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Where You Have Very Difficult Pricing Discovery

A report from Business Insider on Florida. “Ken Griffin is selling both of his Miami Beach penthouses for at least a 20% loss, Katherine Kallergis reported for the Real Deal. Griffin bought the two Faena House penthouses in 2015. At the time, the $60 million transaction was the most expensive sale ever in Miami.”

From Boston Agent Magazine on Massachusetts. “The MyAffordableLuxury report noted that Boston’s luxury market ‘has seen better days,’ due to the pandemic. ‘According to the Greater Boston Association of Realtors, there is currently a glut of unsold condos in the Downtown area, with inventory levels up 50% Y-o-Y. Might be a great time to snatch a luxury condo in Boston!’ according to the report.”

The Real Deal on New York. “Right before a foreclosure auction was due to proceed for a loan tied to Wonder Works Construction’s condo project on the Upper East Side, the developer filed a last-ditch motion to stop it. But Justice Jennifer G. Schecter was having none of it. ‘The default here predates the pandemic and, since then, [the] plaintiff has been unable to comply with the terms of forbearance agreement,’ she wrote in a decision.”

“Afterward, the UCC auction went ahead as planned, according to Genghis Hadi, managing principal of the mezzanine lender, New York-based Nahla Capital. Hadi said multiple interested parties had shown up but Nahla ultimately won the auction through a credit bid, which is when the lender bids using debt it is owed.”

From Bisnow New York. “Real estate auctions in the U.S. have long been considered a domain of bank foreclosures and little else, but as the coronavirus pandemic increases the need for online transactions — and foreclosure auctions — it has also started to encourage more people to see them as a legitimate way to buy and sell commercial real estate. Buyers still have their doubts, too, Compass Vice Chair Adelaide Polsinelli, a veteran of New York City investment sales, pointed out.”

“‘It’s easy to get caught up in the competitive excitement of an auction,’ Polsinelli said. ‘You may be buying a ‘pig in a poke’ — so how do you congratulate yourself when you just outbid some of the smartest players in the business?'”

“‘I think there is likely some kind of place for auctions where you have very difficult pricing discovery, which is never the case in our dense urban markets,’ said B6 Real Estate Advisors CEO Paul Massey, a decades-long veteran of the New York City market. ‘I don’t suspect that a conventional auction … is either in most people’s best interests or likely to ever see more velocity than they currently get.'”

From Bisnow Washington DC. “The pandemic has put a strain on midsized real estate companies like Acumen Cos. that own urban apartments, as they have seen vacancy rise with young professional tenants moving home or fleeing to the suburbs. Acumen Cos. Chairman Abiud Zerubabel, whose firm owns about 1,000 apartments in D.C., Maryland, Virginia and Los Angeles, said his portfolio experienced a sharp increase in vacancy in May, June and July as its predominantly millennial tenant base moved out.”

“He decided to use this difficult situation as an opportunity to pivot his business model. He shifted from leasing properties primarily to young people with roommates to intentionally targeting families using government-subsidized housing vouchers to fill his buildings. He has now filled his existing portfolio with voucher-holding renters, and he is beginning to acquire properties with high vacancy at discounted prices with plans to fill them up in the same way.”

The Californian. “Aleida Ramirez has worked two or three jobs most of her life. She lost all of them in the early stages of California’s shelter-in-place order and over the months that followed, the thousands of dollars she’d been able to save from years of working. October was the first time in her life she missed a rent payment. A dozen distressed tenants gathered in October in front of the property to protest the rent increase and demand management make needed repairs.”

“Neither the building’s owner nor Avenue5 Residential, the building’s management company, responded to requests for comment. Clayton’s Crossing qualifies as affordable housing under the federal Low-Income Housing Tax Credit program. Even if she does convince a landlord to rent to an unemployed single caregiver of two, how would she pay for a security deposit? She says she’s already been fasting to save on food spending; her car’s registration fees are past due.”

“‘It’s like, which hole do I cover this month?’ she asked. So, the U.S. citizen is considering moving to Guatemala, her home country, or Los Angeles, where she has family. ‘We’re all in the same boat,’ Ramirez said. ‘Actually, there’s no boat. I should say we’re all drowning together.'”

From Auto Evolution on California. “If you can afford to buy yourself a mansion during these difficult times, you’re probably looking at new ones. But there’s a ‘pre-loved’ one with celebrity pedigree that might just be the perfect fit for a respectable car enthusiast. This summer, pop superstar The Weeknd listed his Hidden Hills, California mansion – compound is a more fitting term – for $25 million. That auto gallery with everything else attached just got a considerable price cut, by as much as $3 million.”

