Tag Archives: UKIP

Mar 12 2023

Neil Oliver Laments the Current State of Affairs Against the Backdrop of Hollywood Movie Scripts – The Bloom Is Off the Ruse


Posted originally on the CTH on March 11, 2023 | Sundance 

In his weekly monologue, U.K pundit Neil Oliver takes the occasion of the 2023 Hollywood Oscar film awards to overlay the current state of theatrical horsepucky from the professionally political.

As the COVID-19 narrative collapses around them, the rulers who justified their fiats under false pretenses are naked to the sunlight of truth. The people are awake; the lies are easy to see; the gig is up; the bloom is off the ruse… We are watching, and the elites are not comfortable now. WATCH:

[Transcript] – Brace yourselves for the latest from La-La-Land. It’s the Oscars this weekend, another ceremony I used to care about in the world of before.

But for those who feel like we’ve been trapped for the past three years watching a bad movie with an unbelievable script, full of gaping plot holes and bad actors, I can tell you we’ve at least reached a good bit. Not the end, by any means, but perhaps a foretaste of comeuppance yet to be.

After the opening sequence the introduction of the characters establishing who were to be the goodies and baddies, after the setup and then the jeopardy and the darkness when all seems lost we’ve got to one of those bits where the audience leans forward in their seats in expectation of some payback, however slight and however brief. Anything to lift the mood.

I knew we had reached a good bit when I started hearing people talk about “limited hangout”. Have you noticed that term, yet? Limited hangout is more jargon, of course, spy talk this time, from the CIA and the rest of the secret squirrels, for what baddies try and do when they know, as we say in Scotland, that the game’s a bogey means the game is up and those fraudsters and tricksters and over-acting villains inside their hollowed-out volcanoes realise they might well have been rumbled and so start reaching for the back-up plan.

Limited hangout is a short-term fix when the baddies realise their trousers are starting to fall down. They’re not quite around their ankles but some stuff is definitely exposed and so those chancers are forced into buying some time while they try to pull themselves back together and keep going without falling over completely.

What we’ve been handed this past week or so all the high-excitement newspaper revelations are obviously what the baddies regard as the least damaging truth about what they’ve been up to, mere tidbits really, embarrassing but still the least of it. What’s been made visible to us now on account of the baddies’ zips being down, is therefore a limited hangout.

I will come back to the movie analogy in a minute but let me digress.

Billionaire financier Warren Buffet is credited with saying that it’s when the tide goes out that you get to see who’s been swimming naked. Ain’t that the truth?

Well, the tide is quite far out now not all the way but already we can see plenty of bare bottoms. We see you, Rishi Sunak and Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer we see you MSM loudmouths and the rest of the ringleaders, in politics and elsewhere making a run for the sand dunes with your bits out. We see you. You can bleat and whine all you want about how hard you found the last three years and how much pressure you were under trying to keep up with an evolving situation, but you said what you said, and you did what you did and so much of it was wrong and lies and caused incalculable harm to millions.

What we are glimpsing now – even in the midst of the so-called limited hangout – is what we’ve known all along and that is the way the truth does, in the end, what the truth always does. Which is to say, the truth comes out.

There’s been a line out there on social media from the beginning, a meme, which has it that the truth is like a lion, the truth, like the lion, needs no protecting all that is required is for the lion of truth to be set free from its cage and then that lion takes care of itself.

The truth has a partner along for the ride, and that partner is trust. You can’t have the one without the other. What our so-called leaders and their henchmen in the media did over the past three years was abuse our trust to the point where it’s gone now.

As I’ve said before, trust is like a fragile vase. If you break it, you might manage to glue it back together, but you’d never again dream of putting water and flowers in it.

I started by talking about the movies, and movies are all about stories. An old story is The Boy Who Cried Wolf and we’ve all heard it … and we all remember it … because it’s true. It reminds us of what happens when foolish people sound the alarm without good reason. Out of a desire to attract attention and so further their own ends, foolish dangerous people cry wolf when there is no wolf. Everyone around them is briefly alarmed, fearing for their lives. But sooner or later they realise they’ve been had.

