6/23/26: Housing Affordability Crisis, Israel's Nuclear Blackmail Plot

basic home ownership expenses. By twenty twenty five, annual bill is now twenty eight thousand, five hundred, which has massively outstripped overall inflation, which is pegged at twenty six percent during that same time period just from the consumer Price Index by twenty twenty five. Homeowners who wish that they could sell and move elsewhere are also staying put turned off by the cost of purchasing today. This is one of the foremost problems in the so called affordability trap.

What we also see here is that sales of previously owned homes have held around four million a years since twenty twenty three, which is the lowest level in decades, down from the pre pandemic norm of between five million and a million five a year. So if you do the math, that's almost one mill that's almost five or six million houses that have been kept off of the

market largely because of these exact traps. From the overall monthly insurance payments, taxes, interest and principle, you're now sitting roughly around two thousand dollars a month, which if you do the math, twenty four thousand. But then you look at the overall household income, especially if you look at overall household after ten income, you're sitting around fifty percent. This makes it impossible, especially with the average home rate.

The one that really struck me is actually the hoafee.

the interest obviously is the banks. But at home maintenance emergency repairs, that's not just labor costs. It's because in the last six years, private equity specifically has been rolling up local repair business is plumbing ac many of these, especially emergency repairs, and they've realized that because people are in dire straits, and they'll have to pay anything if they standardize, roll them up, give them, you know, back end software and all of that. They can squeeze enormous

profits out of these homeowners. And that's why the emergency repair number is up so high. But finance is the bedrock of all of these overall cost increases that you could see.

over the course of a decade that that shift has happened. Well, when you are someone who has that amount of wealth and literally incomprehensible amount of money, A billion dollars is an incomprehensible amount of money, A trillion dollars is beyond the comprehension of any human being. What do you do, and this goes to your point, Soccer. You buy up assets.

So is it any surprise then that all of these assets, including homes, become more and more and more expensive, that they find more and more ways to financialize every aspect of this. Why because it is money in search of assets, and we have money consolidated.

and up, and there is no relief in sight. If you want, really you have to tax these people. That's what you have to do. You have to do a wealth text. You have to take some of the world. You cannot allow there to be these trillionaires and multi

multi multi billionaires controlling everything and buying everything up. If you are a person who would like to aspire, excuse me one day to be able to I don't know, own a home or own really anything, if you are that person, then you should be in favor of raining

in the wealth and power of these oligarchs. So I think that is a very critical piece of this that also oftentimes goes overlooked intentionally, you know, And that's not to say that like the sort of abundance agenda of deregulation and yimbiism.

when you do, it's crazy. Like this is where they say that Morgan Stanley is predicting that home buyers will face a harsh reset, and mostly they say what it points is to this conclusion is that the base case projects mortgage payments will have to decline about twenty four percent of household income to twenty one percent in the coming decade as rates have to moderate over the long term, but that will still leave affordability well above the fifteen

percent average that prevailed in the years after the two thousand and seven to two thousand and nine financial crisis. The squeeze will reshape ownership in rental dynamics and will make it so that aspiring owners will continue to imprize

more and more of the overall US population. When terms of the reset, what they say is that it will reset the way specifically that wealth is built in the long term, specifically probably for people who are our age and more in the millennial demographic, because home ownership was

the bedrock of wealth building over the postwar period. But now when the first time home buyer is some thirty six to forty years old, and then the average home buyer is like in their fifties, then you have different situations where having that lack of apt which will appreciate over time, just scrambles the entire way that you think about your future, not to mention whenever it comes to

your community. So I think that that data is really really important actually just about home buying and the way that assets will move in the future. But I also think that whenever it comes to the housing front, it shows how the current way that I mean, I really struggle with this. I believe in some localism, I really do,

especially when it comes to data centers. You know, nimbi's definitely have a point in their ability, but facility, yeah or yeah in your case whatever you want beautification, you know, zoning, I really do get it, like I get it whenever it comes to what makes a community nice?

