What are your arguments for this opinion? Others come close, but don’t make that declaration, especially with a countdown clock that puts its end about June 2027.
Terry
I attempt to answer this question with a comprehensive podcast.
To download the podcast – right mouse click here (duration 39:17)
REMEMBER – An economic collapse would serve no good purpose for the globalists at this point, since it would risk exposing the objectives of the Great Reset to the unwashed masses while placing the blame on the central banks. The tenets of the Great Reset will be much easier to achieve when ostensible normalcy persists.
This Realtor is surprised by the sudden strength of house prices and sales. He attributes it to lower mortgage rates. Only stupid people wait for mortgage rates to drop before buying….
Carroll County home sales rose in July, despite high prices, low inventory
Sherry Greenfield,
Baltimore Sun
In a surprising turn, housing sales in Carroll County rose by more than 13% in July, following months of poor sales, high prices and declining inventory.
The number of homes sold last month in Carroll County rose 13.5%, when compared to the same month in 2023, according to the most recent statistics from Maryland REALTORS, a nonprofit real estate association that provides resources and support to area Realtors. Last month, 202 homes were sold in the county, up from 178 in July of last year.
The average sales price for a home in Carroll is still high, up 14.2%, from $470,442 in July of last year, to $537,212 last month.
At the same time, houses with sales pending jumped from 170 in July of last year to 189 last month.
Terry Bass, president of Carroll County Realtors, said the drop in interest rates over the summer is behind the unexpected news.
“I believe it’s a good thing,” Bass said. “A lot of buyers were on the sidelines waiting for interest rates to drop.”
On July 3, the Freddie Mac 30-year fixed-rate mortgage stood at 6.95%. By Aug. 1 rates had dropped to 6.73%, according to Maryland REALTORS.
In early April, interest rates in Maryland were 7.29% for a 30-year fixed mortgage and 7.21% for a 15-year fixed mortgage, according to Bankrate, a New York-based consumer financial services company.
As summer ends, Bass reflected on a housing market that showed improvement after months of decline.
“I think it was actually steady throughout the summer,” she said. “The summer has ended on a much better note than what it was a year ago. Once interest rates slowed down it gave us a boost at the end of the summer.”
The real estate landscape is much the same statewide. Maryland housing sales in July rose 4.2%, from 6,204 homes sold in July 2023 to 6,462 last month, Maryland REALTORS stated in a news release.
At the same time, pending sales jumped, with 6,680 houses under contract, an 8.8% increase from last year. The average sales price rose 5.7% to $512,266, while the median sales price grew 5.3% to $432,800.
Meanwhile, the lack of available houses for sale continues to be a hurdle to homeownership. And with low inventory, sellers can field multiple offers.
Last month, there were 208 homes for sale in Carroll. That’s down from 225 a year ago.in
Finally, Bass said it’s impossible to predict where interest rates will land this fall as the Federal Reserve weighs multiple economic factors.
“That’s a crystal ball question,” she said. “My feeling from all indications is that the feds will take a good hard look at this in September, but after that who knows.”
Huge data dump this morning. Stocks like it, but bonds do not.
•Retail sales are hotter.
•Jobless claims lower than expected.
•Export and import prices are definitely hotter than consensus
•Philly Fed disappoints, while prices paid is above forecast…
Continuing Jobless Claims
Act: 1,864K Cons: 1,880K Prev: 1,871K
Core Retail Sales (MoM) (Jul)
Act: 0.4% Cons: 0.1% Prev: 0.5%
Export Price Index (YoY) (Jul)
Act: 1.4% Cons: Prev: 1.0%
Export Price Index (MoM) (Jul)
Act: 0.7% Cons: 0.0% Prev: -0.3%
Import Price Index (MoM) (Jul)
Act: 0.1% Cons: -0.1% Prev: 0.0%
Import Price Index (YoY) (Jul)
Act: 1.6% Cons: Prev: 1.5%
Initial Jobless Claims
Act: 227K Cons: 236K Prev: 234K
Jobless Claims 4-Week Avg.
