While the bond market is typically seen as sedate and respectful, it can pack a heavy punch when it’s alarmed. And right now, it’s getting worried about how much more Washington is preparing to pile onto its spiraling mountain of debt because of its desire to cut taxes.
— The Associated Press (@apnews.com) May 23, 2025 at 3:30 AM
=====
Sales of previously occupied U.S. homes fell in April, as elevated mortgage rates and rising prices discouraged prospective home buyers during what’s traditionally the busiest time of the year for the housing market.
— The Associated Press (@apnews.com) May 22, 2025 at 10:13 AM
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The number of Americans filing unemployment claims last week fell slightly as businesses continue to retain employees despite growing economic uncertainty over U.S. trade policy.
— The Associated Press (@apnews.com) May 22, 2025 at 9:00 AM
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Short-term lender Klarna says more customers are having trouble repaying their "buy now, pay later" loans.
— The Associated Press (@apnews.com) May 22, 2025 at 12:30 AM
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BREAKING: The U.S. Mint has made its final order of penny blanks and will stop producing the coin when those run out.
— The Associated Press (@apnews.com) May 22, 2025 at 11:35 AM
They Call Me Noni
No more pennies? How will we give our $.02?
Betty Cracker
Orangey McFuckface posted the following on his janky Twitter knock-off:
Stocks will take a nosedive, probably
ETA: Hair Furor seems to think “thank you for your attention to this matter” is a magical incantation. Like “hereby.”
They Call Me Noni
@Betty Cracker: Oh good night Irene here we go again with the tariffs. Like Apple is going to magically start manufacturing phones here just because he has ordained it to be so.
Lord Fartdaddy (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
Am I the only one who’s sad about the demise of pennies?
RandomMonster
@They Call Me Noni: Giving your opinion will now cost a quarter. Guess you can say you’ll give your two bits.
frosty
@Betty Cracker: Yes, “thank you for your attention to this matter” is weird. It sounds like lame begging to me, not at all the incantation he imagines that it is.
ETA I almost used the word “think” in the last sentence which would have had all the jackal lawyers telling me “assumes facts not in evidence.” And bringing out the Princess Bride fans too!
RandomMonster
@Lord Fartdaddy (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): Not whatsoever!
Dorothy A. Winsor
@RandomMonster: How is that going to affect all those prices ending in 99 cents?
Spanky
$250M? That’s chump change.
Wapiti
So more tariff play. I do wonder: after China and the USA came to their agreement, did ships with Chinese-made goods start across the Pacific? Or is Xi going to draw out a quiet trade war to mess up Trump (and the USA)?
Spanky
@Dorothy A. Winsor: “I hereby declare that all Prices must end in 5, and all Taxes must be multiples of 5. Thank you for your attention to this matter! “
Another Scott
A couple of my open tabs are 10 year and 30 year Treasuries at FRED.
Click on the “1Y” blue link to see changes over the last year.
30 year Treasuries are above 5% (the highest since October 2023) and there’s been a lot of volatility in both. Looking at longer trends, it’s nothing like the 1980s – yet.
One would want to be exceedingly careful if one were taking out a big, long-term, loan now. The days of “oh, we’ll just refinance at a lower rate in 2-3 years” are probably long, long gone.
I think the housing market is going to have to make major changes. People, especially young people starting out, cannot spend half their income, or more, on housing – not when everything else in modern life continues to get more expensive. Maybe the last 70 years or so in the USA have been an anomaly and the dream of a 3 bedroom house in the suburbs with a 2 car garage and a half acre with a picket fence and a tree house should be left to history like covered wagons and horses? But what will replace it??
Maybe boarding houses will make a return. :-/
Sensible federal support for housing for individuals is obviously needed. It’s how the suburbs were built, after all. A year or so ago, there was a nice lady who had some good ideas about that…
Forward!!
Best wishes,
Scott.
RandomMonster
@Dorothy A. Winsor: If sales departments like the psychological advantages of letting a customer think that a $20 product is cheaper by advertising it as $19.99, they can advertise it as $19.95.
Wapiti
@Dorothy A. Winsor: In a more perfect union, advertised prices would include tax and be rounded by the merchant to the closest 5 cents.
In our world, I expect we’ll only be able to pay cash when the price + tax comes out to a round 5 cents. Otherwise, no cash is accepted; you’ll have to use debit or credit or something like Venmo.
Soprano2
@Lord Fartdaddy (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): No, I’m sad about it too.
Gloria DryGarden
Years ago, from a cartoon:
“a penny for your thoughts.”