in the war in Iran. That's insanity. So just to show you all in terms of like the cost that we're dealing with here, maybe some of it could go to like an overall homestead fund or builder incentives. You need funds up front, then you need tax incentives for the builders. You need to make it so that the market that is best served for the builder, they have an incentive to build the first time starter home.

there's services and all of that too. But I just, you know, increasingly, all I hear from the home ownership classes like, oh, we can't have that, we can't have that, And I'm like, I'm sorry, Like, you know, when you have people pull in two three hundred thousand dollars a year and they can't even buy a home in a high cost of living area, like we're cooked, you know, as an overall society.

data centers. Now they're claiming, oh, don't worry, it's not going to add to your costs. Okay, do you believe that? Do you believe that? And you're the other thing, it's not just about the cost. We just literally do not generate enough electricity to deal with the amount that these you know, the operators that are the major AI tech companies what they are pushing towards. We do not have

that level of electricity generation. So if we're having to if there are going to be blackouts if we're going to have to ration electricity generation means, who do you think is going to be prioritized in that situation. It reminds me very much of when we had the Flint water crisis and the FORD and GM were like, Hey, this new water is like corroning our parts.

Don't worry. We've got your back. We will fast track your ability to connect into the grid with no requirement that we're you know, building out additional electricity generation needs. So it is this dynamic which will continue to make costs higher and higher and higher across the board.

Everybody go and subscribe. Gentlemen, welcome to the show.

and the Naicinaio government. But I do believe that what this shows and what it indicates and what it surfaces, And this is actually part of the point of our mini series is that we're interested in examining, like, well, okay, how do these moments of daylight emerge when it's clear that the US and Israel have divergent interests, and how

is it then that they get sutured back shut? And I would argue that at this time, when I say we're at an inflection point, we're at a moment where we're figuring out, okay, is this going to be one of those moments as it has been for most of the past eighty years, where something gets stitch shut back together, or is this actually going to be part of a longer process initiated since October seventh, twenty twenty three, where the US and Israel's strategic partnership is perhaps you know,

coming undone or at the very least significantly changing in character from how it's been before.

He opposed it. He told the Zionist lobby, he opposed it. He told his own advisors, he opposed it. He told the public. He opposed it. In one way or another. He thought it was a death no state, alternatively called it neth no state or theocracy, neither of which were ideals that he felt were worthy of lending American support to. The problem was is he had a sort of a showdown in his own cabinet between his foreign policy establishment, which at the very top was led by no less

than George Marshwood, decorated general from World War Two. None of them supported, virtually none of them supported, and certainly no one high up supported the foundation of a Jewish state. And they were even cold warriors, right wingers who said, we think this will drive the Arab states that have a lot of oil into the hands, or rather into the arms of this Soviet Union. There's no reason to do this. Everyone, including Truman, was much more sympathetic to

the idea of a binational or federated state. That's what they were working in concert with the British Empire to bring about. Because a lot of this also meant the

British were exiting the Middle East. However, his domestic advisors were very keen on him supporting a state of Israel, not only because of their own personal Zionism, which they had reached, some of them actually quite recently in their careers, but because it was a very easy way for him to hold together the New Deal coalition that he inherited

from FDR. It was a purely domestic, purely political calculation that the ethnic makeup of the New Deal coalition, which included Jews in very important states and very important cities, that he had to win, that this was something that we need not worry about the consequences of overseas as long as it secures us the election and the sort

of democratic Democratic Party's coalition that was so important. So you have Truman being the first guy who recognized Israel, who didn't even think it was a good idea, and who really didn't pay attention to much of the issue of Palestine after except to express frustration with issues of refugees returning and indeed what you might call the right

of return, that he was rather repulsed by Israel's conduct. However, it was at that point he had already given in to the political pressures and had recognized the state of Israel and couldn't really do much about it.