The Wall Street Journal. “For much of the past decade, the San Francisco Bay Area has strained to absorb the torrid growth of the tech sector. As head counts of highly paid engineers swelled, housing costs soared, traffic gridlock rose and homeless tents spread on city streets. Now a small but prominent roster of tech companies and investors are doing something about it: leaving.”

“Keith Rabois, a well-known San Francisco-based venture capitalist moving to Miami was frustrated with declining quality-of-life issues like homelessness and the state’s relatively high taxes, among other issues, and he realized he could do his job well from afar. ‘It became clear there were much better places to live,’ he said.”

The Columbian in Washington. “Clark County’s constrained housing supply shows no signs of loosening, according to the latest report from the Regional Multiple Listing Service. Sale prices saw a dip in November, although they remain higher than they were a year ago. The average sale price fell from $473,400 in October to $453,000 in November, compared with $416,100 one year earlier. The median price fell from $425,000 in October to $410,000 in November, compared with $384,500 in November 2019.”

“The price drop came as a surprise, wrote Mike Lamb, a broker at Windermere Stellar in Vancouver, because the ongoing strong demand has pushed prices higher in previous months. He speculated that the decline might have happened because the region’s inventory is so small and the few homes that were listed in November ‘just happened to be less expensive.'”

The Philadelphia Inquirer in Pennsylvania. “Philadelphia property mogul Chris Rahn doesn’t have a corporate office, a business phone number, or a company website. What he does have is a long and low-key record of deals throughout the city that’s earned him a quiet reputation as a wizard of real estate — and, more recently, a growing stack of lawsuits with his name on them. Interviews, legal filings, and a complaint to city prosecutors suggest Rahn might not be the only one who loses when those bets go south.”

“Rahn and his business-partner-wife Christine Pasieka and their companies are defendants in at least seven ongoing lawsuits, most by lenders and investors, in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York. Rahn and Pasieka are alleged in one to have defrauded their partners on a proposed Hilton hotel near the Pennsylvania Convention Center out of $1 million. In another, a Rahn company is accused of borrowing more than $1 million from an 88-year-old New Jersey woman and never paying her back.”

“‘I think what he tries to do is take advantage of people,’ said Lisa Solanke, unhappy about her own real estate dealings with Rahn.”

“He had less luck with the three-acre site that had been part of the recently decommissioned St. Joseph’s Hospital at 16th and Girard Streets, which he acquired from the North Philadelphia Health System in 2015 for $3.5 million. Rahn built a complex of three adjoining apartment buildings, each with 40 units, at the property. But he has not been able to get Philadelphia Water Department clearance to connect two of those buildings to the city’s water grid because the project had been built without rain-permeable paving stones required to help prevent flooding during storms.”

“He told inspectors in early 2019 that the correct material would be installed within six weeks but still has not, a Water Department spokesperson said. Rahn said that officials had approved his original plans without flood-prevention measures, so it was unfair to require him to implement them now. In the meantime, the revenue-starved project’s main mortgage has been refinanced at least four times in what appears to be an effort to stave off foreclosure. Those efforts now may be coming up short.”

From Honolulu Civil Beat in Hawaii. “I am now in my seventh year of serving as one of nine members of the state’s Land Use Commission. The LUC is responsible for moving land from Hawaii’s conservation and agricultural districts into the urban district — for housing and other purposes. Each fall, in the lead up to the opening of the next legislative session, developers and their lobbyists and allies start to squawk about our ‘housing crisis!’ They then, under the guise of creating affordable housing, propose projects that will fatten them.”

“Here are the three myths I hear most often at the LUC. Myth: We don’t have enough, or build enough, housing. Truth: As the pandemic took hold and tourism shut down, it became clear that the over 80,000 newly vacant visitor units in the state were far more than what was needed to house our homeless population, which was estimated to be around 6,500 statewide in 2020.”

“Even in non-COVID times, the vacancy rate at the high end of the residential market is significant. Think of all the dark windows in luxury buildings across Hawaii. A 2019 survey of Hawaii property owners with out-of-state addresses indicated that 52% of them left their units vacant or loaned them to family or friends.”

“I am not suggesting we commandeer those units, but they disprove the claim we don’t have or build enough homes. We actually do OK at building housing – take a look at the Kakaako skyline – just not housing that most residents can afford.”

