Among the Stupid, Saint Louis is a Special Kind of Stupid

I heard and read the same sort of drivel from "real estate professionals" in the area during the 2007 - 2008 real estate bust.  This is a quote from one of the locals written in May of 2021 regarding the potential for a real estate bubble bust in St. Louis:

• It’s an “honest” market (chart 5) – One problem that helped lead to the housing bubble before was the advent of “subprime” loans as well clever things like “no doc” loans, “stated income” loans and the like.  As the chart shows, subprime loans went from almost non-existence in 1999 to nearly a trillion dollar market in 2007 and Alt-A loans (better than subprime but still pretty risky mortgages) did the same.  The availability of financing to people that wouldn’t have qualified under normal, more sound guidelines led to artificially inflated prices, an artificially high rate of sales and unfortunately, a lot of loan fraud.  As the chart shows, now these types of loans are at greatly reduced levels and at a volume that is consistent with a historic norm.  The second chart shows that the loan volume to Government Sponsored Enterprise (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginna Mae) which are traditional conventional mortgages, has doubled since 2006.  This means that the current market is being driven largely by well-qualified purchasers using traditional mortgage products making the resulting home prices a much more accurate reflection of the true market.

We had fraud here just like everywhere else in the US during the last real estate bubble.  Realtors and "mortgage professionals" in the area were proclaiming that bubbles did not occur in St. Louis because we were the "nation's heartland".  My response to that statement was, "Bullshit.  This place has more stupid people with access to artificially cheap credit than you can shake a stick at."

Fast forward to September, 2022 real estate news:

"Average St. Louis home prices are still up amid low inventory, but more sellers are dropping list prices as sales volume declines, according to real estate groups. That comes as mortgage rates continue to increase, to 5.66%, pressuring homebuyers still in the market.

Pending and closed sales fell by double-digit percentages in July compared with the same month last year, according to data from the St. Louis Realtors, an industry association for agents in St. Louis County and the city of St. Louis. Closed sales fell 23.6% year over year, and pending sales declined by 17.4%."

This time, the Federal Reserve is not prepared to ride to the rescue so that it can prop up "values" and keep mortgage rates artificially cheap.  Watching "the Heartland" St. Louis get it stuck up its ass is going to be a lot of fun.  I'll be honest - I got so fucking sick of watching truly stupid people benefit from the Fed's largesse during the past two decades that I will very much enjoy watching them in an environment where it is sink or swim.  I think that what really sickened me was the attitude.  Instead of admitting that they were the beneficiaries of an over protective Federal Reserve (starting with the Greenspan / Bernanke Fed), they believe that they truly have "superpowers".

After two decades of flooding the financial system with dollars pulled from the asses of various Fed Chairpersons, the Federal Reserve has finally crossed the Rubicon.  It can no longer rob savers (like myself) and slowly but surely erode the dollar's buying power via inflation without having the USA go full-retard Weimar Republic or Zimbabwe National Bank.  The Fed finally "jumped the fucking shark" ala Fonzi and went a bridge too far.  Fuck you Federal Reserve and all of the pinheads running their shit show.  You made this clusterfuck, now you get to clean it up and deal with the ramifications resulting from so many, many poor decisions over the past two decades (plus).  Jacking up the overnight rate by a 25 - 75 basis points is going to prolong the pain but it will allow savers to make a few bucks on the slow, steady march up.  If they were really serious about squashing the inflation monster that they set loose, they know that they would have to allow the overnight rate to almost immediately go to 5 or 6 percent.  They (and the country generally) are too pussy to do it.

A very big portion of the USA falls into two groups.  The first group is the well connected, entitled, ever wanting, malcontent, overfed, big car, big house, big private jet, big hair, big dick, superficial bunch of ass clowns that just can't get enough and will very happily climb over your dead body to get their "fair share".  Sociopathic liars, cheats and frauds with differing levels of success.  The trait that they all share is this - no matter what they have managed to claw out for themselves, it is never enough.  What do they want?  More.  When do they want it? Right fucking now.

The other group is part of the grossly overweight, great USA "citizenry" who lines up at the food bank driving a new SUV with 8 kids in the back seat (all wearing their stupid Covid-19 masks) and who is ready to burn down a fucking Quik Trip to promote social justice and points to "systemic racism" as the root cause of all of his or her personal problems and failings.  An observation from someone I once knew who had travelled throughout most of the globe during his lifetime:  "The USA has the fattest poor people in the world".

Saint Louis is like many large metro areas in the country.  It has large populations that fall into both groups.  Both groups have unjustly benefited greatly from the moronic policies pushed by the Federal Reserve and a completely corrupt political class that occupies both sides of Congress.  Kenny Bing fucking out.