Author | Lightnews

May Odaigahara @monthofmay.bsky.social · 6h

go to bed, everyone

Guy Trivago @convolutedname.bsky.social · 6h

This is the NJ average btw. you wouldn't think it is this from the discourse on here.

May Odaigahara @monthofmay.bsky.social · 7h

The new Anna von Hausswolff album is so good. As an Ethel Cain hater I don't love that she's on this but the song she's on is one of the more forgettable ones. My queen has still got it

May Odaigahara @monthofmay.bsky.social · 1d

my advice to everyone is to simply ignore early voting data

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May Odaigahara @monthofmay.bsky.social · 2d

As a Japanese-American person I just can't ever root against Shohei (and Yoshinobu and now Roki)

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May Odaigahara @monthofmay.bsky.social · 2d

As a hater it does amuse me to see all the dorks on here upset that the Dodgers won, especially after all of the "muh narrative" talk

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Nute @nutedawn.bsky.social · 2d

While this is true, the fact that only 6% could say it was “mostly violent” after weeks of prepping the ground by the admin really does show that objective reality is not entirely irrelevant to popular perceptions

Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 2d

But it's also weird they ask people if No Kings was violent, like it was a matter of opinion rather than fact that it wasn't. It's true some people think the earth is flat; it's not true that it might be flat as a result of those opinions.

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May Odaigahara @monthofmay.bsky.social · 2d

I love woke boomers

Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 2d

But it's also weird they ask people if No Kings was violent, like it was a matter of opinion rather than fact that it wasn't. It's true some people think the earth is flat; it's not true that it might be flat as a result of those opinions.

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May Odaigahara @monthofmay.bsky.social · 3d

nobody do anything crazy before I listen to the new Anna Von Hausswolff album

May Odaigahara @monthofmay.bsky.social · 3d

I've long said this - LLMs can basically do whatever most pundits can (especially now that they can browse the web). Now whether this is a good or bad thing...

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May Odaigahara @monthofmay.bsky.social · 4d

I'm biased because I like him a lot but every piece of messaging and content he puts out is so fucking good

Zohran Kwame Mamdani @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social · 4d

For New Yorkers who work the night shift, it can be nearly impossible to participate in political life of our city.

So tonight we’re bringing this campaign to them — starting with taxi drivers waiting at LaGuardia.

Zohran with his hand on his chest leaning into the passenger side window of a taxi, talking with the driver.

Zohran extending his hand to shake hands with a taxi driver through the window.

An airport worker showing Zohran something on his phone, both are smiling.

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May Odaigahara @monthofmay.bsky.social · 4d

we love suffering sir, especially people in red states. keep it coming!

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May Odaigahara @monthofmay.bsky.social · 4d

please keep putting this guy on tv, the dems would be so owned

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 4d

JD Vance: "The suffering is going to get a lot worse."

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George Pearkes @peark.es · 5d

Fed cuts 25 bps as expected, Miran dissent (lol loser), Schmid dissented in favor of no change (hawkish!).

QT ends December 1.

George Pearkes @peark.es · 5d

Federal Reserve policy decision in about 10 minutes. Statement will be here @ 2:00p ET -> www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/p...

Expect a 25 bps cut. A signal of more cuts to come would be dovish. Also quite possible they end QT given liquidity pressure is mounting (but not a major problem, yet)

Liquidity. One area of interest for the FOMC this week that has little to do
with the economy or the lack of data due to the government shutdown is
the rapid evaporation of liquidity over the past few months. For the
purposes of this discussion, when we say “liquidity” we mean sufficient
supplies of liquid assets in the repo market and Fed Funds market to keep
rates on the target set by the FOMC.
To illustrate, below we show the spread between the midpoint of the Fed
Funds target range and market repo rates captured by the Secured
Overnight Funding Rate (SOFR) benchmark that replaced LIBOR. SOFR is
volume-weighted median repo rate and includes both tri-party repo where
large batches of securities are financed via a clearing bank and deliveryversus-payment transactions which can reference general collateral or
specific issues. It’s a comprehensive snapshot of repo markets and the
rates they charge.
This spread is quite volatile, so we show it with a LOESS trend, a form of
regression designed to isolate the central tendency of a series with respect
to time. Think of it as a fancier version of a moving average. As shown,
while there were some spikes in the spread last fall, the trend never moved
above zero and was well below its current range (around 10 bps above the
midpoint). Since the start of September, there have been four different
days when SOFR printed above the Fed Funds target range ceiling.
Liquidity (con’t). As for the trend, it’s now the highest since the fall of 2019
when repo rates surged thanks to excess runoff during the quantitative
tightening program of the time. If repo were to print consistently above the
Fed Funds target range, it would represent a failure of monetary policy to
control short-term interest rates, which would be a huge problem for
implementation of monetary policy.
The good news is that the financial system looks less desperate for liquidity
now than it did then. For example, the spread between 99th percentile
(highest) and 1
st per…

