A week ago we highlighted the tumble in US mortgage applications, and things just got worser-er. As mortgage rates extend 4-year highs, home purchase applications plunged 15% in the last few weeks – the biggest drop since Feb 2015.
In fact, mortgage applications to purchase a home are now unchanged since Nov 2015. It seems the affordability barrier just reached its upper limit…
Will higher rates break housing market momentum?
The following chart suggest ‘yes’ – that surge in rates will have a direct impact on home sales (or prices will be forced to adjust lower) as affordability collapses…
President Trump is not letting up in his efforts to see ‘justice’ with regard years of ‘Russian meddling’ accusations and Deep State intervention.
In a relatively calmly-worded tweet this morning, Trump pressured Attorney General Jeff Session (sic.) to open an investigation into the Obama administration over Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
“Question: If all of the Russian meddling took place during the Obama Administration, right up to January 20th, why aren’t they the subject of the investigation?”
“Why didn’t Obama do something about the meddling? Why aren’t Dem crimes under investigation?
Ask Jeff Session!”
Question: If all of the Russian meddling took place during the Obama Administration, right up to January 20th, why aren’t they the subject of the investigation? Why didn’t Obama do something about the meddling? Why aren’t Dem crimes under investigation? Ask Jeff Session!
As a reminder, CNBC notes that Trump has used his Twitter account to attack Sessions before, particularly since Sessions recused himself from investigating matters relating to the 2016 presidential campaign after he failed in multiple testimonies to disclose meetings with a Russian ambassador.
The recusal kept Sessions from overseeing special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible Russian involvement with the Trump campaign, ceding responsibility to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
We’re seeking wisdom from the mouths of babes, these days. So I asked my 12-year-old son if the country would be a better, safer place if the government tried to disarm some or all Americans to reduce violent crime.
“I think that would have the opposite effect,” he said. “The fewer people who are armed, the fewer people there would be to fight against criminals.”
So there we have it: the launch of Pre-Teens Against Infringements of the Right to Self-Defense, right here in my living room.
If you’re less than bowled over by my son’s insights, you’re forgiven. He’s short on experience and incompletely developed in his analytic skills. He also is one person, offering an opinion heavily colored by his parents’ views and the particular American subculture in which he’s raised, writes J.D. Tuccille.
During an Agriculture Department soiree last week, employee Rosetta Davis “unexpectedly took to the stage and alleged to her colleagues in emotional and specific terms how she was sexually harassed on the job,” including a supervisor who allegedly offered her a promotion in exchange for sex. Now she’s been placed on leave.
“Red flag laws” that would make it easier for authorities to seize someone’s gun are gaining popularity.
“In Nashville, they said, it is easier to buy an assault rifle than it is to make a living as an exotic dancer.”
The annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) starts today, with a lineup that features controversial characters like Marine Le Pen, Sheriff David Clarke, and Pamela Geller.
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As the James Comey saga continues to unfold, the James Comey legend continues to unravel. The more we learn about his involvement in the deep state’s illicit targeting of President Trump, the more reason the American people have to question both his motives and his management as director of the FBI, the now-disgraced agency he headed before Trump fired him on May 16, 2017. Comey has left a trail of suspicious activities in his wake.
Comey now looms large over a burgeoning constitutional crisis that could soon overshadow Watergate at its worst. To deepen the crisis even further, it now appears some of Comey’s former FBI and Justice Department colleagues continue to protect him from accountability.
Three suspicious activities stand out, all intertwined: The so-called Comey Memos, Comey’s controversial testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee and Comey’s book deal.
After Comey was fired by President Trump on May 9, 2017, he arranged to give the New York Times a Feb. 14, 2017 memorandum he had written about a one-on-one conversation with Trump regarding former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. The New York Times published a report about the memo on May 16, 2017. Special Counsel Robert Mueller was appointed the following day.
On June 8, 2017, Comey testified under oath before the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, where he stated he authored as many as nine such memos. Regarding the Flynn memo, Comey admitted: “I asked a friend of mine to share the content of the memo with a reporter [for The New York Times]. I didn’t do it myself for a variety of reasons, but I asked him to because I thought that might prompt the appointment of a special counsel.”