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This Post Has 119 Comments

    1. The Mechanics Behind the Electronic Vote Steal Operation

      https://www.bitchute.com/video/OJrljwQFcIvc/

      https://twitter.com/tom2badcat/status/1325126091460268032

      https://archive.vn/KPwUa

      https://everylegalvote.com/country

      https://hereistheevidence.com/

      “Dominion-izing the Vote”

      https://www.bitchute.com/video/qlEUbPLvW98w/

      Eric Coomer Explains How To Alter Votes In The Dominion Voting System

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtB3tLaXLJE

      Eric Coomer, Dominion’s head of product and strategy, has disappeared.

      ‘Representatives from Dominion also did not attend a court hearing in Pennsylvania on November 19. Its US headquarters in Denver was also suddenly closed and moved away. Their employees deleted their names from LinkedIn.’

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oYQeeNCzZM

      https://www.theepochtimes.com/poll-watcher-describes-pennsylvania-election-irregularities-including-47-missing-usb-cards_3594549.html

      Here’s the testimony on video:

      “Baggies of USBs” – PA Witness Gives Explosive Testimony

      https://www.bitchute.com/video/AdaglXlcuqYt/

      Dem Ballot Inspector Says She Was Threatened with Violence for Speaking Up About Suspicious Activity

      “The majority inspector threatened to slap me in the face,” said Olivia Jane Winters, a registered Democrat and minority ballot inspector in Pennsylvania, testifying to Pennsylvania State Republicans Wednesday that she had been threatened and harassed by other election officials after she asked about suspicious activities during the 2020 election.’

      https://www.bitchute.com/video/_KrpyDlHTe8/

      Crowd Gasps after Finding out about Absurd Spike of Votes in Favor of Biden

      https://www.bitchute.com/video/jmNUAx8wQYdO/

      Sen. Doug Mastriano closing remarks PA state legislature meeting.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIqujobvDFI

      https://censoredbyjack.com/channel/evidence-of-widespread-election-fraud

      https://www.deepcapture.com/2020/11/election-2020-was-rigged-the-evidence/

      ”We began to look and realized how easy it is to change votes.”

      ‘Election security expert @RussRamsland
      has performed many investigations on US election machines.’

      ‘The most *shocking* thing about this interview is it took place just days BEFORE the election. Watch’

      https://twitter.com/kylenabecker/status/1327511568993701888

      Col Phil Waldron Confirms Experts Witnessed Dominion Communicating with Frankfurt on Election Day

      https://www.bitchute.com/video/n7j5lg9fYyzz/

      Dominion forensic report from Michigan (PDF):

      https://www.depernolaw.com/uploads/2/7/0/2/27029178/antrim_michigan_forensics_report_%5B121320%5D_v2_%5Bredacted%5D.pdf

      1. ‘KRAKEN is DOD cyber warfare program.’

        ‘They cheated & got caught!’

        Sidney Powell
        🇺🇸
        ‘Who knew?’

        https://twitter.com/SidneyPowell1/status/1331435411286192128?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1331435411286192128%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fheadlines360.news%2F2020%2F11%2F24%2Fsidney-powells-kraken-is-department-of-defense-cyber-warfare-program%2F

        I did some digging around and found this (WARNING) PDF:

        https://www.dacis.com/budget/budget_pdf/FY20/RDTE/F/1203110F_294.pdf

        It’s dated Feb. 2019. If you word search Kraken (‘respond’ category), you’ll find it twice on page 4. This unit 305 person is in the affidavits in Powells lawsuit.

        WARNING PDF with filing:

        https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mied.350905/gov.uscourts.mied.350905.1.15.pdf

        Zuckerberg on page 15. Obammie on page 8.

        ‘Response: Yes, our “White Hat” hackers – they have that traffic and the packets.”

        https://twitter.com/themodalice/status/1333505965857984512

        ‘Ruby Freeman Makes Video of herself Showing MOUNTAINS of GA ABSENTEE BALLOTS With NO RETURN ADDRESS’

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFYaxvxdfXY&feature=youtu.be

        Example

        Note the vote spike at the Atlanta treason:

        https://twitter.com/EricTrump/status/1334812236322381826/

        Corrupt Georgia Election Worker Seen Loading Same Ballots 3 Times into Machine

        Poll Worker Ruby Freeman Loads Up The Same Stack Of Ballots To Be Counted 3X

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RiREC3Zy20E

        Ruby Freeman – “I need an attorney”

        “This is bigger than me. I need an attorney.” at 4:55.

