Trump Voters Driven by Fear of Losing Status, Not Economic Anxiety, Study Finds

A study published on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences questions that explanation, the latest to suggest that Trump voters weren’t driven by anger over the past, but rather fear of what may come. White, Christian and male voters, the study suggests, turned to Mr. Trump because they felt their status was at risk.

“It’s much more of a symbolic threat that people feel,’’ said Diana C. Mutz, the author of the study and a political science and communications professor at the University of Pennsylvania, where she directs the Institute for the Study of Citizens and Politics. “It’s not a threat to their own economic well-being; it’s a threat to their group’s dominance in our country over all.”

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Homebuyers are stretching their budgets and mortgage limits to win bidding wars

LOL! Here we go again.

"When they're more confident they are willing to stretch a little further," said Mike Graff, a mortgage consultant with Prosperity Home Mortgage. "I think that some people realize, look, they're not going to be in this house for 30 years, so moving to an ARM, when the rate is fixed for a period of time, they're definitely more comfortable with something like that to lower their payment or to kind of stretch their budget a bit, so we have seen an uptick in that."

Borrowers also have more options for low down payment loans, options that were not available as recently as just a few years ago. Fannie Mae reintroduced a 3 percent down payment loan that it had discontinued during the recession, and some private lenders are venturing back into subprime, although they're calling them "nonprime" loans. These are mortgages to borrowers with lower credit scores.

Higher debt-to-income ratios

After holding steady for two years, the share of conventional loans backed by Fannie Mae with down payments of less than 10 percent rose from 12 percent to 14 percent in 2017. The expectation is that it will be even higher this year.

"Availability of some low-down-payment loans is really much more widespread than previously, you're seeing things like debt-to-income ratios increase," said Mike Fratantoni, chief economist at the Mortgage Bankers Association.

Underwriting, he adds, however, is still quite conservative.

"Not the products that really led to big payment shocks in the last crisis," Fratantoni said.

Banks are also willing to take on more risk in the jumbo loan space. They hold these loans on their balance sheets.

"You could always put a low down payment on lower-priced homes, but once you start getting into that five, six, seven, eight hundred thousand-dollar price range, it typically was 20 percent, whereas now you can do 5 percent, so we are seeing that absolutely, especially within the past year, that has spiked up," said Prosperity Home Mortgage's Graff.

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Face to Face: Saudi Arabia-Iran

An in-depth look at the military spending, the economy and the drivers of growth for the two regional rivals.

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State pension funds continue to fall behind. Here's how much you owe

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A picture of U.S. foreign policy

Creating A Perpetual War Machine

The United States has taken Thucydides’s famed Melian Dialogue and turned it inside out. Centuries before Augustine, the great Athenian historian wrote, “The strong do what they will, while the weak suffer what they must.”Strength confers choice; weakness restricts it. That’s the way the world works, so at least Thucydides believed. Yet the inverted Melian Dialogue that prevails in present-day Washington seemingly goes like this: strength imposes obligations and limits choice. In other words, we gotta keep doing what we’ve been doing, no matter what.

Making such a situation all the more puzzling is the might and majesty of America’s armed forces. By common consent, the United States today has the world’s best military. By some estimates, it may be the best in recorded history. It’s certainly the most expensive and hardest working on the planet.

Yet in the post-Cold War era when the relative strength of U.S. forces reached its zenith, our well-endowed, well-trained, well-equipped, and highly disciplined troops have proven unable to accomplish any of the core tasks to which they’ve been assigned. This has been especially true since 9/11.

We send the troops off to war, but they don’t achieve peace. Instead, America’s wars and skirmishes simply drag on, seemingly without end. We just keep doing what we’ve been doing, a circumstance that both Augustine and Thucydides would undoubtedly have found baffling.

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The Law: Presidential Deception in Foreign Policy Making: Military Intervention in Libya 2011

Abstract

How did a U.S.‐led, U.N.‐ approved military intervention to protect civilians in Libya end up enabling rebels to overthrow the Qaddafi regime? A variety of evidence shows that the Obama administration was dishonest in publicly describing its military purpose as solely humanitarian when it was largely directed towards regime change. Presidential deception prevented the emergence of alternative policies that might have avoided Libya's postwar chaos while obfuscating U.S. responsibility for that consequence. The essence of the deception is set forth below in contrasting statements by President Obama and former Central Intelligence Agency Director and Secretary of Defense Panetta.

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America Can’t Be Trusted Anymore

But wait, there’s more! The multinational operation against Qaddafi was authorized by U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973, and Russia agreed to abstain on the resolution because its stated purpose was preventing Qaddafi from attacking civilians in Benghazi, not toppling the regime. However, as Stephen R. Weissman has shown in an important article, regime change was on U.S. officials’ minds from the get-go, and they soon blew right past the terms of the resolution. As former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates later recalled, “The Russians felt they had been played for suckers on Libya. They felt there had been a bait and switch.” And they were right. So, if you’re ever wondering why Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly blocked Security Council action over the disaster in Syria, there’s at least part of your answer.