Comey also testified about President Trump’s firing of him, and he detailed multiple conversations with President Trump, during which Comey confirmed he told President Trump three times that he was not a target of investigation. Judicial Watch is pursuingnumerousFOIAlawsuits relating to Comey’s memoranda and FBI exit records as well a lawsuit for Justice Department communications about Comey’s Senate testimony. The American people deserve to know what, if any, complicity his former colleagues had in drafting that testimony and/or in engineering the appointment of Robert Mueller.
The day before Comey’s testimony, Fox News reported: “A source close to James Comey tells Fox News the former FBI director’s Senate testimony has been ‘closely coordinated’ with Robert Mueller…”. Comey may have violated the law in leaking his official FBI memos to the media, and it would be a scandal if Comey coordinated his Senate testimony with Mr. Mueller’s special counsel office.
That we have had to sue in federal court to discover the truth speaks volumes. The FBI has built a protective stonewall around Comey by refusing to release the Comey Memos and refusing to disclose records of communications between the FBI and Comey prior to and regarding Comey’s testimony before the Senate Intel Committee.
Since his forced departure from the FBI, Comey signed a book deal in August 2017, set for publication in April 2018, for which he reportedly received an advance in excess of $2 million. Given the fact that the FBI appears to be letting Comey get away with stealing and leaking official government documents and colluding with the special counsel to get Trump, even a trusting person must be suspicions about his book deal.
The FBI has fanned those suspicions by, you guessed it, adding a new layer to the protective stonewall around Comey. Again, Judicial Watch has been forced to sue a recalcitrant FBI for records, including but not limited to forms Comey was required to complete relating to prepublication review of the book by the FBI. Did Comey’s cronies give the fired FBI director a pass on this long-standing requirement? Is that why they are stonewalling the Judicial Watch FOIA?
Based upon Comey’s performance to date, this book likely will be an elaborate exercise in self-apotheosis. That’s why the American public deserves to know if Comey’s former colleagues — many of whom we now know aided in his exoneration of Hillary Clinton and have participated in the contrived investigation of Donald Trump – scrutinized his literary claims or simply green-lighted his every word.
There is no doubt that the deep state is in deep cover-up mode. The FBI, Justice Department and the special counsel all are stonewalling our requests for Comey documents. The more they stonewall, the deeper the suspicions grow about Comey’s complicity in the entire attempt to use the bogus Trump dossier to prevent the election of Donald Trump, and then use it to undermine his presidency once he was elected to office. In my experience in Washington, when people refuse to come clean, it is usually because they are hiding dirty laundry.
If you’ve been following much international news, you’ve probably heard that, after literally years of scandal, abuse, and incompetence, South Africa’s president Jacob Zuma was finally forced to resign last week.
This is a big deal for South Africa.
The country has been suffering for nearly a decade under Zuma’s corruption.
And people are certainly hoping that the new President, Cyril Ramaphosa, will represent a positive, new chapter for South Africa.
Yesterday Ramaphosa addressed the nation’s parliament in Cape Town and made clear that his priority is to heal the divisions and injustice of the past, going all the way back to the original European colonists in the 1600s taking land from the indigenous tribes.
Ramaphosa called this “original sin”, and stated that he wants to see “the return of the land to the people from whom it was taken… to heal the divisions of the past.”
How does he plan on doing that?
Confiscation. Specifically– confiscation without compensation.
“The expropriation of land without compensation is envisaged as one of the measures that we will use to accelerate redistribution of land to black South Africans.”
Ramaphosa minced no words: he’s talking about taking land from white farmers and giving it to black South Africans.
Astonishingly, he followed up that statement by saying, “We will handle it in a way that is not going to damage our economy. . .”
Wow, what a relief. For a minute it sounded like South Africa wants to do what Zimbabwe did several years ago.
Oh wait a minute.
That’s exactly what Zimbabwe did.
Seeking to correct similar colonial and Apartheid-era injustices in his country, Zimbabwe’s president Robert Mugabe initiated a land redistribution program in 1999-2000.
Thousands of white-owned farms were confiscated by the government, and the farmers were forced out.
