Reading History
Rates (and bond yields and financing costs for homes) may seem high to you, but that's just because you're too young to remember what "normal" is.
As many late-twenty and early-thirtysomethings whose parents aren't on board with the whole "Moving back home to save money" trend might've been apprised by mom and dad recently, a 7.3% mortgage actually isn't unusual at all. It's only high relative to the last 20 years.
But, as I'm always keen to remind the curmudgeons among you, 1999 might as well
Now that’s how you make a list.
Just to validate my social status, I have copies of two of Homer’s best tomes and one of my all time favorites, H.L. Mencken’s Portable Curmudgeon. As Popeye often said, “I yam what I yam.”
As recently as 2019, everyone was quoting structural factors for low interest rates. COVID was disruptive, no doubt, but its impact is finite in time.
The rest is mostly about 2 men. Putin and Xi. Should they leave the scene…