A red flag in housing echoes one in the used car market.
Following yesterday’s dismal housing starts and building permits prints (which followed an ugly homebuilder sentiment signal), analysts expected US existing home sales to tumble 5.2% MoM in November. In fact, things were worse with a 7.7% MoM plunge (the biggest drop since Feb 22 and the 10th straight monthly decline). This is the biggest YoY drop since Lehman and the longest streak of sales declines since 1999… This disappointing drop in existing home sales happened despite the fact that mortgage rates have now fallen for 5 straight weeks.
The US economy is not looking great at the moment.
This is the sort of engagement that we are told is so important that it’s necessary to put up with a constant stream of abusive vulgarities, obscenities, and blasphemies.
@GENESPLICER: As much as I have tired to ignore you, I’ve watched you year after year worm your way into more relevant streams and comment of much more relevant and viable people in a sad attempt to leech off of them. You are simply a sad poser who cannot unless he leeches onto those who can.
@VOXDAY: You’re lying. Go ahead, name a single person with whom I’ve made any attempt whatsoever to “worm my way in”. You won’t be able to do so. I’m a publisher. As a general rule, people contact me. It’s not the other way around.
@GENESPLICER: You are not worth my time to do so. To assume so mean you think your worth is more than it is. It is simply not for such a casual observation.
Gammas are always going to Gamma. Every single time. They are incapable of doing otherwise; their pattern of behavior is firmly fixed. This is why there is absolutely no point in showing them any mercy, any consideration, or any benefit of the doubt. I had absolutely no doubt that this guy was a liar, or that he would immediately produce some excuse to avoid answering after being called out.
This, of course, is why they are wailing about the Gammacaust. Because they are projecting their own inability to back up their groundless assertions on everyone else.
Anyhow, this should suffice to demonstrate my lack of concern about the potential loss of engagement resulting from Gab’s new comment moderations features.
Free speech is a satanic concept that was developed by anti-christian atheists to attack Christian civilization during the Enlightenment. It is neither a Christian nor a conservative value. You don’t need to take my word for it, though. Read A HISTORY OF THE FREEDOM OF THOUGHT by historian JB Bury, who was a strong proponent of free speech.
That is one of two books I would recommend to read if you would like to understand how we went from Christian civilization to Clown World. The other one is AN AUSTRIAN PERSPECTIVE ON THE HISTORY OF ECONOMIC ANALYSIS by Murray Rothbard. Whereas Bury describes the historical degradation of the anti-blasphemy laws, Rothbard describes the successful centuries-long assault on the anti-usury laws.
“The entire idea of free speech is a farce. It is a lie. It is not real.”
As the campaign winds down with only four days left, MIDNIGHT’S WAR gets a bit… darker. These vampires do not sparkle and they are not, even remotely, the good guys. Don’t forget that you can now add the limited edition hardcover of OUT OF THE SHADOWS to your backing.
UPDATE: The bankruptcy of Aftershock Comics is just a harbinger of the failures that are in the process of sweeping the comics industry. Thanks to the continued support of the backers, Arkhaven Comics continues to grow slowly, and steadily, and anticipates being one of the only survivors. The failure of Aftershock tends to demonstrate that we were a) correct to avoid traditional distribution and b) did well to make the pivot to Arktoons.
Can’t imagine how it could have possibly have failed…
BULLS OF BEACON HILL
The comic follows Doctor Christopher Boldt, a surgeon running for Boston City Council. Unbeknown to the wider public, his father, Orin Paige, is one of Boston’s most notorious gangsters. Until now, Paige had been happy “to deny any connection to his queer son, who he sees as a liability in the mob world. Now, Chris’s political aspirations have put father and son on a collision course.
WITCH HAMMER
Witch. The word conjures images of hags in black robes and crooked hats, standing over cauldrons of bubbling brew. But witches are among us, and we do not realize it. They are our friends and neighbors. They are our family members. They are our idols.
I was reading an old Jerry Pournelle anthology from the 80’s – the first Imperial Stars book – one that could be characterized as There Will Be Government in Space, when I was struck by a remarkable passage, the significance of which had eluded me in previous readings, from the concluding essay by Dr. Pournelle entitled The Stars at War.