One day, of course, a wolf comes a real wolf and when that same fool cries wolf again no one comes to help. The fool is eaten by the wolf and why? Because they lied, and lied again, until the people who might have helped them had no reason to believe them, far less trust them.

Boris Johnson pushed nonsense about the danger of Covid. So did Rishi Sunak. So did Michael Gove. So did Jeremy Hunt. So did Keir Starmer and scores of others. They pushed nonsense about how to handle it as well, nonsense about Scotch eggs and stickers in the aisles of supermarkets, hand washing, face masks, social distancing and the rule of six. They pushed nonsense when they knew it was nonsense while they partied together, drank together and danced together and laughed up their sleeves together about what a bunch of mugs we were.

They cried wolf. Now there’s talk about pushing more mRNA jabs … next time for TB and smallpox and diphtheria and the rest. But what happens when billions of people have no trust whatever in that science, in those products from Big Pharma? What happens when the trust is gone?

More and more people around the world have stopped listening to scientists and stopped trusting scientists. They have also stopped listening to the cries of wolf. If a real wolf comes in the future – and there are more wolves out there than just invisible viruses – millions of people will refuse to listen to the alarm.

And now that the trust is gone, for so many people, more and more are questioning everything else they’ve been told by the same characters about what’s going on in the world. More and more people look at the lies and manipulative propaganda they were fed for the past three years about ONE THING, and rightly wonder if they are actually being told the truth about anything else about the war in Ukraine about the climate about immigration about the EU about food shortages about what’s being done to farmers all over the world about the real motivation behind the push for electric vehicles about the imposition of 15-minute cities.

Our so-called leaders knowingly talked nonsense that destroyed lives and turned society upside down and inside out. We know that … the people responsible are wildly exposed and cannot convincingly deny any of it. Why I ask, would anyone trust them about anything else? Liars lie, it’s what they do.

For now though, let’s, by all means, notice that it’s a good bit in the movie and we might allow ourselves to enjoy it.

It’s like when the money-grubbing lawyer in the first Jurassic Park movie tries to hide in the bamboo toilet stall only to have the T-Rex bite him in half. He’s strictly a minor character but he has put his own needs ahead of the helpless children in the movie, so it’s satisfying to watch him get caught, exposed by his cowardly nature, and gobbled up.

This is the bit when Alan Rickman’s baddie in Die Hard realises Bruce Willis is running loose with a machine gun.

This is the bit when Indiana Jones realises the big guy only has a sword, while he’s got a revolver full of bullets.

It’s important to remember the movie has a way to go yet. More clumsy twists for sure … more bad acting in the world of politics which, as we are regularly informed, is only showbiz for ugly people.

Here’s the thing: I sincerely believe that now the truth is partially revealed, if we can only find the strength to keep pushing … then the really, really good bits of this movie lie ahead. Like the bit in A Few Good Men – when Jack Nicolson plays the colonel in the dock and Tom Cruise is the underdog attorney.

Jack’s colonel does not like one bit being challenged by upstart Tom’s character about how Jack chooses to do what Jack does. Jack is angry enough to kick a puppy through a fan

When Tom finally demands to hear the truth about how a young soldier died under Jack’s watch. Jack finally loses it completely.

“You can’t handle the truth!” he roars and he evidently believes what he has just bellowed. He actually believes that Tom and the rest of the general population lack the mental circuitry to contemplate, far less to deal with, what he does down there in the darkness out of sight.

But it’s the best bit in the movie and Jack is caught out and his ass is grass and we know it.

When you get right down to it, his undoing has been no more complicated than that he has been caught lying.

Of course, the other thing we learn from watching movies is that it’s never, never safe to take your eyes off the adversary the first time they go down … the first time they seem to be finished.

We have to stay sharp and be ready for the bit when Glenn Close’s character is lying quietly in the bath in Fatal Attraction, eyes wide open and no bubbles coming out of her mouth.

Right when we think we’re safe, she’ll sit back up again with her yelling and her knife. We must pay attention.

More and more I think about the disaster movies – and if this isn’t a manmade disaster, we’re living through right now then I don’t know what it is.

