Acting all hard, scratching turntables in the back of a Prius? Yea, that’s genius.

June Producer Inflation -Overall PPI Month/Month: -0.4% -Core PPI Month/Month: +0.3% -Overall PPI Year/Year: +7% -Core PPI Year/Year: +2.4% -Lower energy costs this month. This is also a time to remind that ‘Overall’ is a better macroeconomic indicator because it smooths out the volatility of energy and food prices. June Retail Sales -Overall Retail Sales [...]

Priceless video on pricey food culture. Legit music too. (hat tip JW)

Consumer Inflation: CPI – Month/Month (overall) +0.2% CPI – Year/Year (overall) +3.6% CPI – Month/Month core (less food & energy) 0.3% CPI – Year/Year core (less food & energy) 1.5% Month/Month core is a tenth above “acceptable.” CPI details here. Mortgage Applications: Purchase Index – Week/Week Change 4.5 % Refinance Index – Week/Week Change 16.5 [...]

Retail sales dropped 0.2% in May, the first drop in 11 months, but economists were expecting a 0.4% to 0.5% drop so stocks are rallying on the news plus some favorable earnings today (S&P 500 +16 to 1288). Meanwhile rates are up as mortgage bonds sell sharply (FNMA 4% coupon -62 basis points) on inflation [...]

The good news is that rates begin the May 16 trading week near 2011 lows. The bad news is that it’s because of a frail economy. Rates drop when bond prices rise, and mortgage bonds have rallied the last four weeks on lower home prices, weak GDP, and low core inflation. Bonds are topped out [...]

Not long ago, a loan agent could fund a mortgage with a borrower’s name and social security number. Those agents are called mirror foggers, as in: “if you can fog a mirror, you can close some loans.” But Quality Control thankfully returned, so you can’t get by on just breathing and self admiration anymore. Today’s [...]

Today’s links are in pairs, starting with milk: the first explains food inflation using The Milkman Indicator, the second is about a guy in a cow suit who robbed 26 gallons of milk from Walmart. That insanity flows to The Donald, who comedians pray will be president, but two links below show this is no [...]

Stocks are up slightly and bonds are even today after slightly higher consumer inflation and better than expected pending home sales reports are washing each other out. This even-rate, higher-stock mood kicks off a big week of inflation, home price, and employment data that could push rates up. The Fed’s preferred measure of inflation, the [...]

Flat consumer inflation and higher business inflation are canceling each other out this morning, leading to relatively flat mortgage bond trading. The result is rates (on 30yr fixed loans up to $417k) that are holding about 4.875%. We’ll discuss the debate between higher business inflation and flat consumer inflation throughout this week. For now here’s [...]