Tag: news

Authored by Joey Clark via TheAntiMedia.org,

Taking to the Senate floor Tuesday under a veil of earnest hyperbole common among those who fall under the “geriatric” label, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York uttered a plea to his Senate colleagues.

“The country is being tested in unprecedented ways,” Senator Schumer said. “I say to all of my colleagues in the Senate: History is watching.”

The occasion for Schumer’s invocation of Father History was the latest press coverage from the two papers with the most obnoxious slogans in the country.

Under the banner “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” The Washington Post reported that President Donald Trump had shared classified intelligence secrets with the red Soviet — excuse me — Russian ambassador and foreign minister.

 

The following day, under their motto “All the News That’s Fit to Print,” The New York Times reported that ousted FBI Director James Comey had crafted memos regarding his conversations with President Trump, in particular, one conversation in February of this year wherein Trump hoped Comey could “let this go” — ”this” being the ongoing investigation of the short-lived National Security Advisor, Lt. Gen Michael Flynn.

However, despite Schumer’s worry and woe and appeals to history, I doubt history is all that intrigued by this breathless reportage on the latest palace intrigue at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

In fact, I doubt Father History is watching at all, as he’s probably seen it all before.

But do not suggest this to Democrats in their fits of paroxysms or to Republicans who react to these Democratic convulsions with furious eruptions of their own. Just like dogs, it is best to treat those who are foaming at the mouth with caution (though it is best to spare them the Old Yeller treatment for the time being.) Maybe it’s just heat exhaustion; or maybe, it really is a deadly case of rabies. Who knows? I, however, tend to think it’s an affliction we have seen before in the United States of America — Presidential Derangement Syndrome.

Though the term “Trump Derangement Syndrome” has been bandied about a great deal in the past few months, this diagnosis misses the mark. The issue here is not that “History is watching,” but rather that people haven’t perused history beyond a few convenient excerpts. We must remember such knowledge is slippery and selective to the partisan mind, as the purpose of partisan politics is not to seek and speak the truth but to win political power.

That said, the left wing of American politics has indeed become unhinged and unstable. President Trump truly has turned these people absolutely mad. Prone to exaggeration and outright lies, the left has now become what they claim to hate. If Donald Trump’s use of “truthful hyperbole” won him the presidential election, why can’t the left use the same to bring down his presidency? Fair question, but a dangerous one to answer in the affirmative.

You see, Presidential Derangement Syndrome affects more than just a given president’s opposition. There is always a reaction to the reaction enough to make the left and the right switch their political roles. After years of damning the presidency of Barack Obama in hysterical terms — from accusing him of being a secret Muslim born in Kenya to being a Marxist agent trying to destroy and “fundamentally change” the United States from within to a man asleep at the wheel who callously left military men to die in Benghazi — the right wing has dropped their oppositional posture, now opting to play the role (at times reluctantly) of court historians and palace apologists for President Trump. On the other side, after years of forgiving Barack Obama’s domestic half-measures, covert intrusions into American life, and more wars abroad, the left wing has dropped their love of executive power, now deciding to play the role of democracy’s great defenders against the idiotically ineffective yet somehow still dangerous presidency of Donald Trump.

These are the signs of Presidential Derangement Syndrome. Boiled down, such an illness creates dishonest and hypocritical partisan hackery. And, despite wonderful claims and aspirations that Donald Trump’s ineptitude will lead to the demystifying of the great American presidency or the destruction of its credibility, I am not so hopeful this will occur.

Why? Because presidential derangement is based on an envious sort of lust for power, and this affliction has a way of surviving into the future by latching onto a new host — the next president.

Democrats are not upset at Donald Trump and were not unhappy with George W Bush just because of their presidential power. Republicans were not angry at Barack Obama and Bill Clinton just because those presidents once had power. No, the partisans of America were, are, and will continue to be struck mad because presidential power is their greatest desire. Partisans suffering from Presidential Derangement Syndrome are more akin to scorned, jealous lovers than they are to wild-eyed levelers seeking to dig up executive power root and branch.