I think about when the survivors step blinking out of the smoke and darkness to confront a ruined White House and a toppled Statue of Liberty … or a burning Big Ben and a flattened GCHQ. They realise, those survivors, that what they thought mattered was, in the end, just a house, just a lifeless lump of copper and steel, just a bell tower, just an office block.

Those survivors look around at the devastation, the receding flood waters of the tsunami, and realise they were caring about stuff that didn’t amount to a hill of beans. They get ready to start again with all that really matters, which is people they can trust, which is each other. If we have that, then we have all that we will need. Pass the popcorn.

[Transcript Link]

Mar 12 2023

Fallout from SVB Collapse Begins Sending Twitches Through Tech Sector, While Congress Meets With Treasury


Posted originally on the CTH on March 11, 2023 | Sundance

The 44-hour collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) is having some reverberations amid the tech sector as companies who carried unsecured deposits with the bank are facing an uncertain future.

Tech company Roku streaming services holds $487 million in cash reserves at SVB representing 26% of their liquid holdings. Those unsecured funds are now tenuous, depending on what steps are taken next.  Additionally, Etsy an online brokering retailer for mostly independent sellers, has also run into a snag with processing disbursement payments to those same sellers.  Etsy used SVB as a depository and payment transfer provider to the merchant accounts.

According to Axios, “Circle’s usd coin (USDC), the second largest stablecoin in the world” is also in a tough position “because a portion of its cash reserves were held at SVB, which the U.S. government took control of on Friday.”  These and other ancillary issues are now part of a larger conversation about whether SVB is representative of a weakness that may impact other banks.   However, current consensus is that a contagion effect is not expected.

SVB was exclusively a tech sector bank.  Small to mid-size tech companies who relied on SVB may have some immediate issues; but the larger banking sector seems much more solid and less exposed to the long-term treasuries that SVB was holding. “People are used to having zero interest rates and easy money, and it’s gone. And there are people who will manage that well and people who will not,” former Congressional Budget Office Director Doug Holtz-Eakin said during an interview on “Cavuto Coast-to-Coast” Friday. {link}

Meanwhile, congress is meeting with treasury and FDIC officials to discuss if taxpayer intervention is needed.  {insert eyeroll here}:

March 11 (Reuters) – U.S. lawmakers met with the Federal Reserve and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation on Friday to discuss the collapse of SVB Financial Group (SIVB.O), Coindesk reported on Saturday citing a source.

Democratic U.S. Representative Maxine Waters held briefings with officials from the two regulators and the Treasury Department, hours after the startup-focused SVB’s collapse, the report said.

[…] Separately, Representative Ro Khanna said in a tweet on Friday that he reached out to both the White House and the Treasury Department to discuss the situation with the bank.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Friday met with banking regulators on the collapse of SVB, as she and the White House expressed confidence in their abilities to respond to the bank failure. (more)

Nothing makes the Nope Meter peg with greater emphasis than hearing the name Maxine Waters and bank bailout in the same sentence.

I already made my position pretty clear yesterday.  NO BAILOUTS!

The tech sector has a tremendous amount of capital at hand.  Let the tech companies who used SVB as a launch vehicle sell some of their own stock holdings and backstop the bank as an investment mechanism.  There is no need for the U.S. taxpayer to get involved.

I am more concerned about this failure being used as a tool to initiate a conversation about digital currencies.  The ‘never let a crisis go to waste‘ team, are likely chomping at the proverbial bit….

Mar 11 2023

Week in Review: Bipartisan Populists Unite Against War in Syria, China Brokers Historic Iran/Saudi Arabia Peace, & More, w/ Michael Tracey | SYSTEM UPDATE #53


By Glenn Greenwald Posted originally on Rumble on: March 8, 2023 at 7:01 pm EST

Mar 11 2023

The Insufferable Samantha Power Now Focuses on Georgia, Bordering Russia


Posted originally on the CTH on March 10, 2023 | Sundance 

Having planted the seed for color revolution in Hungary, a European country that doesn’t want expanded war with Russia – therefore the U.S. needs to change the democracy, now Samantha Power moves to another European country for the same reason.  This time it’s Georgia.