Bear in mind that Zimbabwe used to be known as the breadbasket of southern Africa. Zimbabwe’s world-class farmers were major food exporters to the rest of the region.
But within a few years of Mugabe’s land distribution, food production plummeted.
Without its professional, experienced farmers, the nation went from being an agricultural export powerhouse to having to rely on handouts from the United Nations’ World Food Programme.
Hyperinflation and a multi-decade depression followed.
If there’s an economic model in the world that you DON’T want to follow, it’s Zimbabwe.
And you’d think that the politicians in neighboring South Africa would know that.
They had a front-row seat to the effects of Mugabe’s land redistribution, not to mention they had to absorb millions of starving Zimbabwean refugees who came across their borders.
Yet this is precisely the policy that they want to adopt.
However you might feel about social justice, it seems pretty clear that copying Zimbabwe is a pretty stupid idea… and will only end up hurting the people they claim to be helping.
Yet the president claims that they want to initiate a land redistribution program that won’t impact the economy or South Africa’s food security.
Yeah sure. And I want to be the starting quarterback of the Dallas Cowboys next season.
But sadly you won’t see Simon Black throwing any touchdown passes anytime soon.
That’s because we have to live in a world with certain realities and limitations.
One of those realities is that land distribution, even if you believe the intentions to be noble, never works.
And of course, the most important reality is that anyone who willfully chooses to copy Zimbabwe’s economic model deserves to suffer the consequences of their stupidity.
[You can watch his remarks yourself here: the fun starts around 30:45]
As speculation mounted earlier this month that Chief of Staff John Kelly might soon be shown the door following the Feb. 6 revelation that White House Staff Secretary Rob Porter’s ex-wives exposed him as a domestic abuser, we anticipated that Kelly’s exit might be fraught with complications for one important reason: Many of top White House officials – most notably senior advisor Jared Kushner – are still working with the same type of temporary security clearance that Porter had.
Kelly’s equivocating over when, exactly, he learned about Porter’s sordid history drew attention to this uncomfortable fact, and we anticipated that, once the White House made clear it would stand by its man, the simmering tensions between Kelly and Kushner, whom Kelly has long treated with quiet derision, would soon spill over into public view.
And lo and behold: Not even two weeks later, the New York Times dropped a bombshell report late Tuesday about Kushner’s efforts to hang on to his top-level clearance – even after Kelly issued a memo on Friday promising to revoke access for any West Wing officials whose clearances were pending as of June 1 (as Kushner’s was).
This, in turn, has set the stage for a “Beyond Thunderdome”-esque confrontation between two of the most influential members of the president’s inner circle.
Kushner is fighting to keep his security clearance because, quite simply, it’d be nearly impossible for him to carry out his multitudinous responsibilities without it.
Mr. Kushner’s clearance has afforded him access to closely guarded information, including the presidential daily brief, the intelligence summary Mr. Trump sees every day, but it has not been made permanent, and his background check investigation is still pending after 13 months serving in Mr. Trump’s inner circle.
Of course, Kushner could’ve made things much easier for himself had he only immediately disclosed all his meetings with foreign officials – including former Russian Ambassador Sergey Lavrov – a needless embarrassment that was, in all likelihood, a ham-fisted mistake (though the left-wing media has sought to portray it as a nefarious cover-up in the absence of a crime).
The questions surrounding Mr. Kushner’s clearance are particularly acute because of the possibility that his extensive contacts with foreign actors – including travel, meetings with leaders overseas and multiple business ventures – might be relevant to the investigation by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, into Russian meddling in the US presidential election.
And the fact that Mueller is now reportedly probing Kushner’s financial interests for conflicts (as his family business seeks to offload its interest in an over-leveraged Manhattan skyscraper) has given the bureau yet another reason to delay – or even flat-out deny – his clearance. Kushner initially failed to disclose some of the scores of those contacts on the standard form required of all US government officials.
As the Times points out, Kushner’s initial failure to disclose his contacts meant his background check information wasn’t delivered until after the June 1 cutoff Kelly specified in his memo.
