, it seems likely to us that KCS shareholders will vote against the merger with CN, and then KCS can re-engage with CP. In that scenario, KCS would owe CN a $700 million breakup fee. Given the [Aug. 30 Securities and Exchange Commission Schedule 13D] activist filing from TCI Fund Management Ltd. [which now is a ‘beneficial owner’ of CN with 5.2% of the company’s shares], it now seems less likely to us that CN would raise the bid again if the voting trust is rejected.”

Meanwhile, as the FT reports, UK hedge fund manager Chris Hohn has demanded that Canadian National abandon its $34bn pursuit of Kansas City Southern, after the US railroad regulator rejected the way the transaction was structured as it held the potential to harm the public interest.

In a letter to the board of CN seen by the Financial Times, the head of TCI, one of the largest shareholders in the Montreal-based company with a 5 per cent stake worth about $4bn, also called for the resignation of CN’s chair Robert Pace and chief executive Jean-Jacques Ruest.

For the first time in decades, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) will restart research into the gun violence epidemic across the U.S. CDC researchers will be on a mission to collect enough data to enable the agency to create solutions to prevent gun-related deaths, accidental gun deaths, and/or suicides.

CDC director Rochelle Walensky spoke with CNN over the weekend and revealed her new plan to research guns and gun-related violence. 

“Every day, we turn on the news, and there are more young people dying,” Walensky said. “I swore to the president and to this country that I would protect your health. This is clearly one of those moments, one of those issues, that’s harming America’s health.”

The CDC has remained silent for decades about guns, tackling other epidemics as tens of thousands of people die from firearm-related injuries every year. 

The Gun Violence Archive, a monitoring platform of gun violence and mass shootings, recently recorded 452 mass shootings in 41 different states (and Washington D.C.) in the 236 days of 2021. For comparison, in all of 2020, there were 393 mass shootings. 

GVA’s mass shooting map shows most of the shootings occurred East of the Mississippi. 

Breaking down GVA’s numbers, the U.S. is averaging nearly two mass shootings per day. 

Walensky said, “something has to be done about this,” adding that Americans are sick and tired of turning on the nightly news and hearing about mass shooting stories.

So her strategy is simple: Restart the CDC’s gun research arm that will find out, based on “science,” why gun violence is rampant. 

“My job is to understand and evaluate the problem. To understand the scope of the problem. To understand why this happens and what are the things that can make it better,” she said

Walensky hopes that gun owners don’t associate the CDC’s upcoming research with “gun control.” 

She continued: “I’m not here about gun control. I’m here about preventing gun violence and gun death.” 

This brings us to her boss, President Biden, whose administration members are on a mission to limit or ban guns. 

We recently laid out, in a gun policy note titled “Puzzle Pieces All Laid Out” – How ATF Has Plan To Classify Semi-Automatic Rifles As “Machine Guns” that stricter gun control is coming with and if the ATF could have it their way, ban the AR-15 platform. 

Liberal politicians could use Walensky’s research as statistics to make the case why gun control is needed to reduce mass shootings. 

So the (rhetorical) question we ask is: Why now is the CDC suddenly focused on trying to tackle another “epidemic”: gun violence, with an administration that desperately wants more gun control? 

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby issued a very carefully worded tweet in response to multiple reports that service dogs were reportedly left stranded in the Kabul airport.

“To correct erroneous reports, the U.S. Military did not leave any dogs in cages at Hamid Karzai International Airport, including the reported military working dogs,” tweeted Kirby, adding “Photos circulating online were animals under the care of the Kabul Small Animal Rescue, not dogs under our care.“

To correct erroneous reports, the U.S. Military did not leave any dogs in cages at Hamid Karzai International Airport, including the reported military working dogs. Photos circulating online were animals under the care of the Kabul Small Animal Rescue, not dogs under our care.

— John Kirby (@PentagonPresSec) August 31, 2021

According to SPCA International, however, the dogs included “military working dogs” used by contractors.

What’s more, the dogs were reportedly released and could be seen roaming the airport. According to Breitbart’s Kristina Wong, the US military was instructed to open bags of dog food.

