Category Fascism

Jan 5 2022

Hong Kong Banishes All Independent News Outlets


Armstrong economics Blog/Hong Kong Re-Posted Jan 5, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam has completely surrendered to Beijing after condoning the shutdown of Hong Kong’s last independent news outlet. Hong Kong police raided the Citizen News building on Sunday, seized all records, and arrested several board members and editors for conspiracy and sedition. Stand News and Apple Daily suffered the same fate for allegedly inciting hate and promoting fake news.

“Seditious acts and activities and inciting other people through public acts and activities could not be condoned under the guise of news reporting,” Carrie Lam said. “These actions are law enforcement actions. These actions have nothing to do with ‘suppression of press freedom’ or ‘suppression of democracy,’ as some will put it.” Lam went on to use the age-old excuse of “national security” being at risk as the truth would lead to civil unrest.

The people of Hong Kong no longer have access to independent news sources. The government has made it clear that anyone attempting to report the honest news will become an enemy of the state who is too dangerous to exist among society. The people of Hong Kong warned us in 2019 that if this tyranny happened there, it could happen anywhere.

Jan 5 2022

Stew Peters Interviews Dr Robert Malone About Current Data and Vaccine Protocols


Posted Originally on the conservative tree house on January 5, 2022 | Sundance | 26 Comments

Stew Peters interviews Dr. Robert Malone about the latest data and vaccine protocols.  It’s a lengthy interview, but overall good discussion to add to your reference points.  {Direct Rumble Link Here}

Jan 5 2022

Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy Says CDC Quarantine Change to Negative Test for Exit Likely to Happen Soon


Posted Originally on the conservative tree house on January 4, 2022 | Sundance | 346 Comments

I’ll get into a little detail about why this CDC change, if implemented, will only speed up the economic crisis we are about to enter.  [However, don’t share that aspect with anyone other than those closest to you.]  First, the change being discussed…

Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, the husband of a very sketchy Chinese communist party shadow official that no one ever discusses, told CNN today the CDC is likely to revise the quarantine guidance to include a negative test for COVID before exit.

(Via Daily Mail) – The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is expected to further change its recommendations for Americans diagnosed with COVID-19, potentially requiring a negative test to leave isolation before ten days.

Last week, the agency shortened its recommended isolation period from 10 days to five days for people who have minimal Covid symptoms. The move drew criticism from experts who said a negative test should’ve been included.

Surgeon General Dr Vivek Murthy said that the CDC is working to further revise the isolation guidance, telling CNN on Tuesday that he expects a clarification ‘any day now.’

‘What they’re trying to do – and it’s important to say more broadly – is recognize and incorporate both the evolving science on Omicron and on prior variants in terms of how long somebody remains contagious, with the critical need to maintain essential services,’ Murthy told CNN.

‘I believe that there will be a role for antigen testing here to help reduce risk as well,’ he said. The further-updated guidance could impact millions of Americans, as the country reports record case numbers during the Omicron surge. (read more)

Here’s why this is going to be exponentially more problematic ,and be cautious who you tell about this.

First, imagine the impact to the U.S. industrial and service economy when workers who have ordinary colds and sniffles are now taking five days off work, and cannot come back until they test negative for the cold/flu virus.   That’s what the CDC was trying to avoid when the original guidance was modified.

If essential workers with ordinary sniffles, sneezes, coughs, stuffy-heads and general aches and pains do not come to work because these are Omicron symptoms, the U.S. economy is going to be in staggeringly big trouble at a macro and micro level.

Add to that an inflated and ‘blown out of proportion‘ reaction to the seasonal cold with a demand for a negative test, and there are limited to zero tests readily available, and it is not hard to see what happens to business operations throughout the country.  Already existing shortages of workers, products and services only gets worse…. exponentially worse.

Production stops.  Manufacturing slows…  end products get less.  Transporation, warehousing and distribution (the logistics aspect) gets hit with the boxcar effect again.  Quickly, store shelves get bare, and products become scarce.   The supply chain issues that already exist only get worse, much worse.

Some businesses then have to close.  Those employees that could work, then can’t.  The downstream consequence from a disrupted workforce will make the supply chain issues of 2020 look like a mere hiccup compared to what’s coming.