According to Kelly, anybody who hasn’t received a permanent clearance – and whose completed application wasn’t delivered until after the cutoff – will lose access. However, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said Chief of Staff John Kelly’s new security clearance directive will not affect Jared Kushner’s work as a top White House staffer, per CNN.
Sanders declined on Tuesday to get into Kushner’s clearance status but said “nothing that has taken place will affect the valuable work Jared is doing.”
But given Kushner’s massive portfolio of responsibilities – from supervising the Israeli-Palestinian peace process to streamlining the federal bureaucracy – it’s difficult to imagine how he’d be able to carry on his duties as anything other than a figurehead should his access to top secret information be revoked.
In all likelihood, the implications of this struggle won’t just impact Kushner’s security clearance: They’re integral to his very survival in the West Wing.
Either he maintains access, or he will in all likelihood join the long, long list of Trump administration alumni – and this in spite of his status as the president’s son-in-law.
Japan to buy at least 20 more F-35A stealth fighters (Reuters)
Broadcom cuts Qualcomm bid by $3 per share (Reuters)
Bump Stock Prices Soar After Trump Proposes Ban (BBG)
Investment star Alan Howard’s comeback hits headwind (Reuters)
New Jersey Transit’s Hidden Danger: Bad Brakes, Bare Wires, Rotten Parts (BBG)
Behind walls of his mansion, Zimbabwe’s Mugabe turns 94 (Reuters)
Russian Trolls Tweeted Disinformation Long Before U.S. Election (WSJ)
Dish Network profit surges on $1.2 billion U.S. tax law benefit (Reuters)
Nobody Wants to Let Google Win the War for Maps All Over Again (BBG)
Overnight Media Digest
WSJ
– Qualcomm Inc pumped new life into its bid for NXP Semiconductors raising its offer to $44 billion and locking up support from key stakeholders— a move Broadcom Ltd had warned could prompt it to end its $121 billion pursuit of Qualcomm. on.wsj.com/2CykyXN
– A federal judge undercut AT&T Inc plans to argue that the Justice Department is challenging its acquisition of Time Warner Inc for political reasons, ruling that the company can’t have information on internal government deliberations. on.wsj.com/2CCr7Zu
– New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy said he would seek to improve coordination among schools, law enforcement and state agencies to prevent school violence in response to the deadly school shooting in Parkland. on.wsj.com/2CArR18
– 3M Co will pay $850 million to settle Minnesota’s lawsuit, claiming the manufacturer contaminated water in the state for at least five decades. on.wsj.com/2CyY3C4
FT
Prime Minister Theresa May has been urged to broker a Brexit that would allow “full regulatory autonomy” outside the EU and the ability for Britain to start negotiating trade deals throughout the two-year transition period that begins in March 2019, according to a letter sent to her by a group of Tory Eurosceptic MPs. on.ft.com/2EI07gQ
Penny Mordaunt, the international development secretary, threatened to strip existing public contracts from crisis-hit charity Oxfam, saying its former trustees misled donors and regulators about aid workers’ use of prostitutes in Haiti.
Britain’s biggest mortgage lender Lloyds Banking Group Plc is set to announce plans to buy back 1 billion pound ($1.40 billion) of its shares when it releases its annual results on Wednesday.
