Today, in the Real Estate Newsletter: Asking Rents Mostly Unchanged Year-over-year Brief excerpt: Another monthly update on rents. Apartment List: Asking Rent Growth -0.4% Year-over-year ... On the supply side of the rental market, our national vacancy index now sits at 6.9 percent, the highest reading in the history of that monthly data series, which goes back to the start of 2017. After a historic tightening in 2021, multifamily occupancy has been slowly but consistently easing for over three years amid an influx of new inventory. 2024 saw the most new apartment completions since the mid-1980s, and with 750 thousand units still in the construction pipeline, the supply boom has runway to continue this year. Realtor.com: 19th Consecutive Month with Year-over-year Decline in Rents The median asking rent across the 50 largest metropolitan areas in the United States fell again in February, to $1,691. This marks 19 months in a row in which rent has fallen year over year, this time by 0.9% from February 2024. This is much more in the article.

The fires that have been ignited are not yet visible. There's a eerie calm after an earthquake. Those trapped in collapsed buildings are aware of the consequences, but the majority experience a silence, as if the world stopped and has yet to restart. The full consequences are as yet unknown, and so we breathe a sigh of relief. Whew. Everything looks OK. But this initial assessment is off the mark, as much of the damage is not immediately visible. As reports start coming in of broken infrastructure and fires break out, we start realizing the immensity of the damage and the rising risks of conflagration. Uncertainty and rapidly accelerating chaos reign. President Trump used a medical analogy for what I'm calling The Tariff Earthquake: the patient underwent a procedure and has had a shock, but it's all for the good as the healing is already underway. We often use medical or therapeutic analogies, but in this case the earthquake analogy is more insightful in making sense of what happens to economic structures that have been systemically disrupted. The key parallel is the damage is often hidden, and only manifests later. The scene after the initial shock looks normal, but water mains have been broken beneath the surface, foundations have cracked, and though structures look undamaged and safe, they're closer to collapse than we imagine, as the structural damage is hidden. Another parallel is the potential for damage arising from forces other than the direct destruction from the temblor. The earthquake that destroyed much of San Francisco in 1906 damaged many structures, but the real devastation was the result of fires that started in the aftermath that could not be controlled due to the water mains being broken and streets clogged with debris, inhibiting the movement of the fire brigades, which were inadequate to the task even if movement had been unobstructed. The earthquake damaged the city, but the fire is what destroyed it. What was considered rock-solid and safe is revealed as vulnerable in ways that are poorly understood. Structures that met with official approval collapse despite the official declarations. What was deemed sound and safe cracked when the stresses exceeded the average range. The Tariff Earthquake exhibits many of these same features. Much of the damage has yet to reveal itself; much remains uncertain as the chaos spreads. Like an earthquake, the damage is systemic: both infrastructure and households are disrupted. The potential for second-order effects (fires in the earthquake analogy) to prove more devastating than expected is high. (First order effects: actions have consequences. Second order effects: consequences have consequences.) The uncertainty is itself a destructive force. Enterprises must allocate capital and labor based on forecasts of future supply and demand. If the future is inherently unpredictable, forecasting becomes impossible and so conducting business becomes impossible. Just as the 1906 fires sweeping through San Francisco were only contained by the US Army blowing up entire streets of houses to create a fire break, the containment efforts themselves may well be destructive. We had to destroy the village in order to save it is a tragic possibility. Here is a building damaged in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake that struck the San Francisco Bay region. The residents may have initially reckoned their home had survived intact, but the foundation and first floor were so severely damaged that the entire structure was at risk of collapse. On this USGS map of recent earthquakes around the world, note the clustering of quakes on the "Ring of Fire" that traces out the dynamic zones where the planet's tectonic plates meet. Earthquakes can trigger other events along these dynamic intersections of tectonic forces. In a similar fashion, The Tariff Earthquake is unleashing economic reactions across the globe, each of which influences all the other dynamic intersections, both directly and via second-order effects generated by the initial movement. Anyone claiming to have a forecast of all the first-order and second-order effects of the The Tariff Earthquake will be wrong, as it's impossible to foresee the consequences of so many forces interacting or make an informed assessment of all the damage that's been wrought that's not yet visible. The fires that have been ignited are not yet visible. They're smoldering but not yet alarming, and so the observers who are confident that everything's under control have yet to awaken to the potential for events to spiral out of control. New podcast: The Coming Global Recession will be Longer and Deeper than Most Analysts Anticipate (42 min) My recent books: Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases originated via links to Amazon products on this site. The Mythology of Progress, Anti-Progress and a Mythology for the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, Hardcover $24 (215 pages, 2024) Read the Introduction and first chapter for free (PDF) Self-Reliance in the 21st Century print $18, (Kindle $8.95, audiobook $13.08 (96 pages, 2022) Read the first chapter for free (PDF) The Asian Heroine Who Seduced Me (Novel) print $10.95, Kindle $6.95 Read an excerpt for free (PDF) When You Can't Go On: Burnout, Reckoning and Renewal $18 print, $8.95 Kindle ebook; audiobook Read the first section for free (PDF) Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $9.95, print $24, audiobook) Read Chapter One for free (PDF). A Hacker's Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook $17.46) Read the first section for free (PDF). Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World (Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF). The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake (Novel) $4.95 Kindle, $10.95 print); read the first chapters for free (PDF) Money and Work Unchained $6.95 Kindle, $15 print) Read the first section for free Become a $3/month patron of my work via patreon.com. Subscribe to my Substack for free NOTE: Contributions/subscriptions are acknowledged in the order received. Your name and email remain confidential and will not be given to any other individual, company or agency. Thank you, Randall R. ($200), for your beyond-outrageously generous founding subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership.   Thank you, Mark H. ($7/month), for your marvelously generous subscription to this site -- I am greatly honored by your support and readership. Thank you, Michael R. 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Plus! Reindustrialization as a Financial Engineering Problem; How the Tariffs Happened; Meanwhile, in Europe; Lead Generation; The Platform

Note: Mortgage rates are from MortgageNewsDaily.com and are for top tier scenarios. For deaths, I'm currently using 4 weeks ago for "now", since the most recent three weeks will be revised significantly. Note: "Effective May 1, 2024, hospitals are no longer required to report COVID-19 hospital admissions, hospital capacity, or hospital occupancy data."  So, I'm no longer tracking hospitalizations. COVID Metrics  NowWeek AgoGoal Deaths per Week576655≤3501 1my goals to stop weekly posts. 🚩 Increasing number weekly for Deaths. ✅ Goal met. Click on graph for larger image. This graph shows the weekly (columns) number of deaths reported since Jan 2023. Although weekly deaths met the original goal to stop posting in June 2023 (low of 314 deaths), I've continued to post since deaths are above the goal again - and I'll continue to post until weekly deaths are once again below the goal. Weekly deaths are now decreasing following the winter pickup and just under double the low of last June. And here is a graph I'm following concerning COVID in wastewater as of April 3rd: This appears to be a leading indicator for COVID hospitalizations and deaths.  This has generally been moving down. Nationally COVID in wastewater is "Low", down from "Moderate" two weeks ago according to the CDC.

This post is a list of books that I read in the first quarter of 2025, including The Lessons of History, American Journey, the works of Aristophanes, Plato, Xenophon, and more.