Whether they know it or not, the partisans of the United States love to be whipped into a frenzy of righteous indignation, and the demagogues on the American political scene are more than happy to oblige the public’s thirst for spectacle, outrage, and quests to slay the big bad. What could be a better spectacle than a mano-a-mano democratic, interactive, systematic, zero-sum, never-ending slugfest for or against the “leader the free world” and “commander-in-chief?”

Can you think of a process more ingenious for aggrandizing political power in one place at the expense of human freedom?

But again, this is what some of “the people” want. This is the process they have chosen either actively or passively. No matter the issue, if there is a wrong to be righted, an ill to be cured, an injustice to be reconciled, a mouth to be fed, a foot to be shoed, a hangnail to be clipped, a butt to be wiped (gently with moist baby wipes, please), or a salty tear to be patted dry; you can bet on the American public time and time again to say, “Let us have another election! Let us have a new president!”

So, good luck keeping your wits about you in the midst of the this latest crucible, America. Do not let news that isn’t all that new or palace intrigue that isn’t all that intriguing get you down or distract you from the beautiful and awe-inspiring things the modern world has to offer. History probably isn’t watching the lunacies of American politics as Senator Chuck Schumer suggests, but if Father History could speak, I bet he would say of American politics:

What has been will be again,

what has been done will be done again;

there is nothing new under the sun.

Is there anything of which one can say,

“Look! This is something new”?

It was here already, long ago;

it was here before our time.

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Jihadis have posted messages urging supporters to carry out vehicular attacks similar to Thursday’s incident in Times Square – when an allegedly intoxicated Richard Rojas, 26, plowed his car into a crowd of pedestrians, injuring 20 and killing one – even as law enforcement officials confirmed that the incident had no connection to terrorism, the Foreign Desk Reports.

From the Foreign Desk:

"Pro-Islamic State jihadis shared images and messages such as, “Soon, the vehicle attacks will be witnessed on your streets, by Allah's permission,” in an attempt to lure so-called ‘lone wolf’ attackers to carry out same-style attacks but in the name of the Islamic State.

The terror group has even been using relevant hashtags such as #NewYork #Times_Square and #USA in their propaganda posts."

One image, posted on the Telegram messaging app, featured a large truck with “We will continue to terrorize you and ruin your lives,” urging "believers" to give up this "temporary life" and earn everlasting reward in paradise, the Foreign Desk Noted. A screengrab of the image is posted below:

The poster continues: "O Muwahhid (believer), Indeed it is a single soul and a single paradise, so sell it to Allah and purchase Jannah (afterlife). Sell what is temporary for what is lasting, for how blessed a transaction is that transaction! Blessed would be the seller and blessed be the buyer!"

After encountering challenges transporting would-be jihadis to Syria, the Islamic State launched a new campaign where it encouraged Western sympathizers to use everyday objects as weapons such as kitchen knives, axes and cars to carry out acts of jihad.

At his arraignment on Friday, Rojas said he wanted to "kill them all" and that police should have shot him to stop him, the Associated Press reported. Rojas added that he was high on marijuana laced with PCP.

Officials are awaiting toxicology results, though a police official said Rojas "had glassy eyes, slurred speech, and was unsteady," during his arrest, according to the criminal complainted, cited by the AP. The incident hasn't been deemed an act of terrorism, though it bore a shocking resemblance to vehicular attacks in London and Nice, for which ISIS did take credit.

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Today’s demonization of Russia is especially offensive when viewed against the suffering of the Russian people that Natylie Baldwin recalled in a visit to the monument honoring the defense of Leningrad against a brutal Nazi siege.

Authored by Natylie Baldwin via ConsortiumNews.com,

We entered the monument to the siege of Leningrad from the back. There is a large semi-circle with eternal flame torches at intervals and embedded sculptures of Lenin’s face, and other symbols of the Soviet era. The monument was built in the post-war period so the Soviet iconography is understandable. In the middle is a sculpture of a soldier, a half-naked woman looking forlorn into the distance, and another woman collapsed on the ground with a dead boy in her arms.

A sculpture commemorating the defense of Leningrad during World War II. (photo courtesy of saint-petersburg.com.)