Food distribution is a complex system of logistics, warehousing, transportation, delivery and preparation.   There are two macro sectors: “food at home” (grocery stores etc), and “food away from home” (restaurants etc.)  In 2020, the country learned how interconnected the supply chain is when 50% of the possible food distribution (restaurants, cafeterias etc) was turned off.

Within days of turning off restaurants, the other side of the food supply chain was overwhelmed, and that shock to the system lasted for several months.   Most people don’t know that the supply chain is still dealing with the downstream consequences.  Grain silos were wiped out as manufacturers demanded more raw material to process.  Ingredients like citric acid, flavorings, and preservatives have still not recovered (go look for flavored sports drinks).

Pet food manufacturers were lowered in priority for distribution of raw material, and that raw material comes at a much higher price.  The pet food sector is still less than 50% recovered from where it was before the restaurants were shut down in early 2020.  That’s how long this impact has lasted.

People just do not know how the U.S. food supply system operates on massive storage systems for bulk products to smooth out the seasonal fluctuations for food commodities.   It is a very complex system to deliver fresh products (produce, fish, meats) and simultaneously organize, store and distribute, the raw materials for things like flour, bread, cereals, soups, and frozen foods.

Trust me, if everyone decided to eat only fresh foods starting tomorrow, there would be fist fights in the supermarket, because there’s not enough of that fresh stuff to feed all of America.  We need, heck we rely upon, processed foods, manufactured foods, shelf stable and refrigerated/frozen stable foods, in order to fulfill the total caloric needs of 350,000,000 people.

This grocery store supply chain has never recovered from the mistake of closing 50% of food distribution in 2020.  CTH warned at the time what would happen, and it did.  We then watched the predictable five phases of impact show up.

If you remember the shortages of products and services in 2020, you have a baseline for what is about to happen in two weeks.  This next round is going to be worse.  Last year’s grain harvest is already almost gone.  Most of the next round of harvests cannot start for months.  The food storage our supply chain depends upon to smooth out seasonality is nearly exhausted, and the inbound prices show the scarcity.

It’s not one thing; it’s a multitude of things.  However, add on top of that a major employment disruption with quarantines and tests, and, well, you can see where this is heading.   The service sectors like hospitality, hotels, restaurants and home services will be stretched very thin.

Prepare for your family accordingly.

Secure yourselves for coming shortages.  Don’t forget your pets.  The window to be ahead of the zombie swarm is now down to around 15 days.

Jan 5 2022

President Trump Cancels January 6th Mar-a-Lago Presser


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on January 4, 2022 | Sundance | 206 Comments

Smart move, following his instincts.  President Trump was scheduled to deliver press remarks on January 6th, earlier today he cancelled them.

Given the continued effort by the DC political establishment, the intelligence branch, corrupt officials, Lawfare aides and the media stenographers writ large, to exploit the J6 events for mid-term political interests, it makes sense to allow them to suck their own oxygen.

WH Occupant Joe Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Attorney General Merrick Garland, and likely a host of more credible Sesame Street costumed characters, are all scheduled to deliver a performance in DC to commemorate the solemn anniversary of the most cataclysmic threat to our nation’s Republic in the history of mankind.

Adam Kinzinger and both Liz Cheneys, including the one with the eye patch, will likely be in attendance for the grand pantomime.

Jan 5 2022

Biden Administration Claims About California Port Productivity Improvements are False


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on January 4, 2022 | Sundance | 75 Comments

[REPOST by request with note: We will get the December data in about a week from now]

You might remember: October 13, 2021, Joe Biden delivered widely carried remarks about specific actions his administration was taking to increase operations at the Port of Los Angeles (POLA) and the Port of Long Beach (POLB).

Here we take a closer look at the claims since the original announcement, and then highlight the actual results from the ports.  The port operations are actually doing worse today than they were in October. They are less efficient, less productive and have handled less freight in November than they did in October.  The factual results are exactly the opposite of the administration claims.

The October 13, 2021, White House fact sheet is HERE, “announcing a series of public and private commitments to move more goods faster, and strengthen the resiliency of our supply chains, by moving towards 24/7 operations at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.”  On November 17, 2021, the White House gave an update, “Recent Progress at Our Ports: Moving Cargo and Filling Shelves” and claiming the increased hours of operations were delivering on the White House expectations of increased productivity and offloading capacity.