Reply: “I was thinking of a dime…”
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Wapiti: That happened to me at a gelato stand in a mall. They gave no change. You paid the exact amount in cash or used a card
ETA: Or overpaid in cash and liked it.
frosty
iPhone’s … as the plural. Cue Fran Lebowitz again.
Why did I read that nonsense? I’ll never get those brain cells back.
Another Scott
Bring back the Penny Drive!!:
If they make it worth people’s while…
Best wishes,
Scott.
frosty
@Dorothy A. Winsor: They’ll all end in 0.95, which many do now. If paid by plastic, no change. If paid by cash, rounded at the register, which some places also do now.
The only benefit will be to clear out the change bowl on my nightstand, which I’m in favor of.
Spanky
@frosty: Not to mention his unnecessary addition to the national apostrophe deficit.
snoey
@Dorothy A. Winsor: The same way we handle gas being priced at 329.9 or whatever.
Suzanne
Klarna allows people to pay in installments for a $40 pair of pants. I’m simply shocked to hear that these might not be the most financially literate people.
Soprano2
@Suzanne: The machine at Aldi asks if I want to split the payment! Geez……..
RevRick
@They Call Me Noni: Piecemeal
Dorothy A. Winsor
@frosty: Good point. Mr DAW tried to foist some change off on me the other day and I refused to take it. So I can’t blame sellers
RevRick
@Lord Fartdaddy (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): It’s senseless
Suzanne
@Soprano2: I can understand people having a hard time paying for groceries. But Klarna, Affirm, etc….. seems like a not-great business model!
Geminid
The fifth round of US/Iranian nuclear talks began about an hour ago, in Rome. White House envoy Steve Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Secretary Sayed Arangchi are meeting, probably at the Omani Ambassador’s residence like they did a few weeks ago. There’ll be plenty of reporting about this one.
Viva BrisVegas
@Wapiti: In Australia, by legislation, the advertised price must be the price that is paid. No sneaky added taxes or costs. There have not been 1c coins for decades and all prices are rounded to the nearest 5c for cash, but not for cards.
When I go to the US, I’m always surprised by how much effort goes into ensuring the buyer doesn’t know the final cost of an item.
Baud
@Viva BrisVegas:
In the US, if taxes were included in the listed price, Republicans would lie and tell people that 50% of the price was taxes, and people would believe them.
Baud
@Geminid:
Best thing Iran can do is pump up Trump and let Trump destroy the US.
Victor Matheson
Banning the penny is literally the only good thing that p.o.s. who is serving as our president has ever done in his miserable life.
RevRick
All kidding aside, the Big Beautiful Abomination, which now goes to the Senate will destroy our future, all in service of a short term benefit to the upper 10%, and especially the very top 0.1%.
It guts Medicaid, which will lead to the closure of hospitals and nursing homes, and will lead to mandatory cuts to Medicare, which will add to the financial strain on medical services.
It guts SNAP (food stamps), which will make food deserts even larger, and add financial pressure to farmers and ranchers.
It guts the climate change provisions of the IRA, which is a massive fu to future generations.
Let’s pray that the bond market puts the fear of God into enough Senators to halt this madness.
Geminid
@Victor Matheson: Lifting sanctions on Syria was a very good thing. Americans generally don’t notice these things much, but this could have a far-reaching and positive impact on people in the Middle East
Ed. And lifting the sanctions might have averted a really bad outcome in Syria.
Gretchen
Penny blanks are produced exclusively in Greene County, Tennessee, which voted 82% for Donald Trump. He didn’t care about their jobs… wvlt.tv/2025/05/22/greene-county-mayor-ending-penny-production-will-cost-hundreds-jobs/
Manyakitty
@Gretchen: well congratulations to them. Now they’re living the lives they voted for.
rikyrah
@They Call Me Noni:
Absolutely not 😡
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊 😊 😊
rikyrah
@Gretchen:
Oh well 😒😒😒
Gretchen
@rikyrah: Good morning!
schrodingers_cat
Trump and his brain trust want the return of the 19th century, with its mercantilism and colonies. He wants to be Queen Vicky
And I am using the word brain trust loosely.
Manyakitty
@rikyrah: morning 🌞
Llelldorin
@RandomMonster:
I’m not sad about pennies going away. I’m very sad about them going away by executive fiat instead of by legislation.
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
Leto
@Gretchen: fuck’em. Republicans talk about “personal responsibility” and being “responsible for your actions” all the time. Well, time to live by those values.
Gretchen
@RevRick: In the past, Democrats have always done everything they could to blunt the worst of Republican impulses, because they didn’t want people to be hurt. The result was people think there’s no difference between the parties. This time Democrats can’t save the day, and people might have to wake up to what Republicans really are.