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsU-CXcJ4Lg

  2. ‘‘I think there is likely some kind of place for auctions where you have very difficult pricing discovery, which is never the case in our dense urban markets’

    Paul, meet Jennifer:

    ‘Justice Jennifer G. Schecter was having none of it. ‘The default here predates the pandemic and, since then, [the] plaintiff has been unable to comply with the terms of forbearance agreement,’ she wrote in a decision’

    1. Vitre, a 21-story boutique building at 302 East 96th Street, launched sales in 2017 and though it had some early momentum, deals later stalled. Wonder Works defaulted on the mezzanine loan this January, according to Hadi, who said his firm provided “ample space and opportunity for the borrower to correct the situation.” Nahla hired a team of brokers from JLL to market the foreclosure auction in October. Hadi said the firm would continue to try to sell units in what he acknowledged was a “very difficult marketplace.”

      Mezzanine loans typically do not require payment during the term of debt, only at the end of the term. This enables a company to improve its cash flow.

  3. ‘the revenue-starved project’s main mortgage has been refinanced at least four times in what appears to be an effort to stave off foreclosure. Those efforts now may be coming up short’

    Jeebus, this article is a cornucopia of a$$-pounding.

    1. Really, is this project being held back only because of a few paving stones? Just take out one loan, put in the pavers, and open for business in mid-2019, pre-COVID. Instead they just keep refinancing? I think there’s some funny business going on.

      1. interesting thought Oxide.
        There is something else going on beside not having the pre-reqs to hook up to the water system.

        I am wondering if they are trying to starve out their partners – and take the building for themselves

      2. For being a “mogul,” I sure couldn’t find much about Chris Rahn and Christine Pasieka. It’s almost as if most info and photos have already been scrubbed from the internet. hmmm

  5. ‘Ken Griffin is selling both of his Miami Beach penthouses for at least a 20% loss, Katherine Kallergis reported for the Real Deal. Griffin bought the two Faena House penthouses in 2015. At the time, the $60 million transaction was the most expensive sale ever in Miami’

    Winner, winner, chicken dinner!

    1. The more expensive something is, the harder it is to sell. It doesn’t matter if it’s a house, a car or a piece of clothing.

      1. Or art.

        ” In 2015, Griffin reportedly paid $300 million to Hollywood producer David Geffen for Willem de Kooning’s 1955 painting “Interchange,” while paying another $200 million in a separate deal to acquire Jackson Pollock’s 1948 work “Number 17A.”

        Griffin’s extensive art collection also includes a $60 million Paul Cezanne painting (“Curtain, Jug and Fruit Bowl”) and an $80 million painting by Jasper Johns (“False Start”).”

        https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/06/photos-how-citadel-billionaire-ken-griffin-spends-his-fortune.html

        ‘Wall Street billionaire Ken Griffin pays $100M for Basquiat painting’

        https://nypost.com/2020/06/04/ken-griffin-pays-100m-for-basquiat-painting-amid-race-protests/

  6. ‘The price drop came as a surprise, wrote Mike Lamb, a broker at Windermere Stellar in Vancouver, because the ongoing strong demand has pushed prices higher in previous months. He speculated that the decline might have happened because the region’s inventory is so small and the few homes that were listed in November ‘just happened to be less expensive’

    The mix. The MIX!!

  7. ‘He decided to use this difficult situation as an opportunity to pivot his business model. He shifted from leasing properties primarily to young people with roommates to intentionally targeting families using government-subsidized housing vouchers to fill his buildings’

    Now that we are filling up luxury apartments with section 8 tenants, can we say the apartment bubble has popped?

      1. Living in tents waiting to get their section 8 vouchers so they can come full circle and live in the places they used to live in but could no longer afford thanks to the plandemic.

  8. I’m hoping Deplorable will stop by to tell us how well these lux apts are built. And how long they will last under the assault of Section 8.

    2. The only difference is that with the section 8 renters I would expect more destruction and holes in the wall, resulting in the replacement of damaged drywall, and the discovery and removal of the hidden urine bottles.

      Whereas with “luxury” renters, no damage, no drywall replacement, and the urine bottles reside inside the walls, forever…

      1. I had a LL with a lot of experience in section 8 tell me it’s the opposite. The reason is they have a pretty good deal going and if they cause problems they can lose it. I’m not a big fan of the program because it helps just a fraction of renters with wait lists that stretch for years. It’s a feel good band-aid, while dogs like Mel Watt guaranteed trillions for the exact purpose of driving up rents. It’s the same with these low income housing guberment scams that benefit rich people for the most part and do nothing to keep rents low. Look at CA article on how much this Guatemalan lady was paying.

