The average home value has reached $1 million in 481 U.S. cities, double the number of locales in 2017, according to data from the online real estate brokerage Zillow. In 2021, 146 cities reached that mark. “The geography of wealth in the U.S. has begun to shift, as 2021 was the first year for both...
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APARTMENT INVESTORS HEAD SOUTH
Apartment buildings are the best-performing real estate investment this year, as we reported in “Commercial Real Estate Investments Hit Record Level. Read Between the Lines” (1 Feb 2021), and investors are panning for gold in the hottest U.S. real estate patch—the Sunbelt. Landlords are following migration patterns, as aging Baby Boomers go south and businesses...
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HOUSING MARKET: SALES UP, FEWER HOMES FOR SALE
Sales of existing U.S. homes rose 6.7 percent in January from December, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) reported, as buyers rushed to lock in low mortgage interest rates before the U.S. Federal Reserve boosts its key lending rate next month. Homes are still selling within days of being listed, with more homes being bought...
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SLAVELANDIA: 61 PERCENT OF AMERICANS LIVING PAYCHECK TO PAYCHECK
At the end of December, 61 percent of Americans were living paycheck to paycheck, a LendingClub survey found, slightly less than the high of 65 percent reported in 2020. We reported the financial straits of so many U.S. households in “Paycheck to Paycheck: The American Way” (29 Jun 2021). Although workers’ pay rose 4.7 percent...
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SEQUOIA CAPITAL DEVOTES UP TO $600 MILLION TO CRYPTO
Sequoia Capital, the $80-billion U.S. private equity firm, will put $500 to $600 million into a new fund that will invest in crypto tokens on third-party exchanges, the company announced. Sequoia previously had invested in DeSo, a crypto social media start-up and Filecoin, a data storage network. “The area in crypto where we have the...
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EL SALVADOR BECOMES WORLD’S FIRST NATIONAL BITCOIN EXPERIMENT
After legalizing Bitcoin as legal tender last September, El Salvador, under self-described “world’s coolest dictator” Nayib Bukele, has become an experiment in Bitcoin’s power to play a role in national economics, perhaps opening new venues for borrowing and using profits from Bitcoin mining to fund new social spending. Bukele’s government has spent $180 million setting...
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CONSUMER SPENDING REBOUNDS. WHAT’S NEXT?
After sliding 2.8 percent in December, consumer retail spending bounced up 3.8 percent in January to a record $649.8 billion, despite a 40-year record inflation rate, as the Omicron virus began to ebb, the U.S. census bureau reported. It was the sharpest monthly jump since March 2021, when households began receiving federal stimulus checks. The...
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JOBLESS RISING. ECONOMY SINKING?
U.S. State claims for unemployment benefits bumped up by 23,000 in the most recent week to 248,000, disappointing economists polled by Reuters, who had forecast 219,000 new applications. New claims had been decreasing since mid-January as reports of new Omicron cases declined, plummeting from 700,000 a day then to under 145,000 in the most recent...
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AMERICAN SATIRIST P.J. O’ROURKE CHECKS OUT TO GREENER PASTURES
This section notes the passing of P.J. O’Rourke on 15 February. A quintessentially American satirist who was known for irreverent and relatable observations, O’Rourke served as Editor-In-Chief of National Lampoon during its comic heyday in the 1970’s. He later authored numerous books of mostly political humor, including Parliament of Whores and All the Trouble in...
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CNN CLOWN SHOW EXPOSES MEDIA’S POLITICAL TIES
Put aside for a moment that CNN’s former anchor, Chris Cuomo, used to interview his brother, ex-New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, on his primetime show at the height of the COVID-19 War. And forget how the media and Hollywood adored the former governor—who was forced to resign due to sexual harassment allegations—by awarding him an...