What Are Older Office Towers Worth When They Finally Sell amid Record Vacancy Rates? Not Much. Huge Losses Everywhere by Wolf Richter • Apr 8, 2023 • 160 Comments But foreclosure sales are far worse, including a total wipeout of CMBS investors.
New Vehicle Sales in Q1 Jump 11.7%. Inventories Build, But Still Less than Half of 2019. Pent-up Demand at 6 Million Vehicles by Wolf Richter • Apr 5, 2023 • 132 Comments Going to be tough for a recession to gain momentum with this kind of demand-overhang going into it.
San Francisco Office Market Turns into Nightmare, in Two Easy Steps. Step 1: Hogging Office Space; Step 2: Working from Home by Wolf Richter • Apr 4, 2023 • 125 Comments Step 3: The economy… but that step hasn’t happened yet.
Status of US Dollar as Global Reserve Currency and Exchange Rates: Slow Long-Term Decline on Track by Wolf Richter • Apr 2, 2023 • 188 Comments But the Chinese Renminbi didn’t make any progress at all last year.
How 3% Mortgages Altered the Housing Market for Years to Come: A Lot Smaller but More in Balance than it Seems, Hence Dropping Prices Despite Low Inventories by Wolf Richter • Mar 29, 2023 • 279 Comments Lot of demand and supply gone in equal, with no net impact on inventory, but huge impact on sales, commissions, profits, and jobs.
Battle for Deposits: Tired of Getting Screwed by Banks, People Yank their Cash Out, Forcing Banks to Pay Higher Interest Rates. Treasury Yields Are a Mess Though by Wolf Richter • Mar 27, 2023 • 198 Comments That’s how it should have been all along. But the Fed’s interest rate repression killed competition for deposits.
Free Money Turned Brains to Mush, Now Some Banks Fail by Wolf Richter • Mar 25, 2023 • 177 Comments The Fed’s rate hikes and QT didn’t break anything except consensual hallucination.
The Fed Should Be Fired as Bank Regulator. Powell’s Discussion of Silicon Valley Bank & Regulatory Failure Shows Why by Wolf Richter • Mar 24, 2023 • 191 Comments The Fed is structurally too conflicted to regulate banks. The FDIC is not, but it needs tiger teeth to bite CEOs’ heads off.
The Most Splendid Housing Bubbles in Canada: March Update on the Housing Bust by Wolf Richter • Mar 17, 2023 • 209 Comments Year-over-year, home prices plunged by the most on record as the seasonal uptick in prices was far smaller than a year ago.
Defying Pivot-Mongers, ECB Hikes by 50 Basis Points, QT Continues, Explains Tools to Calm a Bank Panic while Fighting Inflation Simultaneously by Wolf Richter • Mar 16, 2023 • 129 Comments A hugely important concept: “There is no trade-off between price stability and financial stability.”