        1. It’s a feel good band-aid, while dogs like Mel Watt guaranteed trillions for the exact purpose of driving up rents. It’s the same with these low income housing guberment scams that benefit rich people for the most part and do nothing to keep rents low.

          Welcome to every single government program that supposedly exists to help the less fortunate. It’s really a give to the wealthy disguised as helping the poor.

        2. The last building I lived in in Cleveland before I moved to Colorado was owned, free and clear, by the daughter of the man who built it. It was less than 40% occupied when I left at the depths of the Obama-Biden Depression.

          The building manager told me the owner said she would NEVER start accepting section 8, she’d rather have over half her building vacant than allow section 8 renters.

          I don’t want section 8 neighbors. Yes, there are some real hard luck stories behind some of them, but the overwhelming majority of them are in that position because of having children outside of marriage.

          Globalists love fatherless children. They love anything that destroys the nuclear family and increases dependency on Uncle Sugar.

          2. I don’t see anything about whether it varies with the number of children and I don’t see a definition of who counts as a child…or as a mother. If we as a country want to pay women to stay home with kids it would probably encourage that. But it also sounds like another way to get UBI in place for everyone but the slaves (single men, which there would be a lot more of soon).

          3. Single childless women are serfs too. Who do you think is covering for all the women on paid family leave?

            For every system, someone will find a way to work it. I remember one state program which paid high school kids something like $50(?) for every A they got in class. I don’t know how often they got their grades and $$, but it was a significant amount of money. Families quickly came to depend on the A money as income. Some high school seniors would deliberately fail a required class so they could repeat the year and bring in more hundreds of dollars for the family.

            Paying women to stay home with the kids sounds noble, but it would devolve into a racket as well. I read the moms article. It reads as if the woman would get her kid money on top of whatever other job she had. Would she get the same money for one kid or two kids or 3? How long such payments would last — until the kid is latchkey age? It wouldn’t be hard to space the children every 6 years or so to keep the money flowing until she’s 50. Wouldn’t a better option be to subsidize day care? I think they do that already.

          4. For every system, someone will find a way to work it.

            For some reason, I’ve NEVER been the beneficiary of any free cheese. It’s odd. It’s like as a white male I’m being discriminated against or something.

  10. “The MyAffordableLuxury report noted that Boston’s luxury market ‘has seen better days,’ due to the pandemic. ‘According to the Greater Boston Association of Realtors, there is currently a glut of unsold condos in the Downtown area, with inventory levels up 50% Y-o-Y. Might be a great time to snatch a luxury condo in Boston!’ according to the report.”

    NOW is the best time to buy.

    -NAR

    I bet they said that last year too. And the year before…

  12. i agree that mostly empty units are a waste of resources – but mainly for the owners. Wouldn’t the City/State benefit from the property taxes – when the owners are using very little city services.

    ———
    Truth: As the pandemic took hold and tourism shut down, it became clear that the over 80,000 newly vacant visitor units in the state were far more than what was needed to house our homeless population, which was estimated to be around 6,500 statewide in 2020.”

  13. TD Bank (Toronto) – vacating 1.2 M sq ft will happen mostly in the downtown financial core – say about 10 blocks by 8 blocks. Would hate to be the owner that has to now fill up the occupancy.

    I dont think that people are realizing how quickly this might be happening in financial and tech lead cities.

    ——-
    TD has been looking to reduce office space pre-pandemic, but the pandemic has definitely accelerated the move. During the bank’s earning’s call, Riaz Ahmed, the bank’s Chief Financial Officer, stated “This quarter we made the decision to vacate approximately 1.2 million square feet.” They estimate the office space represents about 11% of the bank’s non-retail space.

    1. Covid is having a devastating impact on children — and the vaccine won’t fix everything (12/15/20):

      “It has been almost 10 months since Covid-19 began battering families in the United States, putting parents out of work, shrouding their homes in grief and loss, and shutting children out of the schools that taught and cared for them.

      It’s all taken an unthinkable toll on children — a social, emotional and academic ordeal so extreme that some advocates and experts warn its repercussions could rival those of a hurricane or other disaster.

