Daily Archives: March 20, 2021

The housing boom unleashed by the Federal Reserve during the virus pandemic was built on historically low mortgage rates, low inventory, city-dwellers moving to rural areas, and remote-work phenomenon. Housing prices in all 20 major US cities have been rising at the fastest pace since 2014. A red hot market has lured house flippers who are pocketing record profits.   Research firm Attom Data Solutions’ latest note specifies homes flipped in 2020 generated a gross profit of $66,300 nationwide (the difference between the median sales price and the median amount initially paid by investors). 2020’s gross profits were up 6.6% from a year earlier and […]

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com, The Taliban warned the US on Friday that there would be a “reaction” if President Biden failed to withdraw from Afghanistan by the May 1st deadline set by the US-Taliban peace deal signed in Doha last year. The comments were made from Moscow, where the warring sides met to discuss the peace process. “They should go,” said Suhail Shaheen, a member of the Taliban’s negotiation team. He warned if the US stayed beyond May 1st, it would be a violation of the Doha agreement. “After that, it will be a kind of violation of the agreement. That […]

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News, FBI crime statistics debunk the media’s narrative that white people represent the biggest violent crime threat to Asians, with figures showing whites significantly underrepresented in crime stats compared to their per capita population. Since the killing of six Asian women who worked in massage parlors in Atlanta, the media has amplified the false narrative that “white supremacy” is to blame. They hyped this explanation despite the fact that the attack had nothing whatsoever to do with race and despite two white women also being killed during the shooting. Despite admitting the attack had […]

After a year-long exodus of residents, San Francisco begins to see people returning as the economy gradually reopens. The folks who are moving back are taking advantage of deeply discounted rents and high concessions offered by landlords desperate for new tenants.  The return of people to the metro area should not be viewed as recovery as deep economic scarring, caused mainly by government public health orders, has resulted in the decimation of small and medium-sized enterprises. Also, remote-work turbocharged the exodus from the metro area as many people moved to suburbia or out of state. The result is soaring vacancies putting downward […]

As was forewarned and expected, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and local organizers of the Tokyo Olympics have reached a final decision on the admittance of foreign spectators to the games, ruling that outside travelers will be barred from attending the summer games.  “In order to give clarity to ticket holders living overseas and to enable them to adjust their travel plans at this stage, the parties on the Japanese side have come to the conclusion that they will not be able to enter into Japan at the time of the Olympic and Paralympic Games,” the Tokyo organizing committee announced in a statement Saturday. […]

Authored by Jonathan Turley, There is an extraordinary case out of British Columbia where a father referenced as CD was arrested after he continued to refer to his biological 14-year-old daughter (known as AB) as “she” and his “daughter” after he transitioned to a male gender.  The Supreme Court of British Columbia, Canada ordered that the child receive testosterone injections without obtaining parental consent. CD opposed the transition as the parent but he was overruled after physicians at BC Children’s Hospital who decided the girl should receive testosterone injections. The father continued to defy gag orders, including a bar on his trying to persuade […]

By John Kingston of FreightWaves, Commodity diesel prices fell Thursday by an amount seen only a handful of times since 2000.  The decline, coming on top of downward moves in the price of ultra low sulfur diesel on the CME commodity exchange earlier in the week, raises the strong prospect that the record 19-week run of increases in the weekly Department of Energy/Energy Information Administration diesel price has likely run its course.  Ultra low sulfur diesel on the CME declined 12.19 cents a gallon Thursday to settle at $1.7842 a gallon. However, the 6.4% decline in ULSD was less than the […]

Biden’s migrant crisis along the southern US border has reached epic proportions. As we reported on Thursday, not long after Biden said he would “reverse Trump’s immigration policies” and vowed to give illegal aliens “a pathway to citizenship”, the ensuing chaos at the border has resulted in over 13,000 unaccompanied migrant children detained in federal custody (a third of whom have been sitting in the same ‘cages’ built by the Obama-Biden administration) and 3,000 of whom have been held beyond the 72-hour legal limit. In a desperate attempt to ease the crisis, Biden did a complete U-turn and told migrants to […]