Yesterday WaPo had an article about a Kansas farmer who was lamenting all the Biden-era programs that were helping him, that Trump cancelled. What was he going to do now? He might lose his farm! He voted for Trump, whom he considered « the lesser of two evils ». He really didn’t seem to understand where all these programs came from – it was just « government » and he couldn’t see why it was suddenly changed when it hurt him.
Senator Marshall campaigned, from his farm, but now that he needs help he can’t get hold of any of his reps. The only one he’s heard from is Sharice Davids, who isn’t even his House representative. She represents the Kansas City suburbs, but sits on the Ag committee and cares more about farmers than any of these guys who pretend to care. wapo.st/4ksENLD
Most of the comments lean toward FAFO.
rikyrah
@RevRick:
Just nothing but evil all the way around 😒😒
Baud
@Gretchen:
The phrase “he’s not hurting the people he’s supposed to be hurting” comes to mind.
rikyrah
@schrodingers_cat:
My term would be sycophantic evil cabal, but I feel you.
rikyrah
@Baud:
That story will never leave me. It is the essence of those people 😡😡
Gretchen
@schrodingers_cat: One of the things in the bill is saying that anyone with kids over age 7 has to work to qualify for Medicaid. It used to be 18. So we can return to Victorian practice of women who worked in sweatshops of chaining their children to the furniture before they left for work. Who needs child care? It was good enough for the Victorians.
Gloria DryGarden
@Geminid: good.
something good, somewhere, for someone…
Eunicecycle
@Gretchen: there’s a bunch of stuff like that, that I hope will be taken out by the Senate. At least raise it to age 12 when most kids age out of day care anyway.
George
@Betty Cracker:
“Thank you for your attention to this matter” is a phrase I saw a lot during my time in the federal government. Mostly it was a phrase used by upper management–who were notoriously poor writers–in emails or correspondence to employees to sound both authoritative and grateful.
It is just a throw-away, cliched phrase that crappy writers use to make themselves sound like good writers. I’m sure the phrase will find its way into the artificial intelligence world soon enough, if it hasn’t already done so.
schrodingers_cat
@Gretchen: Those children over 8 can work in blacking factories like David Copperfield.
Melancholy Jaques
@rikyrah:
I’ve been using coterie of corruption, but have to admit it’s the kind of snobby sounding language that causes millions to hate Democrats.
Trivia Man
@RandomMonster: canada keeps the same pricing, credit payments charge exact amounts. Cash rounds to the nearest .05 and nobody seems to care.
Suzanne
@George:
It’s a passive-aggressive of telling someone to do something, but without seeming like a direction. Women are often coached in corporate environments to speak this way.
Gretchen
@schrodingers_cat: Yes, all that wasted labor, spent learning multiplication tables when they could be working.
Iron City
@George: When I was a Fed there were certain phrases to use in letters that were banned because they were so useless and stupid. And we knew they were and those of us who could, you know, write didn’t use them except to laugh at the people who tried to use them and the management levels who inserted them into correspondence we wrote.
frosty
@RevRick: And that’s just the financial aspects of the Big Beautiful Abomination. As reported, it also opens up the National Parks to more logging, mining, and drilling. It also prevents the courts from finding anyone in the Executive Branch in contempt, neutering them. It also puts independent agencies like the Fed under the Executive.
I called my Rep and told him to vote against this shit. Fat lot of good that did.
David Collier-Brown
@Another Scott:
Already here, in the form of multiple people sharing an apartment.
Iron City
@schrodingers_cat: We don’t have blacking factories any more, so the advanced 21st century counterparts might be filling printer ink cartridges, recycling mother boards, printers, cables/connectors and similar high tech hazardous occupations once we get rid of OSHA.
Another Scott
@schrodingers_cat: My dad worked as a pin-setter in a bowling alley when he was around that age. No wonder he was happy to retire at 58…
You inspried me to do a little looking around. 120 years of education in the USA from 1993 (115 page .pdf).
Figure 4 on PDF page 18 shows the percentage of people over 25 who have a 4 year college degree. 1950, around 7% of white males, around 5% of white females, and lower numbers for other groups.
It’s been a long, slow, painful slog to increase educational attainment in the USA. And much of that came as a result of sustained federal involvement over decades. As with anything, it’s much easier to destroy than to build.
The monsters won’t give up. We cannot either.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Suzanne
@Another Scott:
This is a drum I’ve been beating for a while. Boarding houses would actually be good to have return, they fill a need.
But we need a lot more diversity of housing types….. courtyard condos, bungalow courts, senior units, row houses or townhouses. One- and two-bedroom units. And a mix of rental and ownership.