NYT
– Qualcomm Inc on Tuesday increased its takeover bid for rival chipmaker NXP Semiconductors NV to about $44 billion in hopes of shoring up support for the deal. nyti.ms/2oeVOzl
– Supermarket operator Albertsons Companies Inc said on Tuesday that it would buy the remnants of the Rite Aid Corp drugstore chain. nyti.ms/2CyyvF2
– A federal judge blocked AT&T Inc’s move to obtain communication logs between the Justice Department and the White House on Tuesday, hampering the phone company’s argument that politics played a role in the government’s decision to halt a merger with Time Warner Inc. nyti.ms/2CA7KzU
– With Venezuela suffering one of the most severe economic collapses of modern times, the beleaguered administration of President Nicolas Maduro announced on Tuesday that it had begun a presale of virtual currency backed by the nation’s vast petroleum reserves. nyti.ms/2CAHWDL
Canada
THE GLOBE AND MAIL
** The B.C. budget aims to temper the province’s hot housing market but neither the government nor other observers know what the impact on real estate prices will be. (tgam.ca/2BG2vlz)
** Ontario is planning to impose hard limits on solitary confinement in its prisons – one of a series of proposals contained in a new corrections bill in the works since the plight of a Lac Seul First Nations inmate came to light in 2016. (tgam.ca/2omhZmE)
** Hyundai Auto Canada will enable its dealers to conduct full sales online, allowing customers to preorder cars, put down deposits, build-and-price online, get a trade-in quote on their current vehicle, schedule a test drive and fill out credit paperwork. tgam.ca/2CaDLD3
NATIONAL POST
** Ottawa Valley MPP Randy Hillier intensified his campaign against former Progressive Conservative leader Patrick Brown on Tuesday, reporting him to the provincial integrity commissioner for alleged ethics violations. bit.ly/2okVdeB
Stock markets have settled down after an awful couple of weeks earlier this month. On Feb. 5, the Dow Jones suffered its largest-ever drop in terms of points. It was down 1,600 at one point and ultimately lost 1,175.21 points, a 4.6% drop that day. At one point during that week, the Dow was off 10% in correction territory. But everything is calm now and most of the mainstream is once again feeling bullish and optimistic.
Peter Schiff spoke at the Vancouver Resource Investment Conference 2018 last month before the market tanked. But his message remains relevant in the aftermath of the plunge and the subsequent recovery because the dynamics in the market remain pretty much the same. Conditions are still ripe for a 1987-style market crash.
Investors have not been this optimistic…since 1987. They are even more optimistic than they were at the height of the technology bubble, the dot-com bubble, the new era. Of course, 1987 didn’t end well, right? We had a stock market crash, and there’s a lot about what’s happening today that reminds me about what was happening in ’87.”
Highlights from the Speech
“The economy has not improved under Trump. We don’t have a booming economy. I mean, Trump keeps telling us we have a booming economy, but nothing is booming.”
“When Donald Trump was a candidate for president, he said that the unemployment numbers were phony. They were fake. They were a fraud. They were a con. He said the real unemployment rate is 30%, 40%. Now, every time there is an unemployment number that comes out, he’s tweeting about how great it is we have this record low unemployment and we should all give him credit for it.”
“Now, the tax cuts, are they going to grow the economy? No! Because they didn’t cut government spending. See, you don’t get government for nothing. Taxes pay for government. But if you cut taxes and you don’t cut government, how do you pay for that government?”
“I believe the debt and inflation we have to create to finance the tax cuts will be a bigger drag on the economy than the tax cuts are a boost.”
“Where there will be growth is in the budget deficits and that kind of is where I see some of the similarity now in the 1980s – 1987 – because these big budget deficits are going to be a big problem.”
“Rather than having continuous economic growth, I think the economy is going into recession. Now, I believe that had Donald Trump lost that election, the US would already be in recession. I think we were clearly headed to recession before he won. And when he won, he created this huge burst of misplaced optimism that probably postponed the onset of that recession by another year or two.”
“The most recent trade deficit hit the highest level I think in six years… The trade deficit is heading much higher and so is the budget deficit. You have these twin deficits. And the last time they were a big problem was 1987.”
“I believe that this year, the dollar is going to hit an all-time record low. I think we’re going to crack below 6-to-1 in yuan.”
“If the dollar is going down, why would anyone outside the United States want to buy a 10-year Treasury yielding 2.6%?”
“Here’s the problem. America’s broke. America has more debt than ever before … The debt has more than doubled since the financial crisis. Why did we have a financial crisis? We had too much debt!”
“What has really been propping up the US economy is cheap money and cheap gas.”
“Here is the self-perpetuating spiral that we’re in. As the deficits go up, now we have to sell more bonds. Well, that puts more downward pressure on bond prices and more upward pressure on interest rates. So, as rising interest rates create bigger deficits, those bigger deficits create rising interest rates.”
We’re seeking wisdom from the mouths of babes, these days. So I asked my 12-year-old son if the country would be a better, safer place if the government tried to disarm some or all Americans to reduce violent crime.
The “Russian troll farm” indictment 