Liquidity (con’t). In addition to rolloff, the more acute driver right now has
been the surge in the Treasury General Account. After passage of the OBBB
this past summer, the debt limit was raised which allowed Treasury to
rebuild its cash position (the TGA is effectively Treasury’s checking
account). As shown below, it’s risen by over $600bn in the past three
months. Since the TGA is a liability of the Fed, assuming no change in Fed
assets (and because of rolloff they are actually declining right now)
increases in the TGA reduce liquidity elsewhere. Reserve assets of banks
have fallen by over $450bn in the same period, illustrating the reduction of
liquidity thanks to the changing composition of the Fed’s balance sheet.
Liquidity (con’t). In addition to rolloff and the TGA balance rising, we also
note that banks are illustrating a very strong preference to hold reserves in
recent years. Reserves as a share of assets surged from 2008 to 2014 as QE
created reserves that banks had to hold (as no other entities can hold them
by law). The QE asset swap (which converts private sector holdings of
bonds to holdings of deposits, with banks matching those deposit liabilities
with reserve assets and the Fed matching reserve liabilities with security
assets) meant reserves soared as a share of bank assets. QT during the late
2010s drove down the share, but ultimately it bottomed (and created
liquidity issues) at much higher levels than pre-crisis. That elevated reserve
asset allocation by banks was driven mostly by post-GFC regulation which
required greater liquidity in bank assets; reserves are by far the most liquid
asset available. Another round of QE during COVID drove bank reserves as
a share of assets back up again, but they’ve since stayed stable around 13%
instead of falling to single digits.
That may be in part because banks are sitting on significant paper losses in
bond portfolios purchased during the COVID stimulus. As shown above, at
their peak, unrealized losses …

Liquidity (con’t). In other words, banks are holding more cash (reserves)
than they otherwise might so they don’t have to book losses by selling
bonds marked far above market prices, which would reduce the book value
of equity. Over time, those underwater bonds will amortize down and asset
growth will reduce their relevance, which is what has happened since
2021. But while that process plays out demand for reserves will remain
inflated and combined with QT and the TGA rebuild liquidity conditions are
tight as a result.
Taken together, we would not be surprised to see the FOMC halt QT in
aggregate (while continuing to shift composition of the balance sheet away
from mortgage bonds and towards Treasuries, a process which should not
have a significant effect on liquidity conditions). On the other hand, there is
an insurance policy: since 2019, the FOMC has stood up an equivalent to
the ON RRP designed to automatically provide liquidity via repo markets
rather than remove it. So far that tool has not been used and Fed repo
assets (provision of liquidity to the financial system via repo) has been
negligible. Either way, expect some questions about liquidity for Chair
Powell and in the minutes to this meeting when they are released at a lag.
One final note. This evolving liquidity backdrop makes Dallas Fed President
Lorie Logan’s September 25 speech (link) calling to move the policy target
from the Fed Funds rate to a repo rate all the more interesting. While this
doesn’t seem likely to happen soon, it’s

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Ned Resnikoff @resnikoff.bsky.social · 6d

I have come to believe that becoming a billionaire causes literal, physiological brain damage.

Gav Maclean @gavmaclean.bsky.social · 6d

At a fundamental level, we have to accept much of silicon valley has gone insane.

An ex-Intel CEO’s mission to build a Christian AI: ‘hasten the coming of Christ’s return’

Patrick Gelsinger, executive chairman of Gloo, has made it his mission to advance Christian principles in Silicon Valley

www.theguardian.com

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Nathan Goldwag @goldwagnathan.bsky.social · 6d

What almost everyone who talks about this means is "the prominent cultural and social visibility and influence of LGBT people" which does upset a lot of people, but is also not something that the Democratic Party can actually affect without a totalitarian cultural revolution.

Michael Hobbes @michaelhobbes.bsky.social · 6d

The actual finding here is that a huge percentage of the population believes things that are not true. Democrats objectively did not spend significant time on climate change or LGBTQ issues in the last election campaign.

Joe Walsh @walshfreedom.bsky.social · 7d

Duh. Those of us on the ground last year actually speaking with middle class/working class voters and who heard from these voters every single day the same - “Trump is an asshole, but Democrats are out of touch” - could’ve saved my new political party a lot of time & money producing this “report.”👇

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May Odaigahara @monthofmay.bsky.social · 7d

I love all things Downtempo and Miki Nakatani's Shiseikatsu is just a shining example of the genre. Wonderfully lush but also distant and a little cold.

Album art of "Shiseikatsu" by Miki Nakatani

May Odaigahara @monthofmay.bsky.social · 7d

as it turns out, voters really don't care if their real wages are actually rising, they just see that eggs are 8$ or whatever and that sticks in their mind for 100 years