There are several concentric steps that follow the semi-circle and I sat down on one of them and took in the feel of the area. Classical style music played in the background with a woman’s haunting voice singing in Russian. It was explained to me that it was a semi-circle instead of a full-circle to represent the fact the city was not completely surrounded and ultimately not defeated.

I finally got up and went through the opening in the semi-circle and came out to the front where a tall column with 1941 and 1945 on it stood with a large statue of two soldiers in front of it.

There are several statues on either side of the front part of the monument of figures, from soldiers to civilians, who labored to assist in alleviating the suffering of the siege and defending the city. Soldiers and civilians helped to put out fires, retrieve un-exploded ordnance from buildings, repair damage, and built the road of life over a frozen body of water to evacuate civilians and transport supplies.

The siege lasted 872 days (Sept. 8, 1941, to Jan. 27, 1944), resulting in an estimated 1.2 million deaths, mostly from starvation and freezing, and some from bombing and illness. Most were buried in mass graves, the largest of which was Piskarevskoye Cemetery, which received around 500,000 bodies. An accurate accounting of deaths is complicated by the fact that many unregistered refugees had fled to Leningrad before the siege to escape the advancing Nazi army.

According to Wikipedia, by the end of the siege: “Only 700,000 people were left alive of a 3.5 million pre-war population. Among them were soldiers, workers, surviving children and women. Of the 700,000 survivors, about 300,000 were soldiers who came from other parts of the country to help in the besieged city.”

We decided to go into the small museum attached to the Monument, which consisted of one large room. As you walk in after paying for your ticket, you see a series of glass cases that each contain artifacts from the siege with explanatory panels in both Russian and English.

My Russian friend Mike and I noted the Soviet propaganda-style language used in the panels. He said that if the museum had been done today, the language would be different. In any event, the basic information was readily understandable, if one ignored the glory-to-the-Soviet style wording.

On one wall was a large movie screen on which was projected a constant loop of two films that ran approximately 10 minutes each. One was footage of the siege in general and how it affected the residents and what the soldiers and civilians did to defend against it.

The second film focused on the massive deaths, including era footage of people pulling wrapped up corpses in make-shift sleds through the snow to the nearest mass pit for burial. In the center of the exhibit was a large square sculptured map of the city with the outline of the area that was surrounded by the Germans lit up in red.

The Astoria Hotel, where Hitler planned to celebrate the taking of Leningrad and had even reportedly sent out the invitations, St. Petersburg. (Photo by Natylie Baldwin)

When we emerged from the darkness of the museum and monument, the sun was bright and it was probably one of the warmest days of the year in St. Petersburg. On the walk back to the car, I told Mike that I didn’t think the average American could even begin to fathom this level of suffering. With the exception of a very small percentage of the population sent to fight our myriad and senseless conflicts, war is something that happens to other people somewhere else. It’s an abstraction – or worse yet, fodder for entertainment.

Mike didn’t respond to my verbal stream-of-consciousness. So we continued on in silence. But it all made me ponder how spoiled Americans have been in this respect, with a vast ocean on either side and weak or friendly neighbors to the north and south.

We have not experienced a war on our soil since the 1860’s and have not suffered an invasion since 1812. I can’t help but think that this, along with our youth, goes a long way toward explaining our lack of perspective and humility as a nation. Only those without wisdom would characterize themselves as “exceptional” and “indispensable.”

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The past six months have been nothing short of terrible for Uber from a PR standpoint (via Axios).

