What a line in the Fed's Beige Book today:
Middle-income households were described as “squeezing more life out of every dollar before deciding to spend it,” and low-income consumers showed greater financial strain.
This is America's economy now -- an "E-shaped" -- economy with the top 20% doing just fine. The middle stretching every dollar and the bottom in serious trouble.
Zillow is forecasting home price declines across many U.S. metros through April 2027.
The question isn't whether America has a housing shortage.
The question is whether buyers can afford the monthly payment.
We live in a payment economy.
When rates doubled, affordability got crushed.
Now inventory is rising, migration is slowing, and sellers are competing for a smaller pool of qualified buyers.
The house didn't change.
The payment did.
@m3_melody@7SwanSwimming just a glance at maps and photos of Colony Ridge will dispel this impression. Colony Ridge was (is?) more like a border colonia, sell unimproved land cheap and the owner builds
It seems we are now entering a new phase of the rise of inequality in the US.
It's not just wealth and billionaires — it's a broader acceleration.
Here's who benefited from economic growth in 2025, according to the latest estimates available on https://t.co/arZRWrEZEv
@BradWilcoxIFS@KeithNHumphreys Glad to see this. Some part of this has percolating in my brain since a shopkeeper in New Mexico, after years of observation, told me fentanyl addiction was an easily managed lifestyle, $20 a day at the time. “If it wasn’t for the drugs they wouldn’t be homeless” he opined.
A disturbing proportion of NEET men spend a significant amount of their time obtaining, using, and recovering from the effects of psychoactive substances. https://t.co/s5uqJH6UzC
@michael_hoerger mentioned it briefly in a roundup of vaccine news ..deaths are certainly still happening (looking at CDC WONDER) https://t.co/F5MI5PoRTe
EIA's weekly data release for the week ending 22 May showed broad-based declines across U.S. crude and refined product inventories. Total crude oil stocks, including Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) withdrawals, fell by 12.4 million barrels. Refinery demand surged to nearly 17 million barrels per day, potentially limiting export availability as crude exports slowed for a second consecutive week to 4.4 million barrels per day. Meanwhile, inventories at Cushing, Oklahoma - the delivery hub for WTI futures - declined by 2.8 million barrels.
Ahead of the peak summer driving season, gasoline inventories fell to their lowest seasonal level since 2014, while distillate stocks dropped to around 100 million barrels, the lowest level for this time of year in 25 years.
@mnolangray I think we should all remember that tax assessments are not taxes. If municipalities see rising values as permission to spend more, they share the blame.
NEW: We’ve updated our tracker of federal court rulings in ICE detention cases. Of the 13,000-plus decisions, 11,500 of them have gone against the administration — with lopsided results from judges across the ideological spectrum.
w/ @Jtblaeser
https://t.co/f70BO5IcFM
"[Trump Administration is] conflating fraud and misrepresentation with cases that just don’t have a high likelihood of succeeding...They’re fleeing actual violence...their claims don’t always neatly fit within the protected grounds," -AILA's Heather Hogan https://t.co/47cY62BduM