some kind to the Jews of Europe. It's there's some tenuous, you know, biblical and ancient connection with this land. Why not allow this to happen? You must be an anti Semite you must be some kind of you know, uh, sort of crank to not recognize the right the Jews

have to their own state. We still hear some of this language, but it was coming from places like the Nation, or the pre Murdoch New York Post, and even Soviet agents inside of America, which is a whole other story about why the Soviet Union might want it to have had some of its its inside guys, uh softening Truman's Cold War Coalition by appealing to some of its Jewish members of that coalition with the appeal of Zionism. But at any rate, it was viewed as a progressive cause,

and as I mentioned earlier, it was Cold warriors. A guy named Lloyd Henderson had Truman's ear who was very conservative and right wing and felt that it was a really boneheaded move in the context of the Cold War

and the standoff with the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union itself opposed the creation of a Jewish state for many years until around forty seven, when, to the surprise of everyone, it said, we still would prefer a binational or federated state, but if that cannot be reached, we will sign on to the execution of a Jewish state as far as that can be attained in a just manner, and that

was a huge surprise to everyone. The idea, I think being that they really wanted to drive the British out of the Middle East, and they saw the retreat of the British Empire as something more strategically worthy of their attention than necessarily the founding of the Jewish state in Palestine.

the Truman White House's navigation of that process. We also look at the Eisenhower years, and the Eisenhower years I

think are very interesting and very understudied. In particular, we look at both the Suez Crisis, but also something that happened in nineteen fifty three a few years earlier, a massacre in the West Bank committed by Israeli forces led by none other than later Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, A massacre that was such a pr blow to Israel that it led to you know, it was it tipped a relatively short series of dominoes that led to the creation of APAK, the most powerful and well known Israel

lobby today. And then we also look at the Reagan years, and we have a bit of time. We talk a little bit about how the US is Rail relationship changed in the late sixties and seventies, but we really focus on the Reagan years because the Reagan years are also another underappreciated time of tension between the US and Israel.

Ronald Reagan, elected as probably the most outwardly Zionist president in American history until that point, pretty immediately is thrust into a series of political fights with the pro Israel forces. This is the time when APAC in the pro Israel lobby is coming into its own when Israeli influenced networks in the United States are beginning to reach maturity and facy, A bunch of spy rings get broken up in this decade, a bunch of other organizations that are pro Israel, like

the ADL, get caught up in various political scandals. And the Reagan White House was in fights, you know, a self described very pro Israel White House was in you know, they they did battle with the Israel Lobby or what was called the A Walks fight and arms deal with

Saudi Arabia essentially. And then we also had the time that time that Israel went and bombed in a Raqi nuclear reactor and Reagan wrote in his diary that he thought armageddon was coming, and most infamously, and this is something that has very, you know, kind of jarring parallels with today, frankly, something that when Brennan and I conceived of this mini series, we hadn't you know, it was not quite yet a fact on the ground, which was

the brutal Israeli assault that has been unfolding in Lebanon in the last couple of months. And how in Reagan's time, I mean, Israel committed atrocities and oversaw atrocities such as so Brin Shatila, And in fact, the US was directly implicated in some of these atrocities as well, and we

suffered for it too, the United States. You know, the Marine Barracks bombing took place in this time, and you know, Reagan calls Bagan telling him it's a damn holocaust, like like cut it out, and it's you know, I think

it's kind of interesting. And what we try to tell the story of there is how there was that great moment of tensions, something that had never really happened before, and then it kind of did go back to business as usual with a kind of big exception, or at least with like a sort of important coda, which is that under George hw Bush there was a sincere effort to try to get Israel to the negotiating table with the Palestinians, like say, what one will about the premises

of those negotiations, how strong a hand or how fair a hand the Palestinians would be dealt in them. But

hw Bush successfully held up loan guarantees. Is that Israel was seeking in the early nineties as a method as a method of coercing coercing them, I mean billions of dollars and it what is like, you know, Israel was facing legitimate financial crisis in the US used that as leverage to extract diplomatic concessions, which you know, I don't know about you guys, but I read the headlines today and that would seem like, you know, an idea coming from mars Oh.

