November 22 2024

1. Typical US Homebuyer Now 56, First-Time Buyer Age Hits Record 38
2. MIT Offers Free Tuition for Families Earning Under $200,000
3. Trump Transition Diary
4. American Civil War Death Toll Recalculated: 700k Lives Lost
5. Battle for Eurasia Update
November 22, 1963: President John F. Kennedy is assassinated

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1. Typical US Homebuyer Now 56, First-Time Buyer Age Hits Record 38

The age of a typical homebuyer jumped to an all-time high of 56 in the US, with many young people locked out of the housing market while older owners tap their accumulated home equity for cash purchases or to make large down payments, according to a report. The share of first-time home buyers shrunk to 24%, the lowest in data going back to 1981, according the National Association of Realtors’ 2024 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers. The median age of a first-time buyer also reached a record of 38 — about a decade older than in the 1980s. High prices and borrowing costs have created a bifurcated housing market, in which an increasing share of sales come from repeat buyers and richer households. In just two years, the median income of a first-time buyer has increased by $26,000 to $97,000.

Article Source: Bloomberg

2. MIT Offers Free Tuition for Families Earning Under $200,000

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced on Wednesday that it would eliminate tuition costs next fall for all undergraduate students whose families earn less than $200,000 per year — following a national movement to try to make higher education more accessible. For students whose families earn less than $100,000 per year, the university will also cover all other costs, including housing, dining, fees and an allowance for books and personal expenses. M.I.T., the private research university based in Cambridge, Mass., is ranked among the best higher education institutions in the world. Tuition for the 2024-2025 school year was roughly $62,000, according to MIT’s website. The full cost, including housing and other fees, is just under $86,000 per year.

Article Source: NYT

3. Trump Transition Diary

President-elect Donald Trump has floated selecting the financier Kevin Warsh as his Treasury secretary with the understanding that he could later be nominated to lead the Federal Reserve when Jerome Powell’s term as chair ends in 2026, according to people familiar with the matter. Warsh is a front-runner to lead the Treasury Department, but as of Thursday evening, Trump hadn’t decided whom he would choose for the pivotal cabinet position. The people familiar with the matter said Trump was still weighing how he would approach the Fed vacancy and likely wouldn’t make a final decision until closer to when Powell’s term as chair ends in May 2026.  Trump is thinking about appointing the investor Scott Bessent to lead the National Economic Council with an eye toward nominating him as Treasury secretary later in his term if Warsh becomes Fed chair, some of the people said.

Article Source: WSJ

4. American Civil War Death Toll Recalculated: 700k Lives Lost

Faded ink. Inconsistencies. Fires. The deadliest conflict in American history, the Civil War, also had some of its worst-kept records, making the true number of casualties seem forever elusive. For decades, historians have cobbled together clues. But thanks to a newly released set of census records spanning three decades, researchers have landed on a firmer estimate of lives lost: 698,000. The analysis, published this week in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also suggested that the Confederate states fared much worse than the Union, with a mortality rate more than twice as high. The granular nature of the census data means that researchers who build upon the work will be able to better understand the long-term impact of the war in the hardest-hit regions.

Article Source: NYT

5. Battle for Eurasia Update

Editors note: Starting this week, I’ll be transforming my Friday Ukraine update into a broader Battle for Eurasia update. This ongoing conflict pits the West, led by the United States, against an axis of adversaries, including China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. At stake is dominance over the vast and strategically critical landmass of Eurasia. In this framework, the conflicts in Ukraine, the Middle East, and rising tensions with China in East Asia are all interconnected, forming part of a larger struggle: the Battle for Eurasia. To dive deeper into my framework for understanding the Battle for Eurasia, see my article.

A. Western nations moved to shut their embassies in Kyiv earlier today over fears of a major Russian attack on the Ukrainian capital. The US, Italy, Greece and Spain all closed their embassies in the city after receiving information about a potential “significant air attack”. The threat comes a day after Ukraine used US-supplied long-range missiles to strike a target inside Russia, taking advantage of newly granted permission from Joe Biden.  

B. After more than two years of grinding conflict, Ukrainians are increasingly weary of the war with Russia. In Gallup’s latest surveys of Ukraine, conducted in August and October 2024, an average of 52% of Ukrainians would like to see their country negotiate an end to the war as soon as possible. Nearly four in 10 Ukrainians (38%) believe their country should keep fighting until victory. Ukrainians’ current attitudes toward the war represent a decisive shift from where they stood after it began in late February 2022. Surveyed in the months after Russia launched its full-scale invasion, Ukrainians were defiant, with 73% preferring fighting until victory.  

C. The wars in Ukraine and the Middle East are eating away at critical U.S. weapons stockpiles and could hamper the military’s ability to respond to China should a conflict arise in the Indo-Pacific, the top U.S. commander for that region said Tuesday. Head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command Adm. Samuel Paparo cautioned Tuesday that the U.S. providing or selling billions of dollars worth of air defenses to both Ukraine and Israel is now impeding his ability to respond in the Indo-Pacific, such as if China invades Taiwan. “Up to this year, where most of the employment of weapons were really artillery pieces and short-range weapons, I had said, ‘not at all,’” when asked if the conflicts were hampering U.S. ability to respond to threats in the Indo-Pacific, Paparo said. “It’s now eating into stocks, and to say otherwise would be dishonest,” he told an audience at the Brookings Institution in Washington. China has ramped up its military pressure against Taiwan, including a massive military exercise that involved 125 warplanes in October, and has said annexing Taiwan is a historical inevitability.  

D. As Israel advances its invasion of southern Lebanon, its troops are finding large troves of Russian weapons, confirming longstanding suspicions in Israel that Hezbollah is enhancing its fighting capacity with the help of sophisticated Russian arms.

Article Source: Telegraph, Gallup, AP, WSJ

November 22, 1963: President John F. Kennedy is assassinated

Sources

1. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-11-04/typical-us-homebuyer-more-likely-to-be-older-single-and-a-woman

2. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/21/us/mit-free-tuition.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

3. https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/trump-considers-warsh-serving-as-treasury-secretaryand-then-fed-chair-827207e0?st=VWubZM&reflink=article_copyURL_share

4. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/19/health/civil-war-death-toll.html

5. A https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/11/20/russia-ukraine-zelensky-putin-war-latest-news57/
B https://news.gallup.com/poll/653495/half-ukrainians-quick-negotiated-end-war.aspx
C https://apnews.com/article/ukraine-weapons-taiwan-missiles-stockpiles-28564bbed21f72b9a3c6b3cd9c086bc7
D https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/israel-finds-large-troves-of-russian-arms-in-hezbollahs-hands-eeed9445?st=hsT6Wb&reflink=article_copyURL_share