1. Another tale of sexism and unacceptable workplace behavior in Silicon Valley company has emerged. This time it's at Uber, according to an explosive blog post published on Sunday by a former company engineer named Susan Fowler Riggetti.
2. Uber's newly-hired VP of engineering Amit Singhal was asked to, and did, resign on Monday after the company learned from Recode that he was accused of sexual harassment shortly before leaving Google a year ago. Here's more on the difficult position of former employers in this case.
3. A video showing Uber CEO Travis Kalanick rudely arguing with a long-time driver at the end of his ride was published by Bloomberg. "I need leadership help," Kalanick said in an apology he issued shortly after.
4. Susan Fowler Rigetti, the former Uber engineer who wrote of discrimination, said she's hired attorneys after a new law firm began to investigate her claims. Uber confirmed it has hired Perkins Coie, which reports to former A.G. Eric Holder, who's leading the investigation.
5. Uber said on Thursday that it will finally apply for a DMV permit to test self-driving cars in California after its cars' registrations were revoked in December because it refused to get the permit.
6. Charlie Miller, one of the two famous car hackers who joined Uber's Advanced Technology Center in August 2015, announced he's leaving the company.
7. The New York Times uncovered a secret Uber program called Greyball, through which the company uses software and data to evade law enforcement in cities.
8. Keala Lusk, a former Uber engineer, published a blog post detailing how her female manager mistreated her, signaling that the company's problematic culture isn't limited to the men who work there.
9. Ed Baker, Uber's head of product and growth, resigned. Though the reason is unclear, he was allegedly seen kissing another employee three years ago, which was anonymously communicated to board member Arianna Huffington, according to Recode.
10. A report outlines a trip by a group of Uber employees to a Seoul karaoke-escort bar in 2014, which included company CEO Travis Kalanick and his girlfriend, Gabi Holzwarth. After arriving, several male employees picked escorts to sit with, and went to sing karaoke. Uncomfortable, a female marketing manager, who was part of the group, left after a couple of minutes, while Holzwarth and Kalanick left after an hour.
11. California regulators have recommended that Uber be fined $1.13 million for failing to investigate and/or suspend drivers who are reported by a passenger to be intoxicated. The state requires ride-hailing companies to have a zero-tolerance policy for driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs.
12. A new report says Uber used a secret program dubbed "Hell' to track Lyft drivers to see if they were driving for both ride-hailing services and otherwise stifle competition. Only a small group of Uber employees, including CEO Travis Kalanick, knew about the program, according to a story in The Information, which was based on an anonymous source who was not authorized to speak publicly.

And, as Statista's Feliz Richter details, according to a recent survey published by management consulting firm cg42, all those negative headlines did leave a mark on Uber’s reputation.

You will find more statistics at Statista

As the chart above shows, the percentage of consumers with a negative perception of the world’s most valuable startup jumped from 9 to 27 percent in response to the news stories.

To make things worse, these stories have been the main reason for people to stop using Uber in the past six months.

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There was some good news and some not so good news in the Fed’s latest annual Report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households.

First the good news.

The report, based on the Board’s fourth annual Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking conducted in October 2016, presents a “picture of improving financial well-being among Americans”, at least according to the report (read on to see if this is merited). Overall, 70% of the more than 6,600 respondents said they were either “living comfortably” or “doing okay,” up 1% from 2015 and up 8% from the first survey results in 2013.

Not surprisingly, the highest percentage, or 92%, of those who responded they were “living comfortably” was among the group with more than $100,000 in family income. For Americans making less than $40,000 the breakdown was almost evenly split with 49% saying they are “just getting by.”  According to the same study, 28% of respondents said that their income in the last 12 months was less than $25,000, and 40% report that their income was less than the key $40,000 cutoff, which suggests that roughly 4 in 10 Americans are “finding it difficult to get by.”

The improvements in well-being as reported by the survey respondents were concentrated among high-income adults, with at least some college education, and prompted the WSJ to write that “U.S Household financial health improved in recent years.” Even so, most of the changes reported in the survey were relatively modest, “reflecting a slowly improving economy and an unemployment level at or below 5% throughout 2016.”

Now, the not so good news.

Nearly eight years into an economic recovery, nearly half of Americans didn’t have enough cash available to cover a $400 emergency. Specifically, the survey found that, in line with what the Fed had disclosed in previous years, 44% of respondents said they wouldn’t be able to cover an unexpected $400 expense like a car repair or medical bill, or would have to borrow money or sell something to meet it. Troubling as this statistic remains, the overall share of adults who would struggle to come up with $400 in a pinch has declined by 2% from the last survey conducted in 2015, and down 6% since 2013.

Of the group that could not pay in cash, 45% said they would go further in debt and use a credit card to pay off the expense over time. while a quarter would borrow from friends of family, and another 27% just couldn’t pay the expense. Others would turn to selling items or using a payday loan.

