gehringer_2

I don't know if anyone in DC who matters even remembers, but this (US complaints about Canadian border policy) was a big deal after 9/11 and what eventually led to the end of open travel between the US and Canada. I was doing a lot of traveling to Canada in those days and part of the fallout from the argument across the border was that all of our technical services personnel that had Canadian clients had to take out Canadian work permits to go see them, which they had never required previously. PITA, and perfectly senseless, and 25 yrs later we still don't have the open border back.

which does or doesn't happen will be illuminating

Sweeney was a pleasant surprise. He's not good enough....yet, but he was better than I thought he'd be. It's one of those trap situations though - you don't want to invest a lot in a fall back if he's going to turn into a solid contributor, but you don't yet know if he will.

LOL - C$1.3B over 6 yrs is small money even by Canadian standards. Another political announcement that is more PR than program. Our Canadian neighbors absorb their lessons from the South well.

apropos enough, today's mail contained a solicitation from a 'separation of church and state' lobbying group.

I think it's inevitable Trump will throw Elon off the bus eventually.

David French recently wrote that the "#me too" movement was initially getting a warm reception in evangelical circles, particularly since so many Hollywood types were early targets, but it started catching out evangelical leaders, then suddenly it became commie-socialist pinko and had to be opposed by anyone with true theology.

actually I would say that over the years, NPR has done more coverage of religion in the US than most national media.

agree - that was my initial point - tariffs alone an industrial policy do not make.

Also correct. On shoring will be highly inflationary. In fact the macro argument/justification for allowing/encouraging off-shoring in the first place has always been 'lower prices!." Nothing in that basic calculus has changed much. The wage differential to China has shrunk a good deal, but now you have other low wage Asian and SA workers doing low wage work that has already left China.

an individual at the point of sale maybe, but when rates were going up the industry as a whole had an interest in not writing assumable mortgages, which is when they largely disappeared for a time.

The problem is that manufacturing capacity doesn't just appear overnight. It took decades for manufacturing to off shore, it will take years of steady effort and investment if we make a decision to re-shore. Tariffs are only the carrot, they don't do anything to help get any productive capacity on-line. So maybe after 5 yrs of recession the US looks more like 1960? That's 2 House cycles and 3/2 of the Senate standing for re-election in serious recession? Sure. When Trump was floating tariffs in his 1st term the had no re-investment incentive plans and he still doesn't.

right - and it's really only going to be common when rates are relatively stable. When they are going up, the lender has no incentive, when they are going down, the buyer has no incentive. The other thing that is much different from ages past is the way mortgages are securitized. You have mortgage originators who then become mortgage servicers because the note itself has been securitized and sold off. That changes the incentive structure compared to a bank that used to hold mortgages to their discharge.

Correct - to assume you have to buy out the current owner's equity, whatever that is. But then again, a lot of people keep pulling equity out of their homes as fast as they accrue it, so there are probably still some good candidates out there. 🤷‍♀️

Hinch made an appearance on MLB the other night and his comments on Javy were very pointedly in two separate parts: 'Have to get him healthy' and 'Have to get him in the strike zone', not "Have to get him healthy so he will be back in the strike zone'. I would read that say that Hinch is not really expecting that the hip repair is the fix to Javy's problems with the bat.

IDK, I'd read a little less. I take it as he was repeating the company line from the end of the season and until there is some actual performance to look at (eg ST) there's nothing more to add. To say he was making improvements when there is no game result to validate it would be getting out over his skis (and setting a fan expectation) more than I think Harris is wont to do.

I've seen that a few lenders have started allowing mortgage assumptions, which were once very common, but I don't know if there is any significant movement in that direction. They can at least make a few bucks on fees even if they don't get to write a new note at a higher rate.

The other thing is that there are people still out there, mostly those too young to remember before before 2001, who think that rates are headed back down to 1% or less again, they're not. The end point for the fed rate in a normal world is going to be in the 2.5-4% range so whether they do it in '25 or not until '26, short terms rates aren't going all that much lower anyway. if you have a 5% mortgage, learn to be happy with it.

the run up was funny money, the run down is funny money.

Ever since the species began to think, it has struggled with a way to justify a set of ethics/morals that seem to have a level of universal appeal. In religious systems this is easy - you don't have think too much about why something is right if God told you it was right. But as religiosity fades in Western culture, we'd sort of like to get to a way to argue for that system of morality that we are all comfortable with, that has evolved from the Hebrews and Greeks and for the last 2 millennia, to the western Christian church, by some non-religious means, but philosophically it's not that easy, though folks have been working at it for hundreds of years. To me when you say you are a 'cultural' Christian what you are saying is that you'd like to keep living in the moral milieu of the western Christian church but without the old man in the sky and the Church's downside baggage but you don't have a totally clear idea how to argue for your morality without them. (yes - I'm being a little arch - but just a little)

Same reason we still have diplomat ties with Saudi Arabia after the Kashoggi murder. I would have to think that any administration's concern over airing Saudi dirty laundry in the American media and the foreign policy implications probably had more to due with a decision to let it lie than whatever the facts of the case might have been wrt American law.

as always, the decision is which is more or less crooked, because it makes a difference.

I hope no-one here does, but it's certain a view with currency among right wing evangelicals. The word "you" in English is marvellously slippery. You asked a question where I parsed the "you" as the general "you" which would include the people I'm talking about.

I don't mind Congress Critters being well paid - there are a lot of places in the Country where $250K is not great shakes for a professional. But the payback ought to be tighter financial ethics rules and an end to private money campaign finance slush funds. I know - dream on.....

I'm not so naive to think bad people can't pursue beneficial political policies (often accidental to some other not so beneficial objective!) and vice versa, but to anyone who supports Trump *because* they think he is some kind of latter day Christian Paladin, I would say you are deluded.