Needless to say, the lessons of Libya have not been lost on other countries. North Korean media have repeatedly invoked this example to justify the country’s nuclear weapons program and to warn against ever trusting assurances from the United States. And it doesn’t take a genius to figure out why. If you were Kim Jong Un, would you rather pin your survival on a nuclear deterrent of your own or promises from the United States?

Which brings us to Donald Trump. The world is now dealing with a U.S. president who appears to have no firm convictions or beliefs, the attention span of a hummingbird, and who apparently makes important national security decisions on the basis of whatever fairytale he just saw on Fox & Friends. As near as one can tell, he never saw a treaty or agreement signed by his predecessor that he liked, even though he has trouble explaining what’s wrong with any of them. He just likes to talk about “tearing them up” no matter what the consequences may be.

Link here.

Subprime mortgages make a comeback—with a new name and soaring demand

Here we go again . . . government doing everything in it power to jack up the cost of housing.  And the profits of the FIRE parasites.

"Last summer, Fannie Mae announced it would relax its lending standards for prime loans, allowing borrowers with higher debt and lower credit scores to obtain loans without additional risk overlays, such as large down payments and a year's worth of cash reserves.

Fannie Mae raised its debt-to-income (DTI) limit from 45 percent to 50 percent. DTI is the amount of total debt a borrower can have compared to his or her income. As a result, demand from buyers with higher debt exceeded all expectations. The share of high DTI loans jumped from 6 percent in January 2017 to nearly 20 percent by the end of February 2018, according to a study by the Urban Institute.

• 'From January to July 2017, Fannie purchased 80,467 loans with DTI ratios between 45 and 50 percent. But from August 2017 to February 2018, Fannie purchased 181,911 loans in the same DTI bucket. This increase of more than 100,000 loans in just seven months exceeded our estimate (85,000 additional Fannie loans annually) and Fannie's expectations.' – Urban Institute

The mortgage industry expectation was that Fannie Mae would mitigate the additional risk with other factors, like a higher necessary credit score, but that was not added. The mortgage insurers balked, since they would be on the hook for the risk, so last month Fannie Mae 'recalibrated' its risk assessment criteria again."

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More government efforts to make housing unaffordable

In summer 2017, Fannie Mae increased the number of loans made to borrowers with debt-to-income ratios of up to 50%, up from a typical limit of 45%. Freddie Mac did the same thing.  Fannie’s policy change has resulted in 100,000 new mortgages that otherwise wouldn’t have been made last year and early this year, according to the Urban Institute.

Paulsen Says ‘Proceed With Caution’ Across Many Asset Classes

“Perhaps the Markets Message Indicator peak in January will prove only temporary. However, its current warning comes when the indicator is near the peaks of 2000 and 2007,” Paulsen wrote in a note to clients Monday. “That is, it suggests investor confidence and aggressiveness ‘across all financial markets’ is nearly as pronounced today as it was at the last two major stock market tops.”

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Trump and his generals lock horns over Syria

More from Mr. Bhadrakumar - I really like reading his observations . . .

"This was exactly what happened to President Barack Obama who wanted to pull out of Afghanistan. The generals completely outflanked him and before he knew what he was doing, he allowed the “surge” in 2010 – and, zoom, the troop deployment shot up to 140000. Today, Obama is gone, but the generals are still there. The war is stupid and the generals too admit that it cannot be won. But nonetheless, they want an open-ended stay in Afghanistan.

In the final analysis, it is all about the corporate interests of the military – more budget allocation, more 'good times', more empire building. And the war profiteers – military-industrial complex, think tankers, ex-faujis on the conference circuit, congressmen, the correspondents on the Pentagon press pool all travel in the gravy train at the tax payers’ expense.

President Donald Trump is now facing the moment of truth. He has decided that the US troops should return home from Syria, but is facing resistance form the military. The generals have already decided that there shall be an open-ended military presence in Syria. In fact, they are busy planning more bases in Syria. The argument being touted is that the ISIS may stage a comeback. The real reason could be that the Pentagon wants to turn Syria into a theatre in the New Cold War to fight Russia. With a view to rally the Israeli lobby, the generals also invoke the spectre of Iranian influence in Syria."

Spot. Fucking. On.

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Rand Paul: It's Time for a New American Foreign Policy

We need a foreign policy that recognizes its own limits, a common sense realism of strength, limited action, full diplomatic engagement and free trade.

Here’s how I see the most important principles of this foreign policy.

First, the use of force must always be on the table, but rarely used. War should be the last resort, not the first.

War is necessary when America is attacked or directly and clearly threatened, and when we have exhausted all measures short of war.

The second principle is that Congress, the people’s representative, must authorize the decision to intervene.

The most serious decision we make as a nation is to send our sons or daughters to war. We should make it together, and we should vote on it.

