Cigarbutt

Positive development: April 8 (Reuters) - An Oregon appeals court on Wednesday ruled in favor of PacifiCorp in litigation over a series of Oregon wildfires in 2020, saying a trial judge erred in letting the case against the Berkshire Hathaway-owned utility proceed as a class action. The decision by the Oregon Court of Appeals in Salem could reduce PacifiCorp’s overall liability, which the utility has estimated could total tens of billions of dollars. PacifiCorp has denied claims by thousands of Oregon residents and business owners who accused it of causing several wildfires by negligently failing to shut off power lines during a Labor Day weekend windstorm in 2020. The appeals court said a trial judge overseeing the litigation erred in instructing jurors they could "assume that the evidence at the trial applies to all class members," and that the error was prejudicial to PacifiCorp. Lawyers for fire victims did not immediately respond to requests for comment. PacifiCorp did not immediately respond to similar requests.

https://fortune.com/2025/12/04/rich-people-flooding-dollar-stores-us-affordability-crisis/

Ok you don't like that source of info... Here's another, the findings are not that controversial, it just is what it is... https://snfagora.jhu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Understanding-Evolving-Republican-Attitudes-Towards-Democracy.pdf The link is interesting as it subdivides republicans into Trump-first, Party-first and Constitution first. Disclosure: when the place where i live becomes the 51st state, i will be a Constitution-first type, you? (rhetorical question) It's the relative rise of the faction that treats people with different viewpoints as filth/vermin that i tend to worry about.

This is about a previous discussion concerning housing affordability. The question was: To what extent is housing "unaffordable" these days, relevant for a typical new first-time buyer in a typical large city in North America, UK etc. There is a study that just came out from my jurisdiction (in or around Montreal) comparing key issues including downpayment (deposit), comparing 2015 to 2025. This is relevant from my point of view since we bought at a low point in the cycle (1996) and our oldest child has recently bought, another is buying and another is about to. Key findings: In the last ten years: -prices have more than doubled -monthly mortgage payments have been multiplied by 2-3 -Downpayments have been multiplied by 2.7 -during a time when after-tax revenues have increased by about 20% So the ratio of mortgage payments to after-tax revenue has increased from 26% to 48%. -----) Another way to look at this housing affordability issue is the fact that the time necessary to accumulate the minimal downpayment has increased from 5.4 years to 11.6 years. Ok not the end of the world but time is money and the additional 6 years is worth something?, especially since i highly doubt that present-day first time buyers will have the returns 'enjoyed' in the last few years. Time will tell, i guess.

Some use the words slipping, sliding etc but whatever it is, it's not exactly bipartisan: Isn't this a movie that 'we' have seen before?

You are not the only person.

Thank you KJP, that was interesting. The second case is typical legal work used to resolve conflicting 'powers' at the margin. The first case is both interesting and relevant (versus power to order tariffs for example) as judges leaned towards limiting the power of the POTUS despite an actual war going on. Isn't it incredible that there is still a material possibility that the actual Supreme Court defers to a single person for a situation which should be crystal clear to start with (in terms of constitutionnaly-derived separation of powers)? For the "difficult" question related to the apathy of the good people, i would say here's the beginning of an answer: A Reagan-appointed judge who decides to speak out in (a left-leaning but high validity) publication: https://archive.ph/pVeOJ To @adesigar, i just saw your post, mine then becomes somewhat repetitive. Some stuff is worth repeating though?

https://www.sec.gov/comments/s7-31-08/s73108-39.pdf

Tightness and strain in liquidity is multi-factorial, tends to show up at end of quarters and as @wabuffo alluded earlier what's happened in the TGA account has contributed to this dynamic: Contrary to Q2-Q3 2023 which saw a similar increase in the TGA though is the fact that during Q2-Q3 of 2023, both the Fed (did not really start tightening then) and what happened in the reverse repo window (decreasing levels, so a net supply of reserves to the system) helped to mitigate what happened to reserves in the system despite a growing TGA. Recently both the Fed (tightening mode, removing reserves from the system) and the reverse repo window (almost empty) have not mitigated the effect on reserves in the system caused by a growing TGA. Whatever the reason(s), there seems to be a growing pattern of reduced liquidity which may be a "simple" plumbing issue but there may more to it? Reserves to GDP can be interesting but a more relevant measure may be reserves to the pool of issued and circulating Treasuries: Somehow, despite banks holding huge levels of reserves and Treasuries, this does not seem sufficient to help primary dealers to deal with a persitently large supply of Treasuries. It's always possible that banks are seeing undrawn facilities moving from off-balance sheet to on-balance sheet as a result of strain unrelated to plumbing but that remains to be validated. Anyways, the Fed forecasts that easing and a change of composition is in the air: Moving from ample to ampler to amplest?