      “Recovery from Katrina wasn’t a one-year recovery. We didn’t just bring the kids back and everything fell into place. And this will be the same,” said Betheny Gross, the associate director at the Center on Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington, who studied New Orleans schools after the 2005 hurricane and is now tracking Covid-19’s impact.

      A nation of children coping with trauma, illness and disruption will need more than a vaccine to address the fallout, she said.

      “I don’t think we can just start school next fall and say, ‘Everything’s going to be OK.’

      https://www.nbcnews.com/news/education/covid-having-devastating-impact-children-vaccine-won-t-fix-everything-n1251172

      Look on the bright side. Instead of killing themselves, or shooting up their own (now closed) schools, maybe some of these kidz will get woke to the Plandemic and start taking out some of the globalist Lockdown Lovers instead. One can only wish…

      1. Globalists destroyed the economy with the lowest unemployment rate in recorded history for a disease with a 99.8% survival rate (12/16/20):

        “Americans checking-account balances are sharply declining as they await progress on continued stimulus talks between lawmakers.

        As a result of the enhanced unemployment benefits and direct stimulus checks, both part of the CARES Act, Americans’ median checking-account balances increased by 65% on the year in April, according to a JPMorgan Chase Institute JPM, report published on Wednesday.

        By September, Americans drew out 50% of the initial balance gains in April, the report, which analyzed 1.8 million families’ Chase personal checking accounts found.

        The fall in checking-account balances signifies that “the ‘typical’ family is spending down the cash buffer they accumulated during COVID-19,” the report said.

        https://www.marketwatch.com/story/americans-are-draining-their-checking-accounts-as-stimulus-talks-drag-on-11608138440

        Note that this article does not mention, not once, anything about unemployed people going back to work.

        1. Globalists destroyed small business while mega business is doing better than ever . Less competition, less choices.

          1. Yeah. I’m completely done with Marketwatch. They banned all the pro-Trump commenters or anybody who even questioned the globalist BS. Their comments section used to be massive, and last I checked there were articles with 1 or 2 comments, if at all.

          2. Those comment sections were the main reason I went to Marketwatch. Now there’s no reason to even click on the site; I just use the stock app on my phone to check the markets. I can’t be the only one. These MSMs must be losing tons of viewers. Not that they’ll go out of business anytime soon. They are backed by billionaires, so they don’t need our eyeballs anymore. Of course, they’ll continue to post their shrill hit pieces about how the radical right has migrated to even more radical outlets, to keep their existing audience happy. But if their goal was to gain new right-wingers through propaganda, they have failed utterly. Their antics have only exposed The Man Behind the Curtain, so to speak.

          3. It all transpired leading up to the election. The Trump support was massive on Yahoo and all the places where there were thousands of comments per article. I think they realized that it would be even more difficult to steal the election with such obvious support for the sitting president, so they shut it all down to try to hide it.

      2. 30,000 children dropped out of school this academic year in Colorado alone. The national number must be around 2 million.

        1. Ca teachers union has it handled

          The state’s powerful education unions, led by the California Teachers Association, greatly benefit from three provisions in the “omnibus education trailer bill.” One prohibits school districts from laying off teachers, the second places a de facto cap on charter school enrollments, and a third dilutes transparency and accountability for educational outcomes.

          The union-backed no-layoff decree was forced on school districts, over their objections, as a condition of maintaining budget levels despite the state’s multi-billion-dollar deficit.

          That funding also ignores districts’ losses of students due to COVID-19 shutdowns by basing state school aid in 2020-21 on pre-pandemic levels of attendance. It’s a windfall to school systems experiencing enrollment declines, but freezes funds for those seeing growth — particularly charter schools. Thus, it furthers school unions’ long-standing campaign to knee-cap charter school expansion.

  16. 3 inches of snow today in “Winter storm Gail.” Gail? When I was growing up, we called it “snow.” Now even snow has to have a name, probably feels left out and wants a participation certificate. Geeze, even the snowflakes are snowflakes. 🙄

    1. Wow, snow? I thought it was going to be a thing of the past – with all the global warming….errr…climate change. I’m surprised they haven’t banned cars from driving on it. You wouldn’t want to hurt that precious snow which is going extinct.