Military establishments, ours among them, have always been inefficient, and better organized for the last war than the next. If we wait for perfection, we may well wait forever.
Thus three facts stand out:
The Soviets have an enormous military establishment, and we are not going to match it tank for tank and gun for gun.
Our present course of buying some of this and some of that, more tanks here and more planes there, isn’t an adequate, or indeed reasonable, response to the threat, and “reform of the Pentagon” and other efforts to “trim the fat and reduce waste” aren’t likely to succeed very quickly, if at all.
We have to do something and soon.
This reasoning was the starting point for Lt. General Daniel O. Graham’s strategic analysis. If what we’re doing isn’t going to work, and we have to do something, where can we go? Graham concluded that we needed a bold new approach, a strategic sidestep; that we had to stop competing with the Soviets in areas in which we can’t win, and begin to compete where we have the advantage.
The Stars at War, Jerry Pournelle, 1986
In other words, 13 years before the two Chinese colonels published Unrestricted Warfare, Jerry Pournelle was already writing about a US general’s strategic analysis that essentially laid the foundation for the Chinese defeat of the US military.
Because this is the essence of the asymetric strategy that underlies the decades-long Chinese implementation of unrestricted warfare: stop competing with the Soviets in areas in which we can’t win, and begin to compete where we have the advantage.
That’s exactly what the Chinese have been doing since 1999. This is perhaps the most important material difference between China and Clown World. China pays close attention to the best minds of the East and the best minds of the West. Clown World ignores the best of the East and attempts to silence the best of the West.
There are serious warning signals coming from a variety of markets, including the used-car loan market.
Every Friday I conduct a team meeting to recap our week.
This morning, one of our General Managers opened up DealerTrack — a portal that dealers use to communicate with auto lenders — and highlighted something very concerning: 9 of our lending partners have started WAIVING “open auto stipulations” for consumers.
Wait, wtf does that even mean? Let me explain using a simple, hypothetical scenario:
1) Consumer takes out an auto loan in 2020/2021 on an overvalued car 2) 2022 comes around and that overvalued car is now rapidly declining in value 3) With the car declining in value, consumer now owes more on the car than it is worth 4) Consumer no longer wants the car. Maybe they outgrew it. Or maybe it keeps breaking. So consumer wants to trade it in. 5) But dealer can’t trade the car in because the consumer owes WAY too much on it. So dealer asks consumer for lots of money down to cover the difference. 6) But of course, the consumer doesn’t have $1,000s to cover the difference between what they owe on the car and what it’s worth. And here comes the perfect storm… 7) Dealer can’t sell consumer a car, consumer can’t buy a car, and, you guessed it, lender can’t finance a car! Everybody loses! Oh no! So what happens next? 8) Lender knows that most consumers are stuck in this situation, and does the following:
WAIVES THE OPEN AUTO STIPULATION.
Meaning, the lender lets the consumer buy the car KNOWING that they already have an open auto loan with another bank!
It’s becoming apparent that 2023 has the potential to be worse than 2008. How much worse, we will have to wait and see. In the meantime, it’s a very good idea to be prepared to lower your standard of living and focus your spending on a) things you really need, b) things that will last, and c) things that provide high value for the money.
Live well within your means and you’ll be all right. This is not the time to live a champagne lifestyle on a discount beer budget.
There is a bit of a historical Easter egg in today’s HOW TO SUCCEED. A free ebook to the first person who can correctly identify what it is. Hint: it’s also in the previous two episodes.
Earlier today, I was accused of considering myself to be “a thought leader”. Let me hasten to make it clear that I do not consider myself a thought leader, nor do I even believe it is possible for me to become a thought leader. Over the last five decades, I have reliably observed that most people are constitutionally incapable of following my thought processes for various reasons that are usually, though not necessarily, related to the Bell Curve.
Communication is very difficult across two standard deviations, which is why most “thought leaders” are, by necessity, midwits. I’m not a thought leader because I’m one of the various individuals that the thought leaders read in order to formulate their thoughts.
As I have said many times, I don’t expect you to agree with me. I don’t even expect you to understand.