They sure look like military dogs, besides you have zero credibility at this point. https://t.co/yMZAqClwhn pic.twitter.com/gG7OUFUfNz

— Recall Newsom (@almostjingo) August 31, 2021

“Charlotte requested the U.S. Military open the bags of dog food she was able to bring into the airport and scatter their contents in the area where the dogs had been released.”

— Kristina Wong 🇺🇸 (@kristina_wong) August 31, 2021

“I am devastated by reports that the American government is pulling out of Kabul and leaving behind brave U.S. military contract working dogs to be tortured and killed at the hand of our enemies,” said American Humane president and CEO Robin Ganzert in a statement. “These brave dogs do the same dangerous, lifesaving work as our military working dogs, and deserved a far better fate than the one to which they have been condemned”

In response to the viral footage, journalist Jack Posobiec launched hashtag #NoPawsLeftBehind – which he says Twitter is throttling.

SPCA International says the rescued dogs in Kabul were released ‘into the airport’ and are now running loose #NoPawsLeftBehind https://t.co/EHv1cKvHUw

— Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) August 31, 2021

Twitter is throttling #NoPawsLeftBehind and refusing to let it advance past #3 pic.twitter.com/mwBHHZpIAG

— Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) August 31, 2021

What else has Biden stranded in Afghanistan?

A tale of two presidents. pic.twitter.com/GCb4ant9bO

— Alana Mastrangelo (@ARmastrangelo) August 31, 2021

On the last day of a stellar August for stocks, a month which saw 12 all time highs in a year where stocks have already hit new records no less than 53 times, investors were wondering if we would see a lucky 13 on the last day of the month, and while stocks pushed sharply higher overnight, they failed to maintain the momentum into the close, which saw the Emini close just fractionally in the red – despite a another ramp in the last minute of trading – as the now traditional leadership from the Nasdaq was missing following lackluster performance from the FAAMGs.

In a day that may have seen up to $13 billion in pension month-end selling, the broader market suffered from weakness across bank shares after Bloomberg reported that Wells Fargo would face fresh regulatory action over the pace of “restitution” did not help, with Wells stock tumbling more than 5% and dragging the broader bank sector lower…

… after banks were the best performing sector early in the day thanks to the rise in yields. In fact, by the close, most sectors were in the red with the exception of the Russell/small caps…

… which benefited from the move higher in yields.

Breadth was, as usual horrible, with just 159 new highs on the Nasdaq which however was a modest improvement to recent weeks when just the 5 FAAMGs did all the heavy lifting. This was offset by 50 new lows, a drop from the 300+ observed just a week earlier.

Despite today’s flat move, US stocks still headed toward their seventh straight monthly advance – the longest winning streak since January 2018  which ended with the infamous Volmageddon that sent the VIX explosively higher – thanks to a tidal wave of central bank liquidity.

But while stocks had a great month, nothing compares to the rally enjoyed by cryptoswhich have soared higher blowing away returns of all other asset classes.

Meanwhile, as the tapering debate heats up at a time when a coronavirus resurgence is delaying reopenings in some parts of the world, there’s been concern about an overstretched stock market – as Bloomberg notes, and as regular readers know too well, the S&P 500 is currently trading near its highest valuation levels since 2000, in fact according to BofA, stocks are now overvalued according to 18 of 20 metrics.

While US stocks were flat, Europe closed near session lows after not one but two ECB officials said it’s time to start discussing the ECB’s own taper…

… a development which sent both Bund and Treasury yields sharply higher.

“Markets are taking a little bit of a breather,” said Cliff Hodge, chief investment officer at Cornerstone Wealth. After making it through strong economic data and stellar corporate earnings, “markets are now trying to grapple with: well, what’s next?”

What does happen next? According to Bloomberg, fourteen streaks of seven months or longer for the S&P 500 have occurred during the past 60 years, with history pointing to three outcomes for the gauge after reaching such milestones: five of them ended in the next month as the index fell. Another four were followed by gains of no more than 3.2% before the streaks ended. The other five delivered advances of 9.7% or more before they concluded — including the most recent streak, which lasted 10 months and ran through January 2018 and ended quite painfully for holders of inverse VIX ETFs.

