Re: Fannie/Freddie-The Path Is Actually Clearer NOW. On its face, this claim may sound ludicrous off the back of a precipitous drop in valuations due to what some interpret as SM losing his nerve and punting to a hostile Admin. In this thread, I posit the exact opposite.

First, the economic realities: 1) GSEs are the bedrock behind our housing market which in turn is the bedrock behind our economy, 2) after 12 years and $300 bn, gov has thus far squandered the opportunity to recap, 3) this economy recovery is VERY long in the tooth.

When Trump took office, we all hoped that he would usher in a regime change from the Admins that enacted conservatorship and then the Net Worth Sweep. Well, he actually did that with the appointments of SM and MC.

Yet, what always bothered me about SM was his perfect poker-face. For those of you following me for awhile, you know I’ve been saying that I couldn’t tell whether he was just playing bad cop or really was Darth Vader incarnate.

The primary consensus exit preconditions were: 1) there has to be a demonstrable path to meeting cap reqs, 2) the SPS needs to be forgiven, 3) court cases need to be settled.

This is premature, but I want to walk you though why some of the charges coming through are incredible significant. This is one of the recently unsealed complaints.

1512(b) is a very, very strong crime. Section 1512 is about obstruction of the administration of justice. The statute is supposedly about disrupting court proceedings, but it's broader. The way it's written, Congressional Proceedings count.

The statutory maximum for a single violation of 1512(b) is 20 years in prison. That's a lot. Most related federal crimes—231 civil disorder, 2101 riots—are only 5 years on the top end.

But that's not all.

See, federal sentencing is done via a complicated formula that computes sentencing guidelines.

Sentencing guidelines are based on the statute, the elements of the criminal offense, and the defendant's criminal history. It also factors in things like if the defendant takes responsibility, and takes a plea deal, etc.

Would anyone like to admit why he cc'd himself in an email Wei Dai would see at ibiblio's host address? I have a few ideas.

was the .ae ccTLD a nod to Tim Berners-Lee/registries that issue top level country code domains? Is that why Tel Aviv is a place I commonly find OTC/Bitcoin related companies and DAC/dev protocols and operations based? Why UAE/Israel have opened commerce bilaterally in 2020?

Bitcoin is worldwide P2P software and growing into a network of the same ilk, what it can send without interference we can't even grasp yet. Even if you don't like another person, or their religious beliefs, bitcoin doesn't care. I lived through 9/11, my friends died in war.

But even I don't want Bitcoin just for the people I am more likely to have similarities too. And in working with the @_Devcoin guys for a few years now, officially since 2020 - I realized people from all spots on this globe and I share much more in common than everyday Americans.

And I haven't turned my back or spurned Americans either. I'm just saying we need to change our mindset. We want things but we won't admit it takes a whole world to pull off what it is we seek. The media is to blame for this but I also think we're at the point for grownups to act

On Sep 3rd 2020 we closed on a 120k sf glove factory built in 1890 in a small NY town.

Has 45k sf of self storage inside and had $14k a month of net operating income at closing.

Let's breakdown this deal.

A THREAD on creating $2 million out of thin air in 18 months...

👇👇

First saw the property on Loopnet in mid 2018. I ignored it. Who wants to try to operate a business in an old factory in a dying NY town.

A few months later I reached out. Broker sent me financials. They were good. $24k a month in revenue and $10k in expenses.

So I visited the property. It was old. Needed a new roof. Full time manager. Only accessible to customers 9am-5pm M-S. No autopay. A lot of folks paying 1/2 market rent.

I loved everything about it.

But I knew they were going to have trouble selling this thing no matter the profitability, so on July 1 2018 I made a low offer. $750k + seller pays for new $250k roof + $20k in environmental work.

Countered at asking price + $100k credit towards roof.

I ignored the response.

Broker called me back mid September of 2018. Make another offer, he urged.

I knew it was a good biz so I got more aggressive - $1MM + seller pays for roof / environmental.

Declined. Countered with $1.2MM but they'd give me a new roof and do the environmental.

Long rant: So earlier today, I got into a spat over the $15 minimum wage with @JamesSurowiecki and @noamscheiber. Because this disagreement over whether there is a mechanical relationship between raising wages and less jobs is incredibly consequential, I wanted to say more.

1/16

It is a little frustrating to see the response many analysts had to the GDP growth data Chinese released today. These numbers aren’t especially good, and they certainly shouldn’t have been surprising. Back in April and May, when most

2/16

were projecting negative or barely positive GDP growth for China in 2020 (the OECD, for example, expected China’s GDP to contract by 3.7%), I insisted that GDP growth for 2020 would be positive, and probably between 2% and 3%.

Today, it was reported as 2.3%. How did...