Ok yes, at the commercial banks' level, about the reinvestment or redeployment opportunities, a lot of the "investable" funds have been channeled into dividends and buybacks (especially buybacks since GFC) and a devil's advocate may suggest that a significant part of these funds were derived from the NIM on IOER subsidy but let's not invoke devil's advocacy here and now. But this redeployment has resulted in less funds available for other aspects such as typical loans for the underlying productive and non-financialized economy. Is there such great underlying demand for typical loans then? Anyways, from another era of buybacks, banks have not been exactly great at market timing but a recent report, inspired by regulatory work supported by the Federal Reserve, called this payout flexibility in action. It kind of misses the potentially attractive and opportunistic aspect of buybacks (buy low?) but even the GOAT was buying banks in 2007. About the redeployment at the largest six banks who nonetheless prefer to buy back their own shares, one could argue that they could redeploy their reserves into Treasuries but they've done that, recently and in spades, but this process has met structural and more acute 'transitory' inflationary constraints... An explanation for the evidence suggesting tepid demand for productive private loans would be some kind of crowding out idea (heresy?) so there's got to be other explanations?

There is a love-hate relationship between banks and regulators and, given overall tendencies, there may be a certain polarization between the amazing advantages regulators provide (such as reserves-not-really interest income) and the disadvantages of a growingly more liquidity-dependent and complex plumbing system. The annual report you mention is for the 2020 year. Since then, as far as i'm aware, Mr. Dimon has not really mentioned the following (for banks as a whole or for his own JPM): i'm not relevant in this whole story but some say that a billion here and a billion there and then soon you may be talkin' real money. ----- i'm unable to conceive deep insights so let's try an analogy. Given your interest in NovoNordisk, let's go diabetic. In certain cases (ICU-type), it's possible to use an insulin drip to lower blood sugar while, at the same time, have a IV line for glucose infusion to elevate blood sugar. This way, you (think) can control the sugar blood levels. But this is quite time-consuming and necessitates close monitoring and it can get messy at times, giving the impression of the need for even more control (regulation). However, also, the obvious consequence is that the human adaptive mechanism (self-regulatory forces) does not get to effectively kick in as it is overidden by larger regulatory outside constraints. It's ironic that recent talks and studies come up with a 65% rule of required excess reserves to clear Fedwire transactions as only a minuscule amount of excess reserves were necessary to clear transactions before the GFC? Is this called evolution, adaptation or habituation?

Question 1- -Capitol Riot pardon on top of the cancellation of all other related trials -DOGE creation, a non-governmental 'agency' with huge potential implications -Personal control of the Justice Department (Attorney General with unlimited and non-conditional loyalty, key role to provide judicial validity to decrees, nominations, firings etc) and federal police -Designation of immigrants as foreign invaders -Tariffs -Coordinated cultural war (Kennedy Center, Smithsonian Institute, universities etc etc) -Use of national guards All these premeditated moves based on existing laws but in the context of distortions (laws mentioned do exist but are taken out of context, invasion, rebellion, economic emergency) with increasing laxism in superior courts and even the Supreme Court. Unprecedented powers are given to one person as if there was, in fact, a rebellion, an invasion or an economic emergency... Question 2- Thanks again for the helpful feedback. On my side, in the context of constructive discussions (with family and acquaintances, quite typical and ordinary people), many, especially in younger cohorts tend to be alarmed by such developments (democratic backsliding) and i then tend to act as a moderating voice, but it looks like i'm running out of moderating arguments in what is considered a very slippery slope (i recently read the German drift to Revolution, written in 1933, and...it rhymes...). You don't think your army could be used to influence the next election cycle? I admire the US and continue to marvel at its Constitution. The founders were obssessed to avoid the concentration of power into the hands of one person. Washington, when he retired (under no obligation to do so, to the contrary) described the necessity to promote virtue in the common man. What did he mean by virtue? Who decides if there is a rebellion, an invasion or an economic emergency? The angry mob? It has been said that Jefferson had a particular attachment to two books: Montesquieu's treaty about the separation of power and Gibbon's history of Roman decline.

Keeping in mind the recent interest in those discussions related to recent liquidity issues in the 'system', the SLR ratio indeed is acting as a constraint against lending and even against more commercial banks' balance sheet acquisition of Treasury securities! One of the obvious 'solutions' (opinion) to the recent liquidity strains would be to simply relax or suspend the application of the SLR. However, (opinion, based on conventional money ideas), the last time they (regulators) did this (early 2020s), there was a bout of 'temporary' mainstreet inflation and there may be more to this than simple chronological correlation? ----- Real L+L growth has been very weak for a while: Do you think banks such as JPM have been constrained for private lending due to the SLR ratio limitations? Or is there something else ?

Isn't this just semantics though? Bank profit = change in assets-change in liabilities When banks are paid with reserves, isn't this a profit? When the Fed reverses the operation, won't the banks be able to sell this asset (returned Treasury) for another asset (marketable). And the extra reserves, can't banks sell or loan those reserves to other banks for a profit? ----- Isn't it interesting that the Fed has stopped remittances to the Treasury since 2022 because of deeply negative equity but has continued to pay IOER at relatively high rates (this did not matter as much when rates were ultra low)? So you have the Fed paying (with reserves i realize but still) relatively high rates (clearly higher than what banks pay on associated created deposits) to a very high % of bank assets. Considering historically ROAs of banks, this income stream continues to be a very significant risk-free contributor to their net interest margin and profitability.

The point is that, as an individual, the operation looks like an asset swap, but overall, there is a new deposit (money) in the system and this holder of this new money can buy something else with that new money.