  18. I’m sure that the Founding Fathers never envisioned a Medical Cartel taking away the rights given by the Constitution.
    I have watched for decades now the gradual development of the Medical Cartel becoming more and more invasive into the lives of people. From Obamacare mandating you have to buy insurance based on your income, which is a rip off. Every other commercial is a Big Pharma ad with unacceptable side affects that your suppose to think are ok.
    Prior to the rise of the Medical Cartel because employers started insuring people as a job benefit, people survived nicely by eating a balanced diet of real foods.
    The advent of the Standard of Care, being some long term medication is horrific.
    Processed foods are a big culprit in health problems as well as life style choices. A lot of symptoms can come from simply being dehydrated when water will cure the symptoms.
    When the Medical Cartel started saying that eggs and fats were bad, this is when I started rejecting their theories. Now they have people so brainwashed into taking some magic pill with bizarre side effects.
    The Medical stats show that about a million people die per year based on standard of care , which I don’t find to be acceptable.
    Now, Medical is locking us down and destroying people’s lives and businesses over a virus that has a 99.6 survival rate that mostly affecting very old people with other serious conditions.
    So Government in conjunction with the Medical Cartel is being used to usher in top down control of people’s lives.
    Want to take their rushed vaccines?
    Communist always use the health care carrot to justify ushering in Communist top down control.
    Government getting in bed with private industry is a great evil that has screwed up everything. It wasn’t the intent of the Founders of America to have a One World Order of Corporate Globalist taking over Government and running people’s lives, by Communist means. These forces that rigged the election are no different than Hilter in wanting to rule the World. It’s obvious they are trying to Control all information and dispute to their false narratives, which is a affront to the First Amendment.
    It was alarming that they bailed out the fraudulent 2009 lending fraud, which was followed by the Commie Obamacare being passed. Nothing but rigged industries ,including the real estate and higher education. This isn’t capitalism and the Politicians sold us out , and we can’t get rid of the traitors because they rig elections apparently.
    And God help us if this Great Reset ushers in Rule by Globalist power hungry mad hatters that are basically evil.

  19. Might be a great time to snatch a luxury condo in Boston!’ according to the report.”

    “Now is a terrible time to buy, since the real cratering is still ahead,” said no realtor anywhere, ever.

  20. “‘I think there is likely some kind of place for auctions where you have very difficult pricing discovery, which is never the case in our dense urban markets,’ said B6 Real Estate Advisors CEO Paul Massey, a decades-long veteran of the New York City market.

    Saying “realtors are liars” is redundant, but this asshat’s dissembling is especially dishonest. What Paul won’t tell knife-catchers/future FBs that banks in “dense urban markets” are sitting on securitized collateral that they have no idea how to price, since the cratering is only accelerating. That makes determining true price discovery on the glut of housing a crap shoot, but the trajectory is straight down. Caveat emptor, bagholders.

  21. A dozen distressed tenants gathered in October in front of the property to protest the rent increase and demand management make needed repairs.”

    Did they stamp their little feet?

  22. “The price drop came as a surprise, wrote Mike Lamb, a broker at Windermere Stellar in Vancouver, because the ongoing strong demand has pushed prices higher in previous months.

    Three things:

    1. Realtors are liars
    2. Realtors are liars
    3. The “strong demand” is due solely to ultra-cheap and abundant credit (debt) being preferred by the Keynesian fraudsters at the central bank. But “surprise” house drops are going to financially devastate speculators who levered up on borrowed money to “buy” their shacks, causing an accelerating doom loop. Die, speculator scum.

  23. Gold and silver keep rising inexorably. It gives me great pleasure to know that the Fed’s bullion bank accomplices and designated market-riggers are on the wrong side of that trade, with massive short positions they’re going to have to cover as physical precious metals become unobtainium.

    https://www.kitco.com/market/

    1. Gold and silver keep rising inexorably

      I appreciate the sentiment, but doesn’t it require ignoring down days altogether? Silver is about where it was 10 years ago.

      I have a modest position. I just don’t hear any Zooming noises from the storage area.

      1. I appreciate the sentiment, but doesn’t it require ignoring down days altogether? Silver is about where it was 10 years ago.

        Yeah, I agree. It’s basically been range bound forever. I think that’s part of the reason for Bitcoin’s massive rise. People are getting crucified in precious metals as compared to other assets, and are desperate for returns.

          2. Bitcoin is an asset?

            I remember a story from the Balkans in the early 90s where you could buy a loaf of bread for a live round out of your magazine. I wonder where bitcoin fits into that economy? Maybe you can corner the market on bread AND ammo with your bitcoins?

          4. I wonder where bitcoin fits into that economy?

            It doesn’t. Sh!tcoin is nothing more than a utility to facilitate mass speculation by a bunch of idiots buying and selling nothing to each other.