The breakdown was largely by education attainment: 79% of those with at least a bachelor’s degree said they would still be able to pay all of their other bills in full if hit with a $400 charge. Just 52% of those with no more than a high school diploma said the same.

Just as concerning were other findings from the study: just under one-fourth of adults, or 23%, are not able to pay all of their current month’s bills in full while 25% reported skipping medical treatments due to cost in the prior year. Additionally, 28% of adults who haven’t retired yet reported to being grossly unprepared, indicating they had no retirement savings or pension whatsoever.

The median out-of-pocket cost for an unexpected, major medical expense was $1,000, and 42% of those with such an expense in the past year either had debt relating to that expense or unpaid balances. The Fed reported that 24 million adults are in debt from medical expenses incurred over the previous year.  As a result, many respondents went without some type of care – dental care in particular – because they could not afford it, though the 25% who reported such a situation was down from 27% in 2015.

Commenting on the report’s concerning findings, Fed Governor and Hillary Clinton supporter Lael Brainard said that “the survey findings remind us that many American households are struggling financially, including fully 40 percent of those with a high school diploma or less. More broadly, 44 percent of all respondents could not cover an unexpected $400 emergency expense or would rely on borrowing or selling something to do so. The survey also shows that many adults have no savings for retirement.“

The findings also underscore themes apparent during the presidential election, namely the growing gap between the elites and the broader population. Of whites with a bachelor’s degree or more, 85% said they’re doing OK or living comfortably, compared with 62% for whites with a high-school diploma or less. Blacks and Hispanics have similar but narrower gaps in response to that question when sorted by education.

The biggest differentiator appears to be education: the Fed reported that 82% of adults with a bachelor’s degree or more in education said last year they were “living comfortably” or “doing okay,” up from 80% the year before, as well as 69% of those with some college or an associate degree, up from 66%. Furthermore, 79% of those with at least a bachelor’s degree said they would still be able to pay all of their other bills in full if hit with a $400 charge. Just 52% of those with no more than a high school diploma said the same.

Americans’ sense of economic health also varied among racial and ethnic groups. Of the respondents with no more than a high-school diploma, a greater portion of non-Hispanic whites—20.5%– reported being worse off than a year before than did non-Hispanic blacks, at 18.6%, or Hispanics, at 20.2%.

Asked to comment by the WSJ on the latest annual study, Jonathan Morduch, a New York University professor of public policy and an economist said that “everybody on the low end feels like they’re in a different situation, almost like they’re in a different America than those with a bachelor’s or more.” He added that “The combination of instability and illiquidity are really hurting at the low end,” he added.

That’s the same “end” that had such an outsized impact on the latest presidential election.

So based on the latest set of Fed results presented above, the solution to America’s wealth problem would be to force every American into a college education. Well, sure… just make sure it’s debt free, because as even the NY Fed’s Bill Dudley admitted in early April, student debt and default are a “headwind to economic activity” noting that “rising student loan debt in the United States could ultimately hurt
overall home ownership and consumer spending and erode colleges’ and
universities’ ability to elevate lower-income students.”

There are “potential longer-term negative implications of student debt on homeownership and other types of consumer spending,” Dudley said.

 

“Continued increases in college costs and debt burdens could inhibit higher education’s ability to serve as an important engine of upward income mobility, (and) these developments are important and deserve increased attention.”

Which is understandable with a record $1.44 trilion in student loans outstanding as of March 31, surpassing even the $1.1 trillion in US auto loans.

Here are the disturbing findings from the latest NY Fed study on America’s student debt crisis:

…our analysis shows that for any given level of educational attainment, those with student debt are less likely to own a home in their early thirties than those who completed their education without taking on as much—or any—debt.

 

To the extent that the statistical associations we uncovered reflect a causal impact of debt on homeownership, they have important implications for the housing market and future spending behavior.

 

Homeownership represents an important means of wealth accumulation, with housing equity being the principal form of wealth for most households. So, changes in the way we finance higher education, with an increased reliance on student debt, may have important implications for the housing market and the distribution of wealth.