And that has been the correct analysis. So I wonder what you learned here about whether our relationship with Israel is driven primarily by the interest of empire, whether it's driven primarily by you know, APAC and the very effective lobbying and you know the impact of money and politics here in the US, or is that a combination of the two.

There's too much spying, there's too much sabotage, there's too much dealing of state secrets, and there's too much just if this is to be a proxy or understood, is one flat out disobedience that you just don't see in that type of relationship. And as Noah was alluding to earlier, and as we cover in the first several episodes of the mini series, for several decades, Israel and America did

not have the special relationship. Eisenhower held up arms, embargoed arms. Truman, as we discussed, was not terribly sympathetic in general, he recognized the state. That was obviously a huge move, but it wasn't this handing glove idea that people have had, rightfully so for the past few decades. So it wasn't serving our interest as some kind of attack dog or

expeditionary force for many, many years. Once that became, I think the case that Israel was selling to America, we will be your Cold War chess piece in the Middle East, a lot of people started to believe that genuinely it was a truly necessary relationship. And then in the nineties there wasn't even greater emphasis. Once the Cold War was over, there was a greater emphasis on the Judeo Christian shared

values and civilization. This was of course presaging the war on Terror, language in which Israel became once more this ally that we couldn't do without. I'm skeptical of all of that, and I think the left sometimes overestimates how in concert or symbiotic, supposedly in concert Israel and America are. I would say that, of course the lobby is impossible to ignore. Overstating it is something that will lead you down some strange places, but so well, understating it, and

the nuclear blackmail I think is sometimes under discussed. I mean, whether it be Reagan or HW. Bush. We may do a sequel to our series someday we could talk about Clinton and Bush two and Obama and of course Trump. Right now, you can mouth off about Israel and get them to try to accept their place every now and again,

but you can't get rid of those nukes. And I'm sure many many people in the State Department, whether it was the Biden administration or Trump, right now, they might like to read them their rights, but they might be told the next day by some fanatical Israeli minister, well you know that if we have to do it, we

can set off a tactical nuke. That's not nothing. So you have the domestic political pressure at home where they own much of the Congress, to put it bluntly, and you have a nuclear option for them anytime they want to say, well, who are you to tell us what to do? That's pretty scary for an empire that is declining and that needs as many friends as it can get as it declines. So I think that at this point it's really a relationship born out of weakness of

the of the United States. We'll see how this goes with Trump vance you know, did his little you know, kind of Zelenski's style belittling of Israel the other day. But yeah, I mean those are just words. You know, we tried to cover these in the miniseries, these moments where hw Bush withheld ten billion, where Eisenhower slapped an arms and bargo, where Reagan said, I'm suspending all support,

You're committing a holocaust. However brief, these moments were It's more than we've seen from the Trump people at the moment.

not acknowledging his weapons and so forth. And it wasn't really you know, in the end days of the South African apartheid regime in the final years there, in the context of their various border wars and in the fight in particular against the Cubans and Angola, there were discussions about using tactical nuclear weapons, and I think that, you know, there was a real fear that South Africa would do that, and you know, the like like it was taken as

a credible threat. As my point, and I believe that in the case of Israel, world leaders today similarly view Israeli threats if they were ever to be made, even you know, in behind closed doors, they would view them as credible, considering that Israelis have done everything from like you know, like the Beeper bombings, and I mean, at this point too many ridiculous and strange and blatant horrors

to name. And then the other point and so, which is to say that I think that the nuclear blackmail with them is a lot more powerful of a force than it necessarily.

good historical facts. I know that Eli Clifton, I forget his co author, but he's co author of a new book out about the Israel Lobby, and you know, to say nothing of the Walton Meersheimer.