Georgia legislature recently passed a bill saying all funding for foreign intervention in the country’s politics, via Non-Governmental Agencies (NGO’s), needs to be made public and the funding registered as foreign agent lobbying.  Essentially, the proposed Georgia law would mirror the U.S. Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA).

However, because the U.S. is the funding mechanism for the anti-government agencies that operate within the country, the United States is against the effort.  To make sure the U.S. can continue to covertly manipulate the political outcomes, the groups supported by Samantha Power attacked Parliament. [Power Tweet]

To highlight what Power is celebrating…. “Georgian protesters in their tens of thousands have gathered in the capital, smashing the windows of the Parliamentary headquarters and fighting local enforcement officers as the country erupts into chaos. The nation’s ruling party, Georgian Dream, rushed through its first reading of a “Kremlin-inspired” bill on Tuesday two days before the debate was scheduled to take place, causing carnage in Tbilisi as citizens fear their government is severing links to the West at a time of increased tensions with Russia.” (more)

So why is Samantha Power targeting Georgia now?   Well, like Hungary’s Viktor Orban, Georgia’s Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili does not want expanded war with Russia. Therefore, just like Viktor Orban, the prime minister of Georgia must now be removed and replaced with a pro-war leader.

The U.S. has already installed a pro-war President in Georgia, Salome Zurabishvili.  Now Samantha Power has the responsibility to replace the anti-war Prime Minister.

The ruling Georgian Dream party has insisted it remains committed to Georgia’s EU and NATO membership.  But a “foreign agent” bill reminiscent of Russian legislation used to silence critics has in recent days sparked demonstrations, to which authorities have responded with water cannons and tear gas.

Georgian President Salome Zurabishvili on Thursday congratulated protesters in the Caucasus country after the government said it would drop the bill.  […] worry has grown since Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili’s party tried to introduce the “foreign agent” law, even if for now they have withdrawn it. (link)

Yes, if you want to have a Foreign Agent Registration Act in a nation where the United States is the foreign actor, then you must be a Kremlin stooge. So goes the argument.  It would be a lot more difficult for the U.S. to meddle in foreign countries if the people receiving the money from the U.S. had to disclose it to their citizens.

Hypocrisy thy name is…

This guy nails it in this Tweet/Video.

Mar 11 2023

Tucker Carlson Outlines SVB Collapse and Ponders Impact of Cultural Marxism on Outcome


Posted originally on the CTH on March 10, 2023 

For his opening monologue Friday night, Fox News host Tucker Carlson outlined the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and ponders the deeper story that lay underneath the sudden failure. WATCH:

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Mar 11 2023

Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) Fails, Now the Idiots Are Considering a Taxpayer Bailout


Posted originally on the CTH on March 10, 2023 | Sundance

SVB is Silicon Valley Bank, the almost exclusive banking network for Venture Capitalists (VC), tech sector start-ups and tech industry holding accounts.  48 hours ago, SVB was a “grade A” Moodys rating. As of tonight, they are insolvent.

“All told, customers withdrew a staggering $42 billion of deposits by the end of Thursday, according to a California regulatory filing. […] “The precipitous deposit withdrawal has caused the Bank to be incapable of paying its obligations as they come due,” the California financial regulator stated. “The bank is now insolvent.” (link)

Now, as ridiculous as this sounds outside Silicon Valley, the powers that be are concerned about a ‘contagion‘ effect, and openly discussing the need for a taxpayer funded bailout.  Blood-boiling doesn’t even begin to describe the sensation.

Let the Silicon Valley companies who started with the funds from the bank sell some of their capitalization on the market and finance the bailout themselves.  After all, this is one interconnected system of lenders, borrowers and investors.  This is not a crisis for the guy making their catered lunches, mowing their lawns, or washing their clothes.

♦The system.  A tech guy/gal has an idea or product.  Venture Capitalists (VC) organize the funding for the idea/product and go to SVB for money to start the company.  The bank funds the startup and takes an equity position in the company.  The VC brokers the deal, takes payment and also takes an equity position.  The company launches and if successful builds a multi-billion enterprise.  If they IPO (most do) then shares of the company are sold and the value of the company rises with the increased stock purchasing.

