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South Korean president president Yoon is shown on the US aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt during the Freedom Edge military exercises of South Korea, US and Japan near the Korean peninsula in June 2024.

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Cheap fixed rate mortgages make up two thirds of home mortgages in the US. Most are at 4% or lower interest rate. A new 30 year home mortgage in 2024 would be about 7%. About 660,000 job offers that required moving and selling the home were turned down. This means fewer homes left for people to buy leading to higher home prices. The additional equity people have in their home on average is $119,000 over 4 years and this means consumer spending is resilient in the face of higher interest rates and keeps inflation at 3%. How does this affect the economy? Fewer homes on the market means there is a loss to the economy of 3% to 5% of output, according to NAHB. The smaller supply of homes means there is less home inventory to search from- instead of 62% in more normal times affordability for someone with a $100,000 in income is now 37% of the listings. This is not expected to change in the next 2 years.

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S&P 500 gains 15% in first half 2024.

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There is a clear difference between Biden and Trump on the Climate. Biden put the US back into the 2015 Paris Climate Change Treaty in fight against climate change after Trump took the US out of it. Trump supports coal and oil & gas. Biden is working to phase out of coal and fossil fuels in a way that still keeps the economy strong. There is place where the difference is so starkly clear. Expect climate change events, storms, fires, floods to grow under Trump, and storms, fires and floods to be made to recede under Biden with strong climate change action.

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Queen Elizabeth was more comfortable with Labour prime ministers than Conservatives. This included Harold Wilson of Labour. The Queen had a prickly relationship with Margaret Thatcher. King Charles  has strong views on social issues such as housing and migration, and on climate change. Charles 75 years and Keir Starmer 61 years are shown here to have similar views on social issues in Britain. If Starmer wins the election they will meet weekly, and have much in common. The royal historian says there is a meeting of minds in terms of the social issues at stake, the plight of the people of Britain. The national anthem was played at the beginning of the Labour Conference in 2022. Sir Keir Starmer was made Queen's Counsel in 2004 and was knighted in 2014 for his services in public prosecutions. 

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Only 2 migrants were sent to Rwanda under a British government program of the Tories party to send migrants to Africa. The program if it took off was to spend 490 million British pounds to send migrants to Rwanda from Britain. A payment of 120 million pounds was made to Rwanda. WSJ says it is a huge waste of money. Each of the 2 migrants were paid $3000. Meanwhile record numbers of migrants entered Britain through the English Channel. Over 500 migrants crossed over in small boats each day in 2024, a 23% jump.

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The US Supreme Court throws out a lawsuit that said the Biden administration unlawfully pressured social media platforms to remove content seen as disinformation. The ruling said the two states Louisiana and Missouri and five parties had no rights to bring their claims before a judge. Earlier lower courts had ruled against the government . The claims by the two states were shown through emails written by government officials to Facebook asking why it had not removed disinformation that said Covid vaccines were harmful. This issue of the usefulness of vaccines for Covid was a major issue in 2022.

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Most business leaders tacit support for Biden because of predictability in policy and infrastructure investments is covered in this NYT report by Casselman and Tankersley.