Paradoxically, while one would expect record highs in the market to bring out insider sllers, corporate insiders, whose buying correctly signaled the bear-market bottom in March 2020, are chasing the record-setting rally with more than 1,000 executives and officers have snapped up shares of their own firms this month — the most since May of last year.

In short, with the S&P at all time highs, everyone is now all in.

While the Fed keeps touting the “transitory” nature of runaway inflation, millions of Americans will soon be living under a bridge as both house prices and rents are now rising at a record pace (at least until cities start charging a “bridge habitation” tax).

Earlier today we reported that the latest Case Shiller data showed that home prices across the country had soared at the fastest pace on history, surpassing even the epic surge from the housing bubble, after rising at a record 19.1%.

Needless to say, at the rate home prices are rising, most American will soon be priced out of owning a home – even with record low mortgage rates – if they haven’t been already, which means they will be stuck paying rent for years if not decades to come.

Alas, we have some bad news there too, because as the WSJ reports today, would-be home buyers priced out of the home market are finding little consolation when they turn instead to the single-family rental market. The reason: prices are soaring there as well. Asking rents for houses rose nearly 13% for the year to date through July, the highest annual increase in the past five years as tracked by real-estate data company Yardi Matrix, which analyzed professionally managed properties.

As we discussed extensively two weeks ago in “What Rental Hyperinflation Looks Like: “Soaring Prices. Competition. Desperation“, the sharp rise partly reflects increasing demand from people who can’t afford to buy homes as well as city-dwellers who moved to the suburbs to rent during the pandemic. Meanwhile, the supply of new houses also continues to trail historical levels relative to population growth, and builders in some places remain constrained by zoning laws and available land.

Price increases are more moderate for single-family tenants renewing their leases, said Haendel St. Juste, a real-estate securities analyst at Mizuho Securities USA. “You’ve got to be careful in this industry. You can’t be perceived as gouging.” Apartment asking rents also have risen, but at a slower pace: 8.3% for the year to date through July, Yardi Matrix said. The difference partly reflects weaker demand in downtowns that lost population after Covid-19 hit, although those markets have rebounded in recent months.

A similar picture emerges from the latest data compiled by Apartment List. The real-estate data company revealed that its national index increased by 2.1% from July to August, a slight cool-down from 2.5% the month before, but nevertheless a continuation of rent growth that has persisted since the start of the year. Since January 2021, the national median rent has increased by a staggering 13.8%. To put that in context, rent growth from January to August averaged just 3.6% in the pre-pandemic years from 2017-2019.

With rents rising virtually everywhere, only a few cities remain cheaper than they were pre-pandemic. And even there, rents are rebounding quickly. In San Francisco, for example, rents are still 12 percent lower than they were in March 2020, but the city has seen prices increase by 20 percent since January of this year. At the other end of the spectrum, many of the mid-sized markets that have seen rents grow rapidly through the pandemic are only continuing to boom — rents in Boise, ID are now up 39 percent since March 2020. Rent growth in 2021 so far is outpacing pre-pandemic averages in 98 of the nation’s 100 largest cities.

Last summer, many cities were experiencing elevated vacancy rates coinciding with a sudden decrease in demand as renter households consolidated. This summer, however, demand has been continuously heating up, leading to a supply constricted market. In contrast to this time last year, when households were rapidly consolidating due to the uncertainty of the pandemic, the total number of households in the U.S. is now greater than ever before at over 131 million. Some of these households are likely aspiring homebuyers, but they’re facing a historically unaffordable (and tight) market, which has seen a 48% drop in inventory from last year.

So, as would-be home buyers get priced out of the for-sale market, they continue to rent, likely a driving factor for the increasing incomes and budgets of renters searching on Apartment List. This high demand has created a tight market, resulting in our vacancy index dropping sharply throughout 2021 as prices increase rapidly. Rents are now up more than 13 percent this year, more than doubling the overall rate of inflation.

