Yesterday was an abysmal day for the economy and for stocks (notwithstanding Biden’s remarkable Rose Garden victory celebration on the economy while the market was tanking). One overlooked development was the further rise in the 30-year mortgage rates. They’ve climbed above 6% in most markets up from about 2.7% when that near-fascist Donald Trump was in the White House. This has raised interest payments on a 30 year mortgage for a $500,000 house by about $200,000 over the life of the loan. That doesn’t help home sellers or buyers.
2) We Thought Obamacare Was Going to Make Health Insurance More “Affordable”
Did you happen to notice that one of the consumer products that saw a surge in inflation over the last year was…medical insurance which was up 24%?
Hmmm. How could that be? A dozen years ago Barack Obama signed into law the “Affordable Care Act” to permanently lower health insurance costs. And ever since then Congress keeps making the subsidies more generous in order to hold down costs. How’s that working out?
We will say it again: If you think The Affordable Care Act made health care more affordable, you probably are gullible enough to believe the Inflation Reduction Act will lower prices.
3) Chart of the Day - Why You Can’t Trust “The Experts”
Great chart below shows how persistently wrong the economic experts have been on inflation forecasts this past year. And almost all wrong in the same direction. The consensus opinion over the past year was to simply buy into the “transitory” narrative and thus predict steep reductions in the CPI that never happened.
After yesterday’s stock market rout, the Dow lost the last of its gains since Biden’s inauguration. The blue-chip index is basically flat since Jan. 20, 2021. But that’s just the nominal return that is zero. if you factor inflation based on the CPI, it’s down another 12.7%! So this means that with the value of all publicly traded stocks at roughly $48 trillion, investors have lost more than $5 trillion in real wealth and savings under Biden’s presidency. So incomes, paychecks and savings are getting whacked all at once.
By the way, Steve Moore was on Fox’s Hannity Show last night talking about these issues.
5) Will King Charles Become “King Climate Change?”
The environmental left has successfully infiltrated the newsrooms, the schools, Hollywood, the Vatican, the White House and now apparently the British monarchy.
Historian Jenny Hocking says that Charles “makes no bones about” being more political on issues ranging from architecture to the environment. She told the Daily Express: “Many people have been disturbed by the way in which Charles, far more overtly than the Queen, has engaged in political matters.”
Charles has long been known as “an environmentalist king-in-waiting.”
At the COP26 climate conference last year in Scotland, then-Prince Charles warned world leaders that they must adopt a “war-like footing” to deal with climate change. Then last May in Canada, Charles warned that time was "rapidly running out" to deal with climate change. He urged leaders “to address this challenge by working alongside indigenous knowledge-keepers to restore harmony with nature.”
The British monarchy has always been a tool of soft power, both inside and outside Britain. We can only hope that King Charles, after decades in the wings, won’t seize the temptation to parade whatever “woke” views he has before the public. The stability of the monarch, which Elizabeth so enhanced, could easily be jeopardized.