Of course, zoning rules in various places make these impossible to build. And if you guessed “it’s because we don’t want poor people or minorities living nearby”, you’d be correct.
Tenar Arha
@Lord Fartdaddy (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): Nope, definitely not the only one. But as for a larger group, we know the only town where the blanks were made is very sad.
Suzanne
@Another Scott: Also, I want to add….. the last 70 years have not really been anomalous. Urbanization is the growth pattern for almost all of human history, and it is accelerating. Towns and cities have always been in flux, and densification has always been occurring. The anomalous thing has been the idea that we can resist that, that we build an area and then don’t change it.
The more difficult trick is to change it without financially harming the people who live there. But we need to do it. The population is still growing, urbanization is accelerating, and we cannot simply sprawl outward endlessly.
frosty
@Suzanne: Not just zoning rules, either. A friend told me that land in SoCal is so expensive that they have to build big houses to sell them for enough money to make a profit. And jam them together with 20 feet between them. Like mine from 1923!
Gloria DryGarden
@frosty: my senator, michael Bennett, wants to run for governor. He’s too smooth, and was complicit in confirming those cabinet picks. But he better vote this down…
Raoul Paste
@Another Scott: “ It’s much easier to destroy than to build”…
The American Taliban, ladies and germs…
p.a.
Echoing above that a $250,000,000 “deficit” with the EU is bupkis, except to ShitForBrains.
frosty
Oops, that was SCOTUS yesterday. TPM headline: “SCOTUS just gave a match to a confirmed arsonist.”
Gloria DryGarden
@George: sounds like a threat dressed in velvet, slightly padded.
Thank you for your attention to this matter, fuckers, and stay tuned, try not to think about the power I have over you…
though, I have used this phrase. As in, im counting on you to help with this mess.
Suzanne
@frosty: Yeah, there are definitely market forces at work. I will note that, historically, when we try to build more middle-income housing….. we haven’t added it within cities. We’ve gone out to a perimeter, where land is cheaper, and divide it up into long, narrow lots.
Almost definitionally, infill projects are going to be more expensive. Which is why it’s important to make sure existing residents aren’t economically harmed.
Gretchen
The mayor of my suburb was elected with 94% of the vote. Then he said maybe that abandoned church property on the main drag could be rezoned for multi family housing, maybe a little more affordable so teachers and cops who work in the community could afford to live here? He survived 6 – count ‘em – 6 angry recall attempts. There was also a big to-do about the suggestion that some of the new, big houses being built where the 50’s ranch houses were being torn down, might be allowed to have mother-in-law apartments. Who knows what kind of low-lifes would move into those apartments? That was a big nope also.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@RevRick:
All hail our new Bond Market Overlords!
Heh heh, if that’s what it takes, great. However, I don’t see any more courage in Senate GOPers than in the House.
Hope I’m wrong.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Gretchen:
Did the Wa(com)Post reporter ask dumbass KS farmer how he felt about his vote now? Would he consider voting (D) the next time around?
It’s hard to have *any* sympathy for such people. My wife’s family on her mother’s side were all KS farmers and ranchers since the first Swede emmigrated there in 1868. Over the last 15 years, they’ve all become marinated in Faux “News” and everything right wing so we know first hand morans like the farmer in question.
Suzanne
@Gretchen: Typical suburb behavior.
I was a project manager on a senior assisted-living project once. The facility accepted some sorts of vouchers for low-income seniors. A few members of the community did everything they could to oppose it, including using design review to try to add expensive features to the building so that they wouldn’t be able to have low-income people live there.
lowtechcyclist
@frosty:
More like a flamethrower and a 10-gallon can of gasoline.
gene108
@Another Scott:
How times have changed…
lowtechcyclist
@Betty Cracker:
Cheeto Benito:
The idiot left out some zeroes, because a trade deficit of $250M with the EU would be a rounding error.
ETA. Late to the party with this one – everyone else has gotten there first.
Hoodie
@Suzanne: when my parents were growing up working class in St. Louis in the 20s and 30s, typical housing was a walk up flat, sometimes owned but often rented. Often extended family in a 3 flat building. Suburbia was largely a post war thing. In STL, of course, it was driven by white flight.
Geminid
@Suzanne: Here’s a striking example of urbanization: Sanaa, the nominal capital of Yemen, had a population of 25,000 in 1931. By 1965 it had grown to 110,000. Sanaa’s population was 1,290,000 in 2001, and it is now 3,770,000.
According to Wikipedia, Yemen’s population growth rate overall is 3.2% while Sanaa’s is 7%. And 60% of the larger governate’s population is under 18 years of age.