Thousands, and possibly tens-of-thousands of protesters across Europe marched on Saturday against continued government lockdowns and other pandemic restrictions based on questionable science – which have resulted in mass unemployment, destroyed small businesses, stoked widespread depression and mental illness, and cost taxpayers trillions to keep the whole ship from sinking. Protesters in London, Germany, France, Sweden, The Netherlands, Australia, Belgium, Japan, Vienna and elsewhere came out for the Worldwide Rally for Freedom. Photo via PA In central London, thousands of anti-lockdown activists were seen walking through Hyde Park, chanting “stand up, take our freedom back!“ This is by far the BIGGEST […]

On Friday, Bank of America’s also controversial CIO Michael Hartnett prompted the usual firestorm of confused reactions across Wall Street when he concluded that the “uber-dovish” Fed had backfired and that vigilantes were now bullying Powell into Yield Curve Control (which he predicted would kick in once the 5Y yield surpassed 1.25%), and also shared three strategies on how to trade this. It turns out Hartnett is not alone in assessing that the Fed has been bullied by the bond vigilantes: in a note from Deutsche Bank’s Alan Ruskin titled “10 reasons for Fed not to fight the bond market”, the […]

“Working from home” or at least some sort of the “hybrid” work model (a combination of work-at-home and office) could be the “new normal,” according to a new study of Manhattan’s largest employers.  Despite COVID-19 vaccine rollouts and virus-related infections, hospitalizations, and deaths declining in recent months, the Partnership for New York City released a survey this week that found 22% of Manhattan’s most prominent employers would require workers to return to the office on a full-time basis.  About 66% of respondents said they would adopt a hybrid work model, where employees will bounce between home and office during the workweek. 9% of […]

A New York Supreme Court Judge last week excoriated the New York Times used “reckless disregard” and “acted with actual malice” when two of their reporters deceptively presented opinions as fact in several articles denigrating whistleblower organization Project Veritas. What the Times did, as you’ll see below, is similar to countless hit-pieces against Zero Hedge and others; using broad, unsupported brush strokes to slander their ideological opponents. We can only hope this case sets new precedent for future defamation cases. *  *  * As The Epoch Times’ Zachary Stieber reports in detail (emphasis ours), writers for the New York Times may […]

Authored by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com, Is hyperinflation a threat? While I was on vacation this past week, I got into a discussion on the issue. This is how capitalism will end in the US Same way it ended in Germany. pic.twitter.com/m3imOQJGDz — HousePriceMania (@HousePriceMania) March 18, 2021 While the discussion ebbed between a broken financial system and capitalism’s failure, the gist was hyperinflation was coming. The measure of money in the system, known as M2, is skyrocketing, which certainly supports his concern. Now, with the Biden administration adding another $1.9 trillion into the economy, those concerns have risen. In a recent […]

Humanity has been battling against disease for centuries. And while most contagious outbreaks have never reached full-blown pandemic status, Visual Capitalist’s Carmen Ang notes that there have been several times throughout history when a disease has caused mass devastation. Here’s a look at the world’s deadliest pandemics to date, viewed from the lens of the impact they had on the global population at the time. Editor’s note: The above graphic was created in response to a popular request from users after viewing our popular history of pandemics infographic initially released a year ago. Death Toll, by Percent of Population In the mid-1300s, a […]

Antitrust probes into Facebook appear to be increasing on both sides of the Atlantic.  Earlier this week, Rep. Ken Buck, the top Republican on the House Judiciary antitrust subcommittee, said during an antitrust hearing that “Apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon have reached monopoly status, and their behavior won’t change until Congress acts, the enforcement agencies do their job, and the courts move quickly to rein in their predatory conduct.”  On Friday, sources told FT that the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is preparing an antitrust investigation into Facebook within the coming months, which is the latest crackdown on Silicon Valley’s big tech […]

While a powerful 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Ishinomaki, Japan, a city located just 65 miles from Fukushima, on Saturday, there was a more notable volcanic eruption in southwestern Iceland near the capital Reykjavik on Friday night.  In recent weeks, we published two notes (see: here & here) informing readers about the more than 34,000 quakes that have been recorded on the Reykjanes Peninsula in recent weeks. On Mar. 4, we wrote: such “quake activity has previously preceded volcanic eruptions.” By Mar. 14, the quakes worsened as the country was put on “high alert” for the next volcanic eruption.  About five days […]