3/16

I know? Because I knew that while most of the healthy sources of Chinese growth would contract (except for exports, which would expand given Beijing’s intense supply-side response to the impact of Covid-19), Beijing was going to respond to a significant...

4/16

worsening of the healthy parts of its economy by unleashing enough of the unhealthy, non-productive growth it has long tried to constrain – basically real estate and infrastructure investment – in order to achieve as much economic activity as it...

5/16

needed for domestic political ends.

And that’s exactly what happened. While GDP grew by 6.5% in the fourth quarter, even with substantial tailwinds its retail sales measure – a proxy for consumption – was only up 4.6%, and it was down 3.9% overall in 2020.

"Hello, IT? My economy has stopped working."

"Have you tried -"

"Yes."

"Okay. Check settings. What does it say under software?"

"Compatible with EU membership."

"Do you have that?"

"I just uninstalled it."

"Er - Why?"

"Honestly, I can't remember. Something about fish?"

"Is your fish industry running okay?"

"No, actually that was the first app to crash."

"You see, that one really needs the EU platform installed."

"Really? But my mate told me fishing would run better without it."

"He sounds confused. Can you reinstall your EU app?"

"What about this app my mate gave me instead? It's called Sovereignty 45."

"Mate, don't touch that. It's malware. It'll reduce your economy down to the levels of 1945."

"But those were the glory years! Weren't they?"

"Mate, when were you born?"

"1960. Why?”

“You have also installed the Hostile Environment firewall which is limiting the capacity of other systems”

"But my mate said those things stop viruses."

"Is your mate's name Nigel by any chance?"

"Yes! How did you -"

"Another wild stab. Those aren't viruses, they are EU workers, and they are vital to the smooth running of your systems."

"But I clicked on a pop-up that said it would get rid of them all for me."

THREAD - (Short term Options)

Many of the messages I get regarding options are referencing outside the money (OTM) calls w/ expirations a week or two out (or less)

It's no wonder these traders are often very concerned (even frantic) about the outcome of their trades.

Unless you are an expert technician, and/or have serious market knowledge and intuitive skills, I recommend buying *at least* a month or two of time, and not holding through an earnings report unless you've trimmed your position at a significant profit, or are playing LEAPS.

(LEAPS = Long-term Equity Anticipation Securities
a.k.a. Long term options typically w/ an expiration of longer than a year)

While playing OTM weekly options has the potential for huge returns, & will undoubtedly get your adrenaline pumping, it's also an easy way to lose your💰

*IF* you insist on playing OTM weeklies, be very cognizant of your position sizing.

Each trade should be a *very* small percentage of your account, and you should assume that every trade you make is going to zero.

However, you don't need to play short-term options to make *serious* money over time...

You can still make massive returns on options that have expirations that are 2+ months, even 2+ years out without taking on so much immediate risk.

Today’s GDP release, and in particular how the economy has adapted, a thread.👇

After 6 months of growth, the economy started shrinking again in November as tighter restrictions were in place. (Though there were variations across Wales, England, Scotland and Northern Ireland.) (1/n)

The economy shrank by 2.6% in November. In normal times this would be a significant downturn, but it is much smaller than the falls seen with the first restrictions in the spring: April GDP fell by around 20%. In that sense it is good news. But why the smaller fall? (2/n)

Firstly, some industries remain very depressed. Airlines (air transport in the chart) for example, were operating at very low levels in October so there wasn’t much further for their output to fall. This is different from the picture in Mar/Apr. (3/n)

The same is true, though perhaps less pronounced, for bars/restaurants and other parts of the service sector. (4/n)

Originally posted Jan 5th - https://t.co/Vim3JlOtlZ

FULTON CO.

We're looking at "book votes." That is, people who are marked as having voted in the voter rolls. This is how Floyd County was detected - you had an excess of voters in the book vs. what was recorded on machines.

Jan 5th I mapped the book votes visually at a precinct level and found curious correlations that bears public scrutiny.

Screencaps are not from a public site, but underlying data given is real, public, and verifiable.

We'll be taking a precinct-by-precinct look at Fulton county excess votes. Excess meaning more recorded votes than book.

Fulton has 10K+ excess votes. This has been blamed on stale record keeping. At a precinct level, there are 14700 "excess" votes and 3900 "missing" votes.

This is a precinct map of Fulton County. There'll be a lot of data, so refer to these maps over and over until you understand. Here, the red and yellow/orange areas are where the most excess votes are (by ratio).

And for background context - this is a map showing where Trump votes are. This is a *relative* coloring not an absolute coloring (otherwise it'd be all blue). Fulton is strongly Democratic so the red areas are actually like 55% Trump at best whereas the blue areas are <5% Trump.