The shares of the company are capital. The shares can be sold to create funds that can support SVB.  If SVB needs funds, let the networked companies sell some of their capital and fund the bank that generated their venture.  They do not need outside ‘bailouts’.   That’s just the way I look at it.

Listening to some voices saying the guy who mows the lawn of the tech company executive has a responsibility to ‘bailout’ the bank that created the wealth for the tech company executive, is just, well, another absurd example of how corrupt this entire financial system has become.  Sorry, but this beyond annoys me.

CALIFORNIA – Regulators shuttered SVB Friday and seized its deposits in the largest U.S. banking failure since the 2008 financial crisis and the second-largest ever. The company’s downward spiral began late Wednesday, when it surprised investors with news that it needed to raise $2.25 billion to shore up its balance sheet. What followed was the rapid collapse of a highly-respected bank that had grown alongside its technology clients.

Even now, as the dust begins to settle on the second bank wind-down announced this week, members of the VC community are lamenting the role that other investors played in SVB’s demise.

“This was a hysteria-induced bank run caused by VCs,” Ryan Falvey, a fintech investor at Restive Ventures, told CNBC. “This is going to go down as one of the ultimate cases of an industry cutting its nose off to spite its face.”

The episode is the latest fallout from the Federal Reserve’s actions to stem inflation with its most aggressive rate hiking campaign in four decades. The ramifications could be far-reaching, with concerns that startups may be unable to pay employees in coming days, venture investors may struggle to raise funds, and an already-battered sector could face a deeper malaise.

The roots of SVB’s collapse stem from dislocations spurred by higher rates. As startup clients withdrew deposits to keep their companies afloat in a chilly environment for IPOs and private fundraising, SVB found itself short on capital. It had been forced to sell all of its available-for-sale bonds at a $1.8 billion loss, the bank said late Wednesday.

The sudden need for fresh capital, coming on the heels of the collapse of crypto-focused Silvergate bank, sparked another wave of deposit withdrawals Thursday as VCs instructed their portfolio companies to move funds, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The concern: a bank run at SVB could pose an existential threat to startups who couldn’t tap their deposits. (read more)

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Mar 11 2023

Huge – Iran and Saudi Arabia Agree to Resume Diplomatic and Trade Relations During Talks Negotiated by China


Posted originally on the CTH on March 10, 2023 | Sundance


This is huge in the geopolitical world.  China operated as a broker in the structurally unstable relationship between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

  • From the Iranian perspective – With a visibly weak U.S. president, and a strengthening Chinese Chairman Xi Jinping forming a close bond with Saudi Arabia, it makes sense for Iran to move toward diplomatic relations.
  • From the Saudi Arabia perspective – With a visibly weak U.S. president, the prior assurances from Washington DC diminish, trust is tenuous, and a stronger hedge-based relationship with Chairman Xi is formed.
  • From the Chinese perspective – With a visibly weak U.S. president, and a western alliance intended to destroy itself to fulfill the desires of the WEF climate change and cultural agenda, the opportunity to expand influence is teed up.

It will be intensely interesting to see how Israel positions itself w/ this new dynamic.

BEIRUT — Saudi Arabia and Iran announced an agreement in China on Friday to resume relations more than seven years after severing ties, a major breakthrough in a bitter rivalry that has long divided the Middle East.

The agreement was a result of talks in Beijing that began Monday as part of an initiative by Chinese President Xi Jinping aimed at “developing good neighborly relations” between Iran and Saudi Arabia, the three countries said in a joint statement. The agreement, which was signed by top Iranian security official Ali Shamkhani and Saudi national security adviser Musaed bin Mohammed al-Aiban, said embassies would be reopened within two months.

Saudi Arabia cut diplomatic ties with Iran in 2016 after the Saudi Embassy in Tehran was attacked and burned by Iranian protesters, angered by the kingdom’s execution of prominent Shiite cleric Sheikh Nimr Baqr al-Nimr. The cleric had emerged as a leading figure in protests in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province, a Shiite-majority region in the Sunni-majority nation.

