Tuesday, November 3, 2026

Who controls bond interest?

 



English: This is flatly false: the cost of public debt does not depend on the markets, but on the central bank. Data, not stories. From the quoted Tweet: Escrivá warns of excessive public debt: "Markets may start to doubt and the situation could get complicated"

Friday, October 30, 2026

The domination of banks (UK edition)

 

Who is really to blame?

 

Tuesday, October 27, 2026

Productive and Unproductive "Lending" (Banks don't lend!!!)

 

Monday, October 26, 2026

Debunking "More Cops is Safer" / And Sacramento Fails to Hold Police Accountable

Alec Karakatsanis debunks Malcolm Gladwell’s plea for even more police.

Why is Everyone Lying?

Excerpt:

Promoting ineffective policies that expand corporate-government surveillance and violence—and then telling people it’s good for them—falls well outside the bounds of reasonable massaging of “messaging.” Because once people on the left start repeating the fascist mantra that 2+2=5—in this case that more authoritarian policies, profitable surveillance, militarized policing, targeting of immigrants, etc. will create a safer and better society—it will become difficult or impossible to dislodge that framework in the future. That’s true not only from a communications perspective, but also because that same police and surveillance infrastructure will be used to hobble or eliminate the left in the meantime. 

Update: Lee Fang debunks Gladwell too...

Excerpt:

And then his final point is that he says preventing violence matters more than responding after. Well, that is true. But all the studies that have been done on preventing violence have shown that what prevents violence the most is the things that mostly police don’t do. It’s things like keeping youth in school or, when they’re out of school, giving them programs to do—all of those things that are not policing.  

 

...and locally: 

Sacramento Decreases its Police Oversight/Accountability 

Excerpt:

When the county grand jury concluded in June that the Sacramento Community Police Review Commission had become largely “window dressing” and recommended reforms to strengthen civilian oversight, City Hall rejected or disputed most findings when approving Mayor Kevin McCarty’s response Sept. 15. The response treated grand jury recommendations no differently than those of the review commission itself.

Of 178 recommendations submitted by the commission since 2016, the Sacramento Police Department voluntarily implemented 10 and the council formally approved one, according to the grand jury.

Nothing has prevented the city from taking up a recommendation from its own police review commission, voting on it or explaining publicly why it would not.

The grand jury report arrived nearly two years into McCarty’s tenure amid a systematic dismantling of Sacramento’s police oversight infrastructure.

The mayor was asked for his vision of police accountability and his response to critics who say civilian oversight has moved in the wrong direction during his time as mayor.

McCarty instead detailed the commission’s current authority and stressed that it operates with transparency.

“We are working to continue improving the committee’s efficacy, to strengthen commissioner training, and to better leverage existing public engagement tools,” McCarty finished. He did not acknowledge changes to both the Office of Policy Safety Accountability (OPSA) and the commission since he took office.


Half of the commission’s members have been replaced over the past two years. One persistent police critic was replaced by the mother of an officer, and McCarty proposed allowing former law enforcement officers to serve on the civilian panel.

Meanwhile, Dr. LaTesha Watson, longtime director of the OPSA, departed under a roughly $271,000 separation agreement, and the office has since lost critical positions to budget cuts.

OPSA provides independent civilian oversight of the Sacramento Police Department and Sacramento Fire Department, investigating officer-involved shootings and reviewing misconduct complaints.

....

[Conclusion]

Since 2025, key leaders have been replaced, oversight staff eliminated, and major findings by the grand jury rejected or disputed.

Sacramento spent years building a civilian police accountability system. Under McCarty and this City Council, much of what was built has been systematically dismantled.

 

 

Friday, October 23, 2026

Why Apartments Deteriorate When Interest Rates Rise



Here's the whole Tweet so you don't have to expand it:

 

If your landlord keeps ignoring a leak in your apartment, there's a decent chance it's on purpose. For a lot of owners right now, paying to fix it just hands money to their bank. An exec who oversees 150,000 apartments says buildings are falling apart fast because of it.

Here's how a landlord ends up there.

Back in 2021, investors were paying crazy prices for apartments. A $100 million building might only bring in about $3.8 million a year after expenses, and people paid it anyway because money was basically free. The buyer puts down $30 million, borrows $70 million at around 3% on a loan whose rate moves with the Fed, and pays about $2.1 million a year in interest. The building covers that almost twice over and everybody feels like a genius.



Then the Fed jacked rates up more than 5 points in about a year and a half. Now buyers want something like a 5.5% return on that same building. Same $3.8 million in income, but at 5.5% the building's only worth about $69 million. And the owner still owes $70 million.

So the $30 million they put in is gone, and not one tenant moved out. It gets worse because the loan floats. The interest bill is now over $4 million a year on $3.8 million of income, and rents in Phoenix, Denver and Austin are down 5 to 6% since 2023. Every month the owner has to pick. Write a check out of pocket to cover the hole, or stop spending money on the building.

Economists have had a name for this since 1977. Stewart Myers called it debt overhang. When you owe more than something is worth, any money you put into it makes it more valuable for whoever ends up owning it, and if the bank forecloses, that's the bank. Spend $500,000 on a new roof and you've basically handed the bank $500,000. So a lot of owners just sit on their cash and let the leak become water damage, then mold, then a building nobody can live in.

The bank is doing the same math from the other side. If it forecloses, it gets a $69 million building with mold in the walls and has to eat the loss right now. If it extends the loan, it can keep carrying it near full value and hope rates come down. Lenders extended a record $384 billion in commercial real estate loans heading into 2025. The exec says some big-name funds haven't paid their mortgages in two or three years and their banks still haven't foreclosed.

The official numbers are finally starting to show it. Freddie Mac's apartment loan delinquency rate is higher than it was at the 2011 peak, the worst in over 20 years. Apartment loans in commercial mortgage bonds hit 8.04% delinquent in September, up from 6.59% a year ago. Then on September 16 the Fed raised rates for the first time since 2023, and every one of those floating-rate loans got more expensive the next month.

Asked how this all ends, the exec said there's a chance it's just "a decade of tolerable pain," and they're praying for that. Honestly, I get why. A slow decade lets the owner and the bank put off the loss for as long as they want. The people living in those buildings are stuck waiting it out, and the roof keeps leaking the whole time.

Wednesday, October 21, 2026

Is Paris Safe?

 

Who controls bond interest?

  Esto es rotundamente falso: el coste de la deuda pública no depende de los mercados, sino del banco central. Datos, no relatos. https://t....