Act: 236.50K Cons: Prev: 241.00K
NY Empire State Manufacturing Index (Aug)
Act: -4.70 Cons: -5.90 Prev: -6.60
Philadelphia Fed Manufacturing Index (Aug)
Act: -7.0 Cons: 5.4 Prev: 13.9
Philly Fed Business Conditions (Aug)
Act: 15.4 Cons: Prev: 38.7
Philly Fed CAPEX Index (Aug)
Act: 12.00 Cons: Prev: 7.40
Philly Fed Employment (Aug)
Act: -5.7 Cons: Prev: 15.2
Philly Fed New Orders (Aug)
Act: 14.6 Cons: Prev: 20.7
Philly Fed Prices Paid (Aug)
Act: 24.00 Cons: Prev: 19.80
Retail Control (MoM) (Jul)
Act: 0.3% Cons: Prev: 0.9%
Retail Sales (MoM) (Jul)
Act: 1.0% Cons: 0.4% Prev: -0.2%
Retail Sales (YoY) (Jul)
Act: 2.70% Cons: Prev: 2.00%
Retail Sales Ex Gas/Autos (MoM) (Jul)
Act: 0.4% Cons: Prev: 0.8%
WHO declares mpox a public health emergency as newer strain spreads in Africa
More than 14,000 mpox cases have been reported in the DRC this year.
https://abcnews.go.com/Health/declares-mpox-public-health-emergency-new-strain-spreads/story?id=112827103
Currently, the JYNNEOS vaccine, a two-dose vaccine approved by the Food and Drug Administration to prevent smallpox and mpox, is the only vaccine being used in the U.S. to prevent mpox. Data from Africa has shown two doses of JYNNEOS are at least 85% effective in preventing mpox infection.
Bring it. Curious to see how they spin it.
The Mpox vaccine is as safe and effective as the Covid vaccines. Get ready for Mpox hype.
The public reads these types of articles and it’s just a release valve. This article could have been written in 1975 and just had the dates and company names changed….
Americans’ refusal to keep paying higher prices may be dealing a final blow to US inflation spike
WASHINGTON (AP) – The great inflation spike of the past three years is nearly spent – and economists credit American consumers for helping slay it.
Some of America’s largest companies, from Amazon to Disney to Yum Brands, say their customers are increasingly seeking cheaper alternative products and services, searching for bargains or just avoiding items they deem too expensive. Consumers aren’t cutting back enough to cause an economic downturn. Rather, economists say, they appear to be returning to pre-pandemic norms, when most companies felt they couldn’t raise prices very much without losing business.
“While inflation is down, prices are still high, and I think consumers have gotten to the point where they’re just not accepting it,” Tom Barkin, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, said last week at a conference of business economists. “And that’s what you want: The solution to high prices is high prices.”
A more price-sensitive consumer helps explain why inflation has appeared to be steadily falling toward the Federal Reserve’s 2% target, ending a period of painfully high prices that strained many people’s budgets and darkened their outlooks on the economy. It also assumed a central place in the presidential election, with inflation leading many Americans to turn sour on the Biden-Harris administration’s handling of the economy.
The reluctance of consumers to keep paying more has forced companies to slow their price increases – or even to cut them. The result is a cooling of inflation pressures.
Other factors have also helped tame inflation, including the healing of supply chains, which has boosted the availability of cars, trucks, meats and furniture, among other items, and the high interest rates engineered by the Fed, which slowed sales of homes, cars and appliances and other interest rate-sensitive purchases.
Still, a key question now is whether shoppers will pull back so much as to put the economy at risk. Consumer spending makes up more than two-thirds of economic activity. With evidence emerging that the job market is cooling, a drop in spending could potentially derail the economy. Such fears caused stock prices to plummet a week ago, though markets have since rebounded.
This week, the government will provide updates on both inflation and the health of the American consumer. On Wednesday, it will release the consumer price index for July. It’s expected to show that prices – excluding volatile food and energy costs – rose just 3.2% from a year earlier. That would be down from 3.3% in June and would be the lowest such year-over-year inflation figure since April 2021.
And on Thursday, the government will report last month’s retail sales, which are expected to have climbed a decent 0.3% from June. Such a gain would suggest that while Americans have become vigilant about their money, they are still willing to spend.
Many businesses have noticed.
“We’re seeing lower average selling prices … right now because customers continue to trade down on price when they can,” said Andrew Jassy, CEO of Amazon.
David Gibbs, CEO of Yum Brands, which owns Taco Bell, KFC and Pizza Hut, told investors that a more cost-conscious consumer has slowed its sales, which slipped 1% in the April-June quarter at stores open for at least a year.
“Ensuring we provide consumers affordable options,” Gibbs said, “has been an area of greater focus for us since last year.”
Other companies are cutting prices outright. Dormify, an online retailer that sells dorm supplies, is offering comforters starting at $69, down from $99 a year ago.
