John T. Reed’s news blog

‘Real Estate Isn’t Always a[n inflation] Shelter’ is the headline in a WSJ article from yesterday. Excuse me. Real estate is not a dollar-denominated asset. ALL assets that are NOT dollar-denominated ARE inflation hedges. What is the author Carol Ryan talking about? When inflation accelerates, as in WW II and the 1970s, it is common for the federal government to enact price controls including rent controls. NYC still has rent control left over from WW II. But Ryan manages never to mention rent control in an article about inflation other than mentioning that already existing German “government regulations cap” residential...

Wall Street Journal today has an article about Argentines coping with inflation by hoarding. Yeah. My hyperinflation book has a chapter titled “Advance purchase and sale.” It is about stocking up on necessities now before the prices get higher. Obvious hedge against inflation. I also say to get rid of all the stuff you may try to sell via Craiglist and eBay now rather than when everyone in America is doing that. . I do NOT have a freezer. Hoarding is trickier than that. I have lots of UHT milk, Mormon dry pack #10 cans of food, and freeze-dried #10...

An article in today's Wall Street Journal tells of a top high school senior who got rejected by ten prestigious colleges. Apparently, it is even harder to get into those schools than it was in previous absurdly difficult years. The article reveals what she and her parents did wrong. She is white. That was unfixable absent a Rachel Dolezal false claim to "identify" as black. To get admitted to Harvard as a white, she needed to be a recruited athlete. My oldest son got into Ivy League Columbia, Dartmouth, and Yale as a recruited football player. He graduated from Columbia...

Today’s Wall Street Journal seems like it is trying to claim the home market has stopped being “crazy.” Evidence? The number of home sales is falling. .Yeah, not enough listings. That has little to do with home prices. If anything, smaller inventory raises prices. .Some prospective buyers have left the market apparently due to higher mortgage interest rates. That is a mistake on their part. Some sellers HAVE to sell now for various reasons. The higher mortgage interest rates should force those sellers to lower their prices. Although there are a lot of all cash buyers and low loan-to-value ratio buyers so maybe...