underreported kind of you know, set of institutions. And part of what that has enabled, right, is this like really sort of disastrous, direct and persistent conflation with being pro Israel and being Jewish, and the pro Israel lobby has more or less also taken the place of identifying with the position of the jew organized Jewish community in the United States, and the political power of that just shouldn't be taken lightly, not simply not on the level of like, oh,

Jews have a lot of power, but simply on the level that like this, you know, like an influential, respected and well established minority group in the United States, like its civil rights are now bound up with this political position. And I don't think that the process by which that has been made to happen is a small part at all. I think it's a very important and big part of how it is that the US and Israel have maintained whatever the relationship it is that they do have.

essentially hushed up. There were very little information was released about it, and it fostered a years long, eight decades long resentment between higher echelons of the Navy and the NSA because the NSA grew out of naval intelligence and the NSA and Israel.

for Israel against all reason. Why against all reason in this case, because there's persistent eyewitness testimony and subsequent testimony from senior naval officers who tried to pursue an investigation or at least a deeper establishment of the facts surrounding

the bombing of the Liberty. They said that it was very clear that they were a US ship, that this wasn't a case of mistaken identities Israeli's later claimed, and furthermore that part of what they were observing were Israeli actions and potentially an atrocity in Egypt in the city

of Alrish. And so I think that there is this, you know, the Liberty is just like a perfect example and of how again, like in part of why it's had sustaining power since it happened in sixty seven, even during like pretty consistently pro Israel times in the US, is because the liberty, you know, has come to represent like the just sort of baffling human cost imposed by the US is strategic alignment with Israel. And you know,

there are scholars and journalists. Before we got talking on the show, you brought up James Scott, who is a very well respected and certainly no you know, you know anti Israel, you know lefty who has written about the liberty and has largely come down on the it was a deliberate strike attitude, as has James Bamford, who I would argue is you know, one of the best chroniclers of the NSA of all time, a wonderful journalist, and he has also argued the same thing.

shared Western values, et cetera. But you know, I think some of our leaders genuinely like their true believers, Like I think Joe Biden is a true believer in that regard, And you talk also about how LBJ was a true believer, and he would make all these comments about like, oh, they're just like us in our founding fighting the savages, comments which later on were when it became less of a convenient narrative on both sides, were excised from his

public comments. Talk a little bit about that, because I thought that was sort of an extraordinary admission both of the reality of our past and founding and also of you know, what some of the real ideological ties might be between the Zionist project and the American one.

of American Zionism. Yeah, Brandeis would make comparisons between the civilizing mission of the American settlers and the civilizing mission of the Zionist settlers. The Jewish settlers in the Middle East and the indigenous population of America that were of course exterminated and cheated, were to be compared to the barbarians of the Arab population in Palestine. However, by the time, even of the Second World War, which is a lot of stuff that wasn't there was still socially admissible that

we wouldn't like now. Even then those lines were excised from his collected speeches that were released. Johnson, however, I think more in private, who was one of the first presidents to embrace Israel a lot more than it previously had been by a US president. He liked that the Israelis were fighters, and that they were they reminded him of the shotgun over the mantelpiece that was there for every American pioneer, and it was just happening in the

Middle East instead of in North America. So a lot of people, correctly, I think, identify this as one of the easiest ways that Israel sold its kinship with America, and two Americans. These days, maybe not so much, because even if it was out of style by the nineteen forties,

for some probably isn't so much in style now. In fact, I guess I would close my answer by saying, we've had an interesting switcheroo where now a lot of Israel pro Israel voices will say Israel in fact is decolonial, and Israel is the one who was the Jews were colonized in fact by these Arabs and driven out, and

they're reclaiming air indigenous role in that land. So the arguments change very drastically and sometimes to a comic level of contradiction, but the ultimate case remains the same, which is that Jewish settlers should have the right to steal other people's land and do whatever they want to the people there. So whether it was LBJ back then or Brandeis back then or Chuck Schumer and the Atlantic magazine, now you have the same bottom line.