According to the Fed’s “Beige Book,” an anecdotal collection of business reports from around the country that is released eight times a year, companies in nearly all 12 Fed districts have described similar experiences.
“Almost every district mentioned retailers discounting items or price-sensitive consumers only purchasing essentials, trading down in quality, buying fewer items or shopping around for the best deals,” the Beige Book said last month.
Most economists say consumers are still spending enough to sustain the economy consistently. Barkin said most of the businesses in his district – which covers Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland and North and South Carolina – report that demand remains solid, at least at the right price.
“The way I’d put it is, consumers are still spending, but they’re choosing,” Barkin said.
In a speech a couple of weeks ago, Jared Bernstein, who leads the Biden administration’s Council of Economic Advisers, mentioned consumer caution as a reason why inflation is nearing the end of a “round trip” back to the Fed’s 2% target level.
Emerging from the pandemic, Bernstein noted, consumers were flush with cash after receiving several rounds of stimulus checks and having slashed their spending on in-person services. Their improved finances “gave certain firms the ability to flex a pricing power that was much less prevalent pre-pandemic.” After COVID, consumers were “less responsive to price increases,” Bernstein said.
As a result, “the old adage that the cure for high prices is high prices (was) temporarily disengaged,” Bernstein said.
So some companies raised prices even more than was needed to cover their higher input costs, thereby boosting their profits. Limited competition in some industries, Bernstein added, made it easier for companies to charge more.
Barkin noted that before the pandemic, inflation remained low as online shopping, which makes price comparisons easy, became increasingly prevalent. Major retailers also held down costs, and increased U.S. oil production brought down gas prices.
“A price increase was so rare,” Barkin said, “that if someone came to you with a 5% or 10% price increase, you almost just threw them out, like, ‘How could you possibly do it?’ ”
That changed in 2021.
“There are labor shortages, Barkin said. “Supply chain shortages. And the price increases are coming to you from everywhere. Your gardener is raising your prices, and you don’t have the capacity to do anything other than accept them.”
The economist Isabella Weber at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, dubbed this phenomenon “sellers’ inflation” in 2023. In an influential paper, she wrote that “publicly reported supply chain bottlenecks” can “create legitimacy for price hikes” and “create acceptance on the part of consumers to pay higher prices.”
Consumers are no longer so accepting, Barkin said.
“People have a little bit more time to stop and say, ‘How do I feel about paying $9.89 for a 12-pack of Diet Coke when I used to pay $5.99?’ They don’t like it that much, and so people are making choices.”
Barkin said he expects this trend to continue to slow price increases and cool inflation.
“I’m actually pretty optimistic that over the next few months, we’re going to see good readings on the inflation side,” he said. “All the elements of inflation seem to be settling down.”
Thank you for the podcast. Very informative. All the rumors of Iran and Hezbollah attacking Israel are just talk and no action. Your podcast just confirmed my feelings that no powder kegs will be lit at this time. The pieces to WWIII are not yet all in place. The USA and Europe will need to be much weaker than they are today and that will come about in the next two years as the Western world gets sicker, poorer, and more reprobate. The rumors of impending war are just a false distraction right now to deflect our attention and to freeze us in fear against taking steps to make ourselves more self sufficient.
Great broadcast Thomas. I enjoyed it very much….do more of them in the future.
Satan has a way of disposing people that are no longer useful to his agenda. Susan Wojcicki oversaw Youtube censorship against those who claimed side effects from the Covid vaccines.
She also promoted the isolation and persecution of those refusing the Covid Vax.
Very interesting that she was diagnosed with this cancer two years ago after the first round of the Covid shots.
A big COVID bioweapon injections promoter was probably unrepentant until her last breath and is most likely now burning in hell. She was a liar who believed the lies and her SoS gig job is done………..
https://x.com/MythinformedMKE/status/1532010327499489284?s=19
Susan Wojcicki, former CEO of YouTube, dead at 56
Former CEO of YouTube Susan Wojcicki. Her husband Dennis Troper posted on Facebook that Wojcicki died of cancer.
•Susan Wojcicki, former YouTube CEO, died at 56 after living with lung cancer.
•Wojcicki led YouTube from 2014 to 2023.
•She is survived by her husband, Dennis Troper, and their children.
Susan Wojcicki, the former CEO of YouTube, died “after two years of living with cancer,” Alphabet CEO Sunder Pichai wrote on X, adding that he was “unbelievably saddened by the loss.” She was 56.
https://www.businessinsider.com/susan-wojcicki-dead-2024-8