Finally, how do we solve non-military challenges in places like Asia and Eastern Europe?

That’s where the third principle comes in—a firm, full commitment to diplomacy and leadership.

Hysteria over election-meddling threatens to reignite the Cold War.

Russia, at times, is our adversary, but it need not be our permanent enemy.

Whether it is the threat of ISIS, or the situations in Iran and Syria, it would be in our interest to work together with Russia where possible, yet this opportunity is slipping by. Obsession with Russian “collusion” or other conspiracies involving the Kremlin and the administration have frozen the narrative and hampered what I believe to be the president’s good instincts on the proper relationship with Russia.

Link here.

Saudi Arabia Has Become a Geopolitical Loose Cannon

The Saudi state is an artifact of Western militarism and imperialism, growing out of the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire after World War I. Abdul Aziz ibn Saud eventually fulfilled his lengthy quest to unify the peninsula. Discovery of oil in 1938 gave his country an unexpected international importance.

Four decades ago the Islamic revolution in Iran, which inspired Shia in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s eastern provinces, and seizure of Mecca’s Grand Mosque by Islamic extremists caused the monarchy to turn its theocracy in a totalitarian direction. The royals enforced the Wahhabist clergy’s fundamentalist interpretation of Islam in return for the latter urging obedience to the Saudi state. Hence, ruling princes mixed private libertinism with public piety, treated women as inferior, prohibited non-Muslim faiths, and deployed the mutawa, or religious police. Also, they provided large-scale subsidies to spread Wahhabism abroad, through mosques, schools, teachers and textbooks.

The result was a decrepit, corrupt gerontocracy undermining virtually every Western value and interest. However, the doddering monarchy, passed among the aging sons of ibn Saud, possessed oil and money aplenty. This earned the regime plenty of affection in the West, and especially the United States.

Link here.

PERSPECTIVE: To Truly Fight Terror, Counter Salafist Jihadist Ideology First

Additionally, several ISIS defectors I interviewed specifically told me how al-Wahhab’s Kitab at-Tawhid was the chief and the most important part of their training, a book also widely and historically adopted by today’s Saudi Arabia. Furthermore, I observed that Salafist literature and books were adopted by terrorists including al-Qaeda for their indoctrination and training during the investigations I carried out as a counterterrorism police chief in Turkey.

This is the reason Sheikh Adel al-Kalbani, the former Imam of Kaaba, the Grand Mosque of the Prophet Muhammad in Mecca, and a Salafi himself, openly and sincerely admitted that “ISIS is a true product of Salafism, and we must deal with it with full transparency.”

The fact is, some Saudi princes, clerics, and charities for decades have been pouring out billions of dollars to promote their understanding of Islam, Wahhabism. They have found willing partners among the vulnerable populations in the Central Asian and Afghan-Pakistani regions, Africa, the Balkans and even in Europe. These funders indirectly assist ISIS and al-Qaeda-friendly organizations to fast-track their recruitments process on their behalf. In the leaked U.S. embassy cables, it was openly addressed that Saudi Arabia was “a critical source of terrorist funding” where the money is mostly spent on training of Wahhabi clerics, production and distribution of Wahhabi textbooks, media outreach and donations to local schools or cultural centers.

Thanks to the Saudis spreading Salafism all over the world, these terrorists reach ideologically ripe people among their targeted groups who are already educated by the Wahhabis.

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Licence to kill

From Leon Trotsky, killed with an ice pick in Mexico, to Alexander Litvinenko, poisoned with polonium in London, Russia’s security services have undoubtedly liquidated many opponents of the Kremlin living abroad. Other countries have resorted to such measures without triggering the same diplomatic uproar. France, Germany and the US have been involved in the kind of state-sponsored assassination that has so offended Johnson, yet this has not stopped them joining him and May in railing against Russia.

Israel has taken great care to avoid commenting, perhaps because it is one of the countries that most frequently ‘carry out this kind of operation, known as an “extraterritorial elimination”’. The list of Palestinians, including official representatives, killed by Israel’s secret service abroad makes the Russians look like amateurs: at least half a dozen in Paris alone, without serious consequences. Moroccan opposition leader Mehdi Ben Barka also disappeared in Paris; the African National Congress’s chief representative in France, Dulcie September, and more recently three Kurdish activists, were assassinated there. Across the Atlantic, Orlando Letelier, a minister under former Chilean president Salvador Allende, was killed in Washington DC by agents of Augusto Pinochet, which did not stop Ronald Reagan from feting Pinochet; and Margaret Thatcher was happy to drink tea (without polonium) with the dictator and present him with a silver dish.

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Speaking Freely: Paul Kantner

Britain's best long-distance walks

David Bathurst, author of a new book on Britain's big walks, picks his top 10 hiking trails, from classics like the Pennine Way to less well trodden routes

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Here's a link to company offering walking holidays.