Throughout these past 11 weeks, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and Transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg have been claiming their supply chain task force has been successful in generating exceptional results. They claimed changing the hours of operations increased the port capacity, specifically targeting the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.  However, if we look at the actual records from both ports, we find exactly the opposite:

Ports record their data in 20-foot equivalent units, or TEU’s.  The Port of Los Angeles data shows they handled 468,713 import containers in October, and 405,309 in November.  That’s a decrease of 63,404 import containers from the prior month. [DATA LINK]

The Port of Los Angeles is the largest port of the two.  The POLA also showed a decrease in Total TEU’s handled (import and export).  As you can see above, the total TEU’s handled in October was 902,643.  The total TEU’s handled in November was 811,459.

That’s a decrease of 91,184 total containers handled.  This is the exact opposite of what Biden, Harris and Buttigieg are claiming.

♦ Next, we look at the Port of Long Beach (POLB).  [DATA HERE]

Again, we note the Total Loaded containers (carrying cargo) in October 2021, the month of the White House announcement, was 507, 214.   In the full month of November 2021, the total of loaded containers handled was 472,215.   That’s a decrease of 34,999 containers.

.

There is a disconnect between what the White House, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg are saying, and the actual results of what is taking place at the Port of Long Beach and Port of Los Angeles.  They claim hours of operation have expanded to increase capacity, yet fewer containers are being handled?

Perhaps the administration did not expect anyone to check when they claimed on November 29th:

“The Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach—which handle 40 percent of the country’s containerized imports—continue to show improvement in moving containers out of the docks and into warehouses.”  [White House link]

Despite what the White House Supply Chain Disruption Taskforce is claiming, the actual records from the ports do not concur.  Someone is clearly lying, and/or not expecting anyone to check.

There’s a strong possibility they did not expect anyone to notice, because part of their logistical scheme involved telling the ship operators to wait further offshore so that it would give the illusion of less congestion near port:

CALIFORNIA – […] “Starting Nov. 16, ships waiting to anchor at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach will have to wait for a green light about 150 miles from the coast, the Pacific Merchant Shipping Assn., the Pacific Maritime Assn. and the Marine Exchange of Southern California said in a statement Thursday. That compares with 20 nautical miles (23 miles) now. North- and southbound vessels must remain more than 50 miles from the state’s coastline.” (read more)

Apparently, what the White House taskforce did was to move the line of awaiting cargo ships further offshore to make them less visible.  Then, it appears, the White House just started making up talking points about productivity at the ports increasing and capacities expanding; neither claim is based on facts that surface in the actual operations of the ports.

The outcomes speak for themselves.  Both the Port of Los Angeles and Port of Long Beach handled less cargo and fewer containers in the first full month of the “new expanded operations” than they did in the previous month when the expanded operations were announced.

In order to remind ourselves how big an issue this was for the White House, watch the Biden announcement from October 13, 2021, again.

It looks like the media need to start asking questions….

Oh wait, never mind.

Jan 5 2022

Another 370,000 Workers Quit in November, Total Quits Rate Now 4.5 Million


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on January 4, 2022 | Sundance | 378 Comments

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released the November job openings and turnover data today [DATA HERE] showing 370,000 workers quit their jobs in November bringing the quits rate now to 4.5 million people.

From the report, “Quits increased in several industries with the largest increases in accommodation and food services (+159,000); health care and social assistance (+52,000); and transportation, warehousing, and utilities (+33,000).”

Over the 12 months ending in November 2021, hires totaled 74.5 million and separations totaled 68.7 million, yielding a net employment gain of 5.9 million for 2021. However, while the unemployment rate drops with fewer people working, the employment picture overall appears to be tenuous.

The FRED personal savings rate for Americans overall [DATA HERE] has been dropping rapidly since March 2021, the last federal COVID employment bailout injection. All of the federal assistance has created massive data skews in the savings rate, as federal subsidies gave an artificial boost to the U.S. savings rate.

It appears that the aggregate American worker is now using their savings, created by COVID bailouts, to offset the massive inflation created by the COVID bailouts.  The net result is a workforce going into negative savings each month as inflation driven expenses (energy, fuel, food) are higher than earnings.  This is an unsustainable situation.

There is obviously a large retirement factor in the quits rate; however, it does appear the vaccination mandate is also a major influence. Additionally, when talking about people living paycheck-to-paycheck, rapid inflation almost always causes job-jumping for workers to get higher wages.