[…] On Friday, John Kirby, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said the United States welcomed the agreement but noted that Washington was not “directly involved.”

Kirby said it was too early to tell whether the deal would hold. “It really does remain to be seen whether the Iranians are going to honor their side,” he said. “This is not a regime that typically does honor its word. So we hope that they do. We’d like to see this war in Yemen end.”

Yemen has enjoyed a rare reprieve from fighting since April, when a truce sponsored by the United Nations went into effect. (more)

With the western alliance nations destroying their economies while simultaneously meddling around in European cultural and political affairs, the dynamic of the BRICS economic alliance also opens up within a Saudi-Iran peace process.  Economics is the oil that lubricates against geopolitical friction.

China is gaining influence, and Russia is gaining breathing room from WEF sanctions.

This will be very interesting to keep watching.

Mar 10 2023

Hoards -Even Gold


Armstrong Economics Blog/Hoards Re-Posted Mar 10, 2023 by Martin Armstrong

In times of economic distress, people will hoard their wealth. This is as true in ancient times as it is in modern times. I was called in about a hoard of gold – one thousand $20 St Gaudians gold coins all dated 1924 – uncirculated. As you see, I have a reputation for buying hoards as well as funding major archaeological digs. This was a hoard of US$20 gold coins. So I took the lot. As for those who say I hate gold, no, I have always loved the $20 st Gaudens.

Obviously, this was a stash. It was the year of a Presidential election and in 1925, Calvin Coolidge was the first President to have his inauguration broadcasted on radio. In 1921 the Chinese Communist movement began and in 1924 Stalin came to power after poisoning Lenin and his wife. The flight from Russia began in 1917, but it escalated by 1919. It is hard to say why this hoard was stashed away. But they are all dated 1924 and may have been connected to the upheaval in Russia. By the end of 1919, it was clear to almost everyone that the Bolsheviks had won the Civil War. The White armies were defeated on all fronts: Siberia, the Russian North, and Petrograd (as St Petersburg was then called).  Pravda on Aug. 31, 1918:

“Our cities must be mercilessly cleansed of the bourgeois rot. All these gentlemen will be put on file, and those who pose a danger to the revolutionary class will be destroyed … Henceforth, the hymn of the working class will be a song of hatred and revenge! ”

It was the White Russians who fled. It was estimated that at least 2 million fled Russia at the time. That was about 2%-3% of the surviving population by 1919. Given the date of this hoard and the condition, they were tucked away and never saw circulation. They may have been related to the turmoil in Russia.

A number of people have asked if I could put together sets of the 12 Caesars because I had mentioned I thought that could be done for half the price of the set being offered elsewhere. I am trying to get a small hoard of Caligula denarii. They are very difficult to find. I believe because he was so hated,  they may have just melted down his coinage.

It all depends on quality. I have purchased a small hoard of Julius Caesar coinage. I will try to see If I get these Caligula denarii. If I do, I will try to see if I can put together some sets with much more realistic prices.

I have purchased a hoard of late Constantine bronze. They are very reasonable.

I have purchased an early hoard of Gallic coinage of Postumus which is silver. I also have purchased a hoard of Victorinus which are bronze. This is the period of both the split in the Roman Empire as well as the collapse of the monetary system.

Others have asked if I can put together a progression of the coinage showing the debasement. I will try. Here is a photo showing the stark difference between the beginning of the region of Gallienus (253-268AD) and its end.

Mar 10 2023

The Credit Suisse Latest Scandal


Armstrong Economics Blog/Banking Crisis Re-Posted Mar 10, 2023 by Martin Armstrong

Credit Suisse has gone from one crisis to the next. Last month alone, the bank reported that customers have withdrawn $120 billion. A rogue employee stole the names of people with $50 million or more and probably gave that to tax authorities for a bribe – the second time this has taken place in Switzerland.

The Swiss bank is telling some top clients with $50 million or more in the bank that sensitive personal information including social security identification, employment information, and contact details has been compromised. The leaked information came from a whistle-blower, for money, who shared his findings with the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, according to a press release. Credit Suisse wrote that a rogue employee has taken individuals’ data, “an individual employee, who has since left the firm and had legitimate access to your personal data at the time for their daily work, inappropriately copied this information without Credit Suisse’s authorization onto their personal device.”