What’s just as remarkable about the current market, is that unlike previous bubbles, this time the price surge is uniform with no pockets of weakness as the 2021 rent boom is affecting virtually every major market in the country. This is a big change from 2020, when rents fell precipitously in expensive markets while growing quickly in more-affordable ones. In 2021, rents are rising across the board.

The chart below visualizes monthly rent changes in each of the nation’s 100 largest cities from January 2018 to August 2021. The color in each cell represents the extent to which prices went up (red) or down (blue) in a given city in a given month. Bands of dark blue in 2020 represent the large urban centers where rent prices cratered (e.g., New York, San Francisco, Boston), but those bands have quickly turned red as ubiquitous rent growth sweeps the nation in 2021. In 2020, 75 of these cities saw rent prices rise in August, at an average rate of 0.9 percent. This year, all 100 cities got more expensive in August, and average rent growth more than doubled.

And with the August rent prices now in hand, Apartment List concludes that many of the cities that saw dramatic pandemic-era rent drops are finally back to pre-pandemic prices, including the nation’s two largest: New York City and Los Angeles. In New York City, prices went up 5.8% last month, faster than anywhere else in the country. There, the city-wide median rent price is now $2,052, above $2,000 for the first time since March of last year. On the side of the country, Los Angeles experienced 2.5 percent rent growth this month, and the median rent price now stands at $1,874. Other major cities that eclipsed pre-pandemic rent prices this month include Boston, MA; Portland, OR; and St. Paul, MN.

That means that today, “pandemic pricing” is over in most of the country. Rents remain below pre-pandemic levels in just 8 large cities: four California cities in the San Francisco Bay Area (i.e, San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, and Fremont); Minneapolis, MN; Washington, DC; Seattle, WA; and Jersey City, NJ. The chart below visualizes the rapid rent drops and rebounds in each of these places. Oakland and San Francisco consistently made headlines throughout the pandemic for staggering rent drops and today are the only two cities retaining double-digit price reductions. The remainder should be back to pre-pandemic prices before too long.

And the cherry on top, of course, is that as most middle-class Americans become poorer as they spend increasingly more of their disposable income on rent and other staples, Wall Street is getting richer.

As we reported last month, the largest US financial institutions are doubling down on home buying. Investors purchased $87 billion in homes in the first half of 2021, according to real-estate company Redfin, including a record 68,000 houses in the second quarter.

Since June, Blackstone, Invesco and Goldman Sachs alone have committed more than $11 billion to the sector. Meanwhile, other companies are building rental homes from scratch. Tricon Residential, a publicly traded house owner, reported new lease rent increases of around 21% in July, a record for the company. The average hike was a more modest 5% for renewal tenants. In an August earnings call, Gary Berman, Tricon’s chief executive, said in some markets the company could fetch close to 10% rent increases for existing tenants if it didn’t intentionally “hold back”, the WSJ reported.

Wall Street firms also have a hand in would-be buyer woes: one in six home sales went to an investor in the second quarter of 2021, according to Redfin. In Atlanta, Phoenix and Miami, it was one in four.

“The institutional players are chasing some of the same homes that would be starter homes for owner occupiers,” said Desiree Fields, a geography professor at the University of California, Berkeley who researches the single-family rental industry.

We bring this up just in case there is confusion where to direct populist anger.

* * *

OK, fine, rents are soaring, but so what – after all, if the Fed pretends not to notice and if the CPI or PCE do not capture these prices, then prices can keep rising even more and politicians and money printers will keep pretending all is well and inflation is “contained” if a little “transitory” high.

Only, that’s no longer the case – as the chart below show, there is a roughly 4 month lag between the the first real-time Apartment List print and when it registers in the official Owner Equivalent Rent series. And as the next chart shows, which overlays the latest Apartment List data set through August, with the latest CPI data, the record surge in rents will soon appear on official data – unless it is dramatically revised and manipulated – leading to what may may be an OER print north of 5% as soon as December.

At that point, the Fed will have no choice but to taper and taper fast unless it is willing to risk the appearance of an angry – but mostly peaceful – mob at the Marriner Eccles building.