What began in March as a limited ban on evicting tenants who received federal assistance soon snowballed into a total ban on evictions, with a realtors' group telling Biden back in January that 40 million Americans were already in arrears on rent, to the tune of $70 billion in missed payments.Meanwhile over in the UK housing market: UK house prices now 30% higher than pre-2008 crisis peak
Biden had already exhausted his own options by declaring a month-long extension of the benefits in June, at a time when 14% of American adult renters were behind on paying their landlords.
Many states have disbursed less than 5% of their share of the $45 billion Congress earmarked for such aid.
At least 3.6 million Americans were facing eviction within the next two months as of July 5, the US Census Bureau's Household Pulse Survey showed. Eviction proceedings often take time to initiate, however, meaning many more may face a similar fate before the end of the year.
While federal Covid-19 assistance for those who kept their jobs - perhaps taking a pay cut or reducing to part-time - has topped out at only a few thousand dollars over the past 18 months, unemployment payments were for some time so lucrative that many gave up looking for work entirely, realizing they could make more money sitting at home collecting checks. These payments have doubtless saved millions more from potential eviction, but they're also starting to dry up as many states face worker shortages, meaning those jobless masses have to find work again.
Though the moratorium has failed to help some renters, it has succeeded in starving out the mom-and-pop landlords who couldn't afford to lose a year's worth of rent from their tenants, forcing them to sell their properties to their much larger institutional brethren, who increasingly control housing policy.
Only a third of these small landlords qualified for what little mortgage relief has been doled out, and none were spared the yearly expense of property taxes. But private equity firms such as Blackstone, with trillions of dollars in assets to absorb deadbeat tenants, have happily moved in to snap up entire neighborhoods, further driving up rents in a vicious cycle that invariably leaves the average American worse off.
Indeed, the private equity firms have apparently gotten greedy, buying up houses across the US for thousands of dollars more than they're worth. So much so, in fact, that, in an already hugely inflated market, home sales actually dropped unexpectedly for the month of June everywhere except the northeastern states.
This shocking halt to ever-increasing housing costs suggested to observers that the market might - at least temporarily - have bitten off more than it could chew. Biden may simply be trying to calm things down, but with Congress knee-deep in virtue-signaling hearings, it's unlikely it'll have time to actually stop what it's doing and save Americans' lives.
"we condemn the mass arrests and detentions of protestors in Cuba and call on the government to respect the universal rights and freedoms of the Cuban people, including the free flow of information to all Cubans..... On July 11, tens of thousands of Cuban citizens participated in peaceful demonstrations across the country to protest deteriorating living conditions and to demand change. They exercised universal freedoms of expression and assembly, rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights..."
"has a real problem. He is sitting on top of an economy that has nuclear weapons and oil wealth and nothing else. Nothing else. Their economy is like the eighth ... largest in the world. He knows he's in real trouble - which makes him even more dangerous, in my opinion."
"The process of reopening the economy is unprecedented, as was the shutdown at the onset of the pandemic. As the reopening continues, bottlenecks, hiring difficulties, and other constraints could continue to limit how quickly supply can adjust, raising the possibility that inflation could turn out to be higher and more persistent than we expect."
"Given the current situation, I think it makes sense to consider deploying strongholds of Russian border guards across the whole Armenian-Azerbaijani border to allow for the demarcation of the border, without the risk of firefights."Officials in Yerevan announced that three soldiers had died and five had been wounded after a fatal skirmish along the frontier on Wednesday evening. Casualties were also reported on the Azerbaijani side of the border. Russian peacekeepers are already stationed in outposts near key towns and villages as part of the Moscow-backed deal, signed last year, that paused the fighting in a brief but violent war between the two nations.
Comment: Those countries with leadership that correctly perceive the outcome of the Fed policy have been preparing:
- Why are Russia and China buying gold at a fever pace?
- Gold is always shiny but US dollar is a 'hyperinflated bubble' ready to pop - RT's Keiser Report
- Peter Schiff: Russia prudently boosts gold reserves with eye on impending US dollar crisis
- China buying gold & dumping dollar assets as trade war with US intensifies
- India reducing its US Treasury securities and buying gold instead
- Turks heeding Erdogan's call to get rid of dollars & buy gold
Even state level officials are being prudent:Texas gives Wall Street bankers gold finger, moves to extract its gold from FED