It only took the Fed about 6 years to figure out what was patently obvious to everyone else.  Alas, that does not help solve the core underlying problems discussed above because absent a world in which US colleges hand out diplomas to everyone – which will never happen – the vast wealth gap will only get bigger. And that “prediction” does not even take into account the fact that the US is now about 2 years overdue for a major recession.

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Bitcoin is now up over 100% in 2017, amid global political uncertainty and increased interest in Asia, suddenly spiking above $2000 this afternoon for the first time ever…

That is a year-over-year gain of more than 350%. The move comes, as CoinDesk notes, amid a broader boost in the cryptocurrency market, which broke the $60bn barrier today. The increase has taken place amid strong surges from Ripple’s XRP, which seeks to lower costs in enterprise cross-border payments, and ethereum’s ether token, a cryptographic asset that powers its decentralized app network.

It appears Bitcoin is one of the only (un-rigged) assets in the world that is reflective of global policy and geopolitical uncertainty…

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Authored by Charles Hugh-Smith via PeakProsperity.com,

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You know what they say about biting the hand that feeds. The NYT just dropped its latest deep-state scoop, and boy is it a doozy.

But instead of using the information as more leverage to attack President Trump, the leaks reveal allegedly extreme incompetence at the highest levels of the CIA, what NYT’s "current and former government sources" characterized as the worst intelligence breach in decades.

These officials revealed that "the Chinese government systematically dismantled CIA spying operations in the country starting in 2010, killing or imprisoning more than a dozen sources over two years and crippling intelligence gathering there for years afterward."

The sheer number of U.S. assets lost rivaled those lost to the Soviet Union and Russia during the betrayals of both Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen during the 1980s and 1990s, the NYT noted.

The timing of the scoop is also curious: Instead of dropping it during the market day, standard practice for  anti-Trump revelations from WaPo, NYT and CNN, this story appeared at noon on a Saturday, when global markets were shuttered – almost guaranteeing it won’t dominate the cable-news cycle, which will likely be laser-focused on Trump’s first trip abroad.

One possible reason: the head of the CIA from 2010 to 2013 was Mike Morell, an outspoken supporter of Hillary Clinton, who in August of 2016 penned "I Ran the C.I.A. Now I’m Endorsing Hillary Clinton." That is explainable: after all Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State at the time when, as we now learn, China was killing CIA spies.

Beginning in 2010, CIA operatives meant to collect information on the innerworkings of the Communist Party started disappearing. The NYT reports that between the final weeks of 2010 through the end of 2012, the Chinese killed at least a dozen of the CIA’s sources.

According to three sources, one was shot in front of his colleagues in the courtyard of a government building – a grisly killing meant to send a message to any others who might have been working for U.S. intelligence. Still others were imprisoned. All told, the Communist Party killed or imprisoned 18 to 20 of the CIA’s sources.
But perhaps even more disturbing than the killings themselves is the fact that, nearly seven years after they started, the agency still isn’t 100% about the source of the leaks, though the NYT mentioned a few theories.

As the NYT reports:

“Some were convinced that a mole within the CIA had betrayed the United States.

 

Others believed that the Chinese had hacked the covert system the CIA used to communicate with foreign sources.

 

Years later, that debate remains unresolved."

Some of the NYT’s sources believe the leak came from a former asset who turned on the U.S., but the FBI and CIA were never able to gather sufficient evidence to make an arrest. The asset eventually left the agency to pursue “a business opportunity” in another Asian country that some of NYT's sources believe was arranged by the Communist Party.

The FBI also has a theory.

“Some FBI agents became convinced that CIA handlers in Beijing too often traveled the same routes to the same meeting points, which would have helped China’s vast surveillance network identify the spies in its midst.”

The details of this alleged incompetence are staggering. Most alarmingly:

“Some officers met their sources at the restaurants where Chinese agents had platned listening devices, former officials said, and even the waiters worked for Chinese intelligence.”

Though the killings had largely subsided by 2013, the FBI and CIA affirmed that the damage had already been done.

Meanwhile, China’s espionage efforts have been particularly aggressive in recent years, up to and beyond the 2015 breach of the Office of Management and Budget’s systems.