Suzanne
@Hoodie: Agreed, suburbia really bloomed once cars became affordable. But there have been detached dwelling types for thousands of years, across many different cultures and climate types. So that’s not anomalous.
The mass production and subdivision that characterize suburbia is really a leveling-up.
lowtechcyclist
@Trivia Man:
It’s been a couple decades since I’ve been in Europe, but same deal there at the time.
It appears that one of the lasting effects of the pandemic here in the U.S. is that there are way fewer retail cash transactions than there used to be. If retailers here followed the EU’s and Canada’s examples, hardly anyone would notice. And the useless clutter that is the penny would finally go away.
Geminid
@Gloria DryGarden: Senator Bennett will be a guest on CNN’s State of the Union this coming Sunday. I expect he’ll be asked about the bill.
Suzanne
@Geminid: Urbanization is rapidly occurring and the stats never fail to blow my mind. I’ve cited this here before….. it is estimated that it was around 2009 that, for the first time in human history, more than half of people on the planet lived in cities. Current projections are estimating that we will have 75% of the world population living in cities by somewhere around 2050-2060. That is….. borderline unbelievable.
The growth of megacities will be significant, as well. But even in the U.S., which will not have any of the world’s megacities, urbanization is the pattern. The contemporary economy is driving this; we are increasingly service-based, so we need to collect.
Adam
Everybody’s got a price
Gloria DryGarden
@Geminid: I’m unlikely to watch, so I’ll hope to catch a summary, or an excerpt.
Another Scott
@Suzanne: Isn’t a huge amount of recent urbanization driven by China?
I agree with your points. Lots of changes are needed, and urbanization needs to continue as it’s the most efficient way for modern societies to work. But lots and lots and lots of smart investment is needed to handle the increasing density. It could be a huge engine for improving efficiency, quality of life, etc., etc., or we could see cities stuck in decay and neglect and malaise and worse because the monsters won’t stop screaming about MY TAXES!!11
Every election matters.
Forward!!
Best wishes,
Scott.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Hoodie:
It was driven by white flight *everywhere*.
And much of what’s happened over the last decade has been a concerted effort to drive out the people that caused white flight so the entitled white colonizer/gentrifiers can “reclaim” areas now seen as desirable.
Tom Toles was prescient on this with a cartoon from 1998:
cnu.org/publicsquare/2016/09/23/vast-white-ring-conspiracy
Also too, all too often people discuss “urbanization” and immediately link it to “cities”, the implication being inside city limits. But, at least in a USA context, the discussion should be *metro* and all that includes. And there’s a lot of geography and issues pertaining to it when we use the more accurate *metro* term.
Gloria DryGarden
@Gretchen: then they don’t deserve to have teachers and cops working in your town. Good grief
Suzanne
@Another Scott: The biggest change is that many of the expected megacities projected by 2050 will be in Africa. A lot of growth in the Asia Pacific region, as well.
They Call Me Noni
@Gretchen: Most of the comments lean toward FAFO.
As they should. If people who pay no attention have their noses rubbed in the shit they voted for perhaps, just maybe, they will wake up and be better informed in the future. And hopefully spread the word to their ill informed friends and family. You’re fucking grown, you work hard, you own a business (in this instance) and you don’t have a clue about how the money part works? Like it’s just manna from heaven. FAFO indeed.
Suzanne
@Another Scott:
Yes, the question is not whether or not cities will grow. The question is whether or not that growth will be well-managed. Both infill and new-build (sprawl) bring challenges.
Citizen Alan
@frosty: my pet peeve is when I go to pay for something and an asked if I want to round up to the nearest dollar in order to donate to some charity or other. Which I never do because the naked cynicism of that scheme never fails to piss me off. I donate five cents to some charity through rounding up my bill. The company then donates five cents to that charity without having donated a penny of its own money and simply by acting as a conduit. Multiply that by hundreds of thousands of purchases, and the company gets the credit for donating millions of dollars to charity, reaping good press and a tax right off without having paid a cent.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Citizen Alan:
I never thought of it that way!
It doesn’t come up often but now I know.
I’m assuming this same process applies to places that simply ask for a donation? For example, Pet Smart always asks for a donation. I always give em $2. It goes to their in-house 501(c)3 but the broader tax implications for the corporation, beats me.
Now my brain hurts.
Trivia Man
@Suzanne: they even had ads to order Uber Eats ON INSTALLMENTS!
dnfree
@gene108: Good catch! I got married in 1967 and I hated that usage. My JC Penney credit card says Mrs. [hisname] lastname rather than simply [myname] lastname , and when clerks see it they are puzzled. It’s because that account goes WAY back to before when women could have credit cards.