According to the BLS data, in November the job openings rate decreased in small establishments with 10-49 employees. This could be due to employees returning to small business, and/or there are fewer small businesses around to be hiring.

The hires rate rate increased in very large employers with 5,000 or more employees. However, the quits rate increased in both small businesses with 1-9 employees and in medium-sized businesses (1,000 to 4,999 employees). The I9 contracted workers are also leaving small and mid-size employers.

Then comes a significant aspect, “both the layoffs and discharges rate -and the total separations rate- increased in the larger establishments with 1,000 to 4,999 employees.” This could indicate mid-sized businesses are starting to see contractions in sales or demand and lowering their payrolls. This outlook would match the productivity drops we noted last month.

(DECEMBER CTH) – “The value of all products and services generated increased by 1.8 percent.  However, the labor cost of generating that small amount of added value increased by 7.4 percent.  The difference between those two numbers is a drop in productivity of 5.2% over the entire quarter.

This is the largest quarterly drop in productivity since 1960 !

The Biden administration will blame the drop in productivity on a lack of material to produce the end product (ie. the COVID excuse).  Which means employed people were sitting around waiting for goods to arrive and being less productive.   There is a small amount of that which might be true.  However, it is not the biggest factor, at least not on this scale.  Keep in mind we are talking about both goods and services.

The more likely cause of such a massive decline in productivity is a genuine decline in demand.  In the aggregate, consumers needed less goods and services.  This likelihood aligns with the diminished and softened retail sales figures recently noted.   It is a simple cause and effect.  When gasoline, energy, and essential products like food cost more, consumers have less money for other stuff.  Demand for the non-essential products drop.” (more)

When we look at the macro picture, things look a lot clearer than the financial pundits talk about.

After the March 2021 peak of savings rate (massive fed spending bill), sometime around June of 2021, the U.S. economy overall started to jam up.  In May of 2021 the first round of massive inflation started, what the Fed and White House called “transitional”, but we noted it wasn’t.

Then, new home housing starts, and contracts for new homes yet to be built suddenly stopped; while at the same time (June/July 2021) new permits for construction dropped.  From that moment forward prices for food, fuel and energy related products started a massive upward spike.  Despite the Fed and administration “transitional” talking points, the prices continued to climb and inflation was growing month over month.

The middle class and working class started to really feel the inflationary pain in the second half of 2021.  It was not the Delta variant driving this economic pain, it was inflation and the collapse of disposable incomes.  By the time we go to November 2021, suddenly the low employment gains shocked the financial pundits.  A few weeks later, we saw sales data from November go down, and retail hiring for the holiday season was non-existent.

Take a look at the timeline in hindsight. At exactly the wrong time last year, September 2021, Joe Biden mandated vaccination for all U.S. workers.   The economic data was sending signals that things were tenuous, but no one was paying attention.  The already tenuous economy and labor pool (economists ignoring) was hit with an ultimatum of forced vaccination or get fired.

It’s not a single factor leading to this quits rate data.  As you can see, there is a snowball effect inside the data.   Wages earned, including any pay raises, have been chewed up by much higher inflation.   When we look back upon this economy in a year, I am quite certain we will identify the inflection point as June of 2021.  That’s when things peaked and started to go down.

Keep in mind, inflation has a big impact on job turnover.  When people feel inflation, they look for pay raises.  Larger employers are slower to respond to pay raises driven by worker needs, and many have very structured pay raise guidance.

Ex. if a worker needs a raise (immediate inflation driven), and the boss or organization is less responsive (structured pay raise schedule or performance review), the worker can get a faster pay raise by quitting their employer and going to work at a higher entry wage rate with another firm.   If the job market is tight, the worker can make much more doing this.  This is called job-jumping.  In my opinion, this is a big factor right now.

So, what does the labor market look like in your town?  What is going on in/around your community and local economy?   Are you seeing a drop in spending habits overall for the people around you?   The workforce hunkering down, forced to spend savings to survive and dealing with massive rising costs, will ultimately lead to less employment.

What do you see around you?

Jan 4 2022

MASS FORMATION PSYCHOSIS


or… mass hypnosis- the madness of crowds

As many of you know, I have spent time researching and speaking about mass psychosis theory. Most of what I have learned has come from Dr. Mattias Desmet, who realized that this form of mass hypnosis, of the madness of crowds, can account for the strange phenomenon of about 20-30% of the population in the western world becoming entranced with the Noble Lies and dominant narrative concerning the safety and effectiveness of the genetic vaccines, and both propagated and enforced by politicians, science bureaucrats, pharmaceutical companies and legacy media.