The bank told clients that it would enroll them in an identity theft protection service, Identity Works, but wouldn’t pay for other fees, some as low as $20, associated with protecting their identity as a result of the theft, sources add. While Credit Suisse said clients can file a report with the Federal Trade Commission or a state Attorney General, the bank won’t cover any of those filing costs either.

While the major support lies at the 2.37 followed by extreme long-term support at the 1.60 level, it still appears that we should see a temporary low form here in 2023. We would need to rally and close above the 3.60 level for year-end to imply a 2023 low would hold.

Mar 9 2023

Why Most Americans Cannot Afford a Home – A Price Breakdown


Armstrong Economics Blog/Real Estate Re-Posted Mar 9, 2023 by Martin Armstrong

Are you too poor for the basic human necessity of shelter in Biden’s America? The average home price in Q4 of 2022 was $535,800, according to the St. Louis Fed.  If you live in a highly desirable area, expect to pay more. To simplify the math, let’s say that you are looking to purchase a $500,000 property. To heighten the fantasy, let us also pretend you are one of the rare Americans with zero monthly debt. This means that you do not have student loans, car payments, childcare expenses, medical bills, credit card debt, or any major outstanding bill. Fewer than 25% of American households are debt free and this number is rapidly dwindling.

Ok, so you decide to put 5% down on the house or $25,000 for a loan of $475,000. You manage to lock in a 6.7% interest rate for a 30-year mortgage under a conventional loan. Nationwide averages in real estate drastically undercut true averages due to the outliers, but the average annual property tax in America is around $3,000. I personally have not seen a property tax this low between FL or NJ, but I’ll attempt some optimism. After all, this should be a simple price breakdown that does not lead to a mental one.

We will average the PMI payment of 0.5% at $197.92 for 125 months. We will also incorporate the low home insurance average estimate of $1,000 annually. To be most forgiving in my calculations, I will also assume that your monthly HOA fee is $0. This is utterly impossible for anyone seeking to purchase a condo. In my area, the average HOA fee is $600 per month, and a $500,000 property will not afford you a single-family house. At best, you’d be lucky to find a two-bedroom property at that price point in my area. In contrast, home prices here were about 40% to 60% lower in 2019.

Therefore, the overall total monthly payment for a $500K home is $3,596.32. This home can be yours by 2053 if you close this year. Forget “starter homes” as once you are locked into a good rate, you will likely not leave. So how much income do you need to afford this monthly payment? The MAXIMUM debt that the bank will allow you to qualify for is around 50% of your total gross income if you have good credit. If you choose this method, you will be “house poor” and unable to afford other basic human needs. So based on these calculations, you would need to make at least $7,192.64 GROSS per month to afford this property and live “house poor.” This would equate to a salary of $86,311.68 per year BEFORE TAXES.

I did not factor in closing costs, inspections, maintenance, moving, or even furniture. So should you continue renting while establishing zero equity? The median rental price in America as of February 2023 was $1,978. Inventory is low, and landlords are compensating for the money lost during COVID moratoriums. Most leasing offices require tenants to earn 3X the monthly rental price, equating to a monthly gross income of $5,934. This has left countless Americans stuck on the rental carousel of paying the majority of their monthly income to the landlord and being unable to save for a future that includes home ownership. Landlords can raise rental costs yearly at whim, and there is no guarantee that you will comfortably be situated in your rental unit from one contract to the next. Rental properties have also begun charging fees for everything under the sun, such as repairs and parking, which was one of the reasons people chose this method.

Gone are the days when Americans comfortably paid ¼ of their monthly salary toward living expenses. We have not even touched on the astronomically cost of other basic living necessities such as food or energy. You must make a decent income if you want to buy a home in 2023. The bank does not care if you are unable to pay because they will simply take your house. Some are lucky enough to secure an interest-free loan from the central bank of mom and dad. Others, the majority of the Great Unwashed, are scraping by—YOU WILL OWN NOTHING AND BE HAPPY!