The U.S. agencies have finally started hitting back – but it might be too little, too late. The NYT report that in March, the Feds arrested a longtime U.S. State Department employee who is accused of lying to investigators about her contacts with Chinese officials, the NYT notes.

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Authored by Danielle DiMartino Booth via BloombergQuint.com,

Amid the carnage in the auto sector, economists have sought solace in the comforts of home, sweet home. A recent Census release suggests that Millennials, long sidelined, have finally started to tiptoe into the home-buying market. The reception to the data was so effusive that other reports, suggesting housing has reached a much different sort of turning point, were lost in the fray.

The good news is that the trend is unequivocal, based purely on supply and demand. The bad news is in the actual message. The May University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment survey showed a six-year low among those who think it’s a good time to buy a house and a 12-year high among those who say it’s a good time to sell. Disparities of this breadth tend to coincide with break points and that’s just where we’ve landed in the cycle.

The beginning of May officially marked the advent of a buyers’ market, defined simply as sellers outnumbering buyers by a wide enough margin to trigger falling prices. Yes, it’s the moment buyers have been waiting for. It is also the moment private equity investors, those who’ve crowded out natural buyers, have been dreading.

Three factors determine home sales: interest rates, unemployment and prices.

The recent decline in interest rates has provided some semblance of relief; purchase applications have bounced off April’s levels, when they were down four percent over last year. April and May are obviously critical to the spring sales season.

The low unemployment rate would seem to be a huge plus if it wasn’t for the stress building around thousands of layoff announcements across the retail and auto sectors that won’t find their way into this most lagging of economic indicators for months. That is not to say those getting pink slips don’t know their fate, which should influence home sales going forward.

Price is the one bright spot, with one glaring caveat: Falling home prices tend to be associated with a negative macroeconomic backdrop, which does not bode well for any buyer of, well, anything. Dig into the Federal Reserve’s recently released first quarter Senior Loan Officer Survey and you will see nothing of note on the residential mortgage side — banks reported that both loan demand and lending standards remained unchanged in the first three months of the year.

But that is the here and now. Demand and supply in the auto sector, where pricing has been under pressure for some time, looked quite similar to that for houses several months back.

According to the Fed survey, at minus 13.3 percent, demand for auto loans flat-lined in deeply negative territory, as was the case in last year’s fourth quarter, the worst levels of the current expansion. This data point corroborated the Michigan survey, which showed that those who said it was a good time to buy a car fell to the lowest level since August 2014. Meanwhile, demand for credit card loans slid to minus 10.2 percent from minus 8.3 percent in the last three months of last year. In the event you’re detecting a trend, households are sending out distress signals that have just begun to be picked up in housing, even as household debt levels recapture their pre-crisis highs.

The silver lining in the dynamic that's just beginning to play out is what pricing pressures on the home front imply for the future of household finances — that is after the recession comes and goes. The cost to rent and buy has never been as high as it is today for the average working young American. The preponderance of apartments constructed in the current cycle has been luxury units. At the same time, private equity investors with deep pockets swooped in and bid up the price of rental homes, leaving many would-be first-time homebuyers and renters alike with no choice but to remain at home with their parents after graduating from college.

A quick glance at the average household budget shows that sky-high housing costs bite more than any other line item. Housing devours a third of average household spending, while auto payments command half that amount. More than any other considerations, these costs matter — where to sleep at night and the means by which to get to and from work.

Hence the good long-term news building in the coming decline in housing costs as record supplies of apartments coming online collide with falling home prices and private equity investors growing increasingly uncomfortable with their huge inventories of overpriced homes. As for cars, a new report from J.D. Power showed continued deterioration in the auto sector, driven by falling used car prices, sliding car sales and a further rise in incentive spending.

There is budgetary relief building in the pipeline for Millennials. It just might not be in the form they’d prefer to see, nor will it arrive in time to offset the broader macroeconomic damage inflicted by two key areas of support for the U.S. economy.

Perhaps most regrettable is that policy makers inside the Federal Reserve were aware of the pitfalls of being complicit in hampering the clearing of the housing market and providing incentives for subprime car lending. The sad truth is the optics of stifling clearing and encouraging borrowing among those who could ill afford payments was better than the alternative. Again.

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