What one observes with the mass hypnosis is that a large fraction of the population is completely unable to process new scientific data and facts demonstrating that they have been misled about the effectiveness and adverse impacts of mandatory mask use, lockdowns, and genetic vaccines that cause people’s bodies to make large amounts of biologically active coronavirus Spike protein.

These hypnotized by this process are unable to recognize the lies and misrepresentations they are being bombarded with on a daily basis, and actively attack anyone who has the temerity to share information with them which contradicts the propaganda that they have come to embrace. And for those whose families and social networks have been torn apart by this process, and who find that close relatives and friends have ghosted them because they question the officially endorsed “truth” and are actually following the scientific literature, this can be a source of deep anguish, sorrow and psychological pain.

It is with those souls in mind that I included a discussion of the mass formation theory of Dr. Mattias Desmet during a recent talk I gave in Tampa, Florida to an audience of about 2,000.  As I looked out into the audience and spoke, I could see relief on many faces, and even tears running from the eyes of stoic men.

Unknown to me, someone recorded the speech and appended the vocal track to a series of calming images of natural landscapes, producing a video that has gone viral throughout the world.  A link to the video, as well as some notes to clarify and supplement the talk are appended below. Many have told me that they find it very healing.  I hope it may help you also.

A brief overview of Mass Formation, which was developed by Dr. Mattias Desmet. He is a psychologist and a statistician. He is at the University of Ghent in Belgium.  I think Dr. Mattias is onto something about what is happening and he calls this phenomena:

MASS FORMATION PSYCHOSIS

So, when he says “mass” formation, you can think of this as equivalent to “crowd” formation. One can think of this as:

CROWD PSYCHOSIS

The conditions to set up mass formation psychosis include lack of social connectedness and sensemaking as well as large amounts of latent anxiety and passive aggression. When people are inundated with a narrative that presents a plausible “object of anxiety” and strategy for coping with it, then many individuals group together to battle the object with a collective singlemindedness. This allows people to stop focusing on their own problems, avoiding personal mental anguish. Instead, they focus all their thought and energy on this new object.

As mass formation progresses, the group becomes increasingly bonded and connected. Their field of attention is narrowed and they become unable to consider alternative points of view.  Leaders of the movement are revered, unable to do no wrong. 

Left unabated, a society under the spell of mass formation will support a totalitarian governance structure capable of otherwise unthinkable atrocities in order to maintain compliance. A note: mass formation is different from group think. There are easy ways to fix group think by just bringing in dissenting voices and making sure you give them platforms.  It isn’t so easy with mass formation.  Even when the narrative falls apart, cracks in the strategy clearly aren’t solving the issue, the hypnotized crowd can’t break free of the narrative.  This is what appears to be happening now with COVID-19.  The solution for those in control of the narrative is to produce bigger and bigger lies to prop up the solution.  Those being controlled by mass formation no longer are able to use reason to break free of the group narrative.

Of course, the obvious example of mass formation is Germany in the 1930s and 40s. How could the German people who were highly educated, very liberal in the classic sense; western thinking people… how could they go so crazy and do what they did to the Jews? How could this happen?
To a civilized people?  A leader of a mass formation movement will use the platform to continue to pump the group with new information to focus on.  In the case of COVID-19, I like to use the term “fear porn.”  Leaders, through main stream media and government channels continuously  feed the “beast” with more messaging that focus and further hypnotize their adherents.

Studies suggest that mass formation follows a general distribution:

  • 30% are brainwashed, hypnotized, indoctrinated by the group narrative
  • 40% in the middle are persuadable and may follow if no worthy alternative is perceived
  • 30% fight against the narrative.

Those that rebel and fight against the narrative, become the enemy of the brainwashed and a primary target of aggression.

One of the the best ways to counter mass formation is for those against the narrative to continue to speak out against it, which serves to help break the hypnosis of some in the brainwashed group as well as persuade the persuadable middle to choose reason over mindlessness.

Dr. Desmet suggests that for something as big as COVID-19, the only way to break the mass formation psychosis is to give the crowd something bigger to focus on.  He believes that totalitarianism may be that bigger issue.  Of course, after COVID-19, global totalitarianism may be the biggest issue of our time.  

Copyright © 2021, Robert W. Malone, MD, MS
Permission is hereby granted to reproduce this work in its entirety and with author acknowledgement.

Jan 4 2022

Trudeau Dehumanizes the Unvaccinated Population


Armstrong Economics Blog/Tyranny Re-Posted Jan 4, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has chosen to completely dehumanize those who are failing to comply with the agenda. After explaining his disgust for those who have not taken the mRNA vaccine, Trudeau declared that these people are “often racist and misogynistic extremists.”

Is this you, Mr. Trudeau?

His hatred for the unvaccinated reached a horrifying height when he questioned whether Canada should “tolerate these people” any longer. He no longer views them as his fellow man but as a hated enemy. The man responsible for leading the nation continued by saying that “a small group of the population” was essentially “taking up space.” Trudeau blurted out what many world leaders wish they could say – the war against the unvaccinated is on.

Comparisons to Nazi Germany are frequent and often exaggerated examples, but what Trudeau is saying aligns with the Nazi propaganda to dehumanize Jews to transform them into something sub-human in the public eye. The pandemic would be over if not for the unvaccinated, or as they lied in Nazi Germany, the economy would be better if not for the Jews.

“The goal of Nazi propaganda was to demonize Jews and to create a climate of hostility and indifference toward their plight,” the United States Holocaust Museum cited. Although they are not exterminating the unvaccinated, governments around the world have ruled that people who are unvaccinated can no longer be a part of society. The “small group of the population” that is “taking up space” can no longer travel, visit public places, or start or maintain a successful small business.

The United States Holocaust Museum created the following video that discusses the horrors of how Jews went “From Citizens to Outcasts”:

Jan 4 2022

Did You Have Omicron Over Christmas?


Armstrong Economics Blog/Disease Re-Posted Jan 4, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

Comment: The wife and I came down with om-moron-icron over Christmas, kids were fine. The family acted like it was a death sentence as we are a no vaccine home. Brother who lives three states south thought we were irresponsible for not having the shot and lectured me all year. Low and behold he and his family also came down with omicron. Everyone was sick but it was like having a flu and EVERYONE WAS FINE. My brother had to catch covid to believe me after all.

Reply: I have heard countless stories similar to yours. We are in the midst of flu season as well, despite that being shrouded in secrecy as if this isn’t the time of year that people cyclically fall ill. I personally know numerous people and households who contracted the new variant over the holiday season. Yes, many were vaccinated like your brother. But, as you noted, they were completely fine after a week or so. I understand people have died of COVID, but people also die from the flu and other viral infections too.

Omicron seems to be more contagious but less severe than other strains, and that was not a factor that the powers that be considered. More and more people are directly contracting COVID, surviving, and realizing, “Hey, that wasn’t so bad!” Additionally, now they have antibodies that are far superior to the vaccine. If they didn’t before, people will now realize that shutting down the world was utterly unnecessary. “Why did I willingly stay home for months, pull my kids out of school, shut down my small business, ruin my finances, subject myself to an unknown vaccine?” The list of questions is bound to appear in anyone’s mind who is still capable of critical thinking. Once the cognitive dissonance passes, people will be enraged that they lost years of their life for no valid reason

Jan 4 2022

Mortgage Lenders Provided a Record $1.61 Trillion in 2021


Armstrong Economics Blog/Real Estate Re-Posted Jan 4, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

The post-pandemic real estate frenzy led to mortgage lenders issuing more money last year than ever before. According to records, mortgage lenders in the US issued $1.6 trillion in purchase loans in 2021, an increase from $1.48 trillion in 2020. The only time mortgage loans came close to this level was in 2005, when lenders issued $1.51 trillion in loans.

Refinances declined to $2.3 trillion in 2021 from $2.6 trillion in 2020. Total originations also fell from their 2020 peak of $4.1 trillion to $3.9 trillion, with many homeowners already taking advantage of low rates. The markets are anticipating three rate hikes from the Federal Reserve this year, which would cause an increase in mortgage rates.

Mortgages are low, but home prices are at an all-time high as demand has not waned. The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta notes that mortgages are now less affordable relative to income than any period since 2008 during the subprime mortgage crisis. Home prices typically stay in line with inflation, but the 18.4% annual increase in average home prices recorded this past October shows that the market is indeed inflated.