      2. Rick Rule thinks that we are in the beginnings of the next bull market in pm’s. The bull markets last about 10 years with lots of pullbacks in the middle. And that’s not counting the epic money printing. pm’s are a good place to be if you have dollar-denominated debt, like a mortgage. (I realize Blue has no mortgage.)

        Gold bugs agree that a Biden presidency will usher in a Green New Deal. Anything green requires small amounts of silver. There is already a deficit between the amount of silver that will be needed and the amount that is being mined. The price of physical silver is anticipated to increase dramatically. For example, if an iPhone needs $4 of silver for an $800 phone, and suddenly silver becomes scarce, Apple will willingly pay $16 for that silver. Compared to an $800 phone, it’s a small cost, but people with silver just quadrupled their investment.

        For gold specifically, gold bug (and dealer, of course) Andy Schectman has his own theory. He’s put together a few puzzle pieces:
        1. Bretton Woods was the 1944 agreement that established a gold-backed dollar. The gold backing was removed incrementally from 1944 to 1971, when Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard entirely.
        2. Since 1400, any reserve currency has lasted no more than 40-50 years before becoming unstable and being replaced. The US dollar, if you start from 1971, is 50 years old.
        3. Over ~150 countries have been asking for a new Bretton Woods agreement. This is a sign that the dollar’s days are numbered.
        4. In April 2019, the Bank of International Settlements has reclassified gold as a Tier 1 asset, meaning that it is considered risk-free along with the US dollar. Those two are the only Tier 1 assets.
        5. Since the BIS’s announcement, European countries have been transferring their physical gold from vaults in London and New York to their home countries.
        6. This year, high-net worth individuals have been converting their paper gold (GLD) to physical gold by taking delivery. This weakens to COMEX. They are doing this on the sly.
        7. JP Morgan and other banks are suppressing the price of gold to discourage and distract people from buy gold themselves.

        Putting this together, Schectman predicts that, soon, countries will agree to replace the US dollar as singular reserve currency with something with at least a partial gold backing. He’s not sure what the something is. Could be a basket of currencies, could be a new stablecoin crypto, could be an Eastern basket and a Western basket. But there is way too much going on with gold behind the scenes (according to Schectman). And that was before COVID. All the subsequent COVID money printing just makes the dollar weaker and gives countries a stronger reason to want something else.

        1. I don’t know what to think. I could honestly see a situation where gold and silver are topped out, because inflation hits hard and fast and the FED is forced to raise rates rapidly and stop their money printing nonsense.

        2. The biologist fancies herself a metallurgist now?

          It’s fun to think about how copper that was in a Roman coin 2,000 years ago could have been passed through the hands of generations of Europeans, been melted down and re-minted, and crossed the Atlantic to end up as a 500 foot roll of #10 AWG stranded.

          “a new stablecoin crypto”

          LOLZ

          1. The biologist fancies herself a metallurgist now?

            I think oxide is a chemist. She could know quite a bit about metals if her focus is/was inorganic chemistry.

        3. pm’s are a good place to be if you have dollar-denominated debt

          Seriously, if you have dollar denominated debt, sell everything for dollars and get the heck out of debt. Staying in debt to speculate in anything is crazy.

          The Green New Deal will bring poverty, spread far and wide.

          1. What am I going to sell to pay off the mortgage on my house? The house itself? Now we’re back the never-ending rent vs. buy argument. Houses in my neighborhood are selling for twice what I owe on my mortgage, so I feel ok for the moment.

            I’ll just wait for the Chinese to come and take my house. After all, there are many children in China that need housing in a place with clean air and fresh water. And I, a single white old woman, have no business depriving a family of such a house, despite paying for it fair and square, isn’t that right?

          2. The best return on your labor is limiting your losses. And the losses loom large with housing given the fact the depreciation eats you alive even under the best of circumstances.

          3. What am I going to sell

            The Chinese children isn’t a very good distraction, though it does remind me of my mother telling me to finish my dinner in the ’50s because there were 30 million Chinese starving to death.

            It’s not a rent vs. buy conversation. It’s a question of taking a dollar and paying down your debt vs speculating with it. Speculation vs security and every penny may count. You do whatever you want of course. Plan A may be fragile.

            Some see a peaceful controlled inflation event. I see a credit event. Move to the center lane or get over to the shoulder as you see fit.

          6. The Green New Deal will bring poverty, spread far and wide.”

            Yes it will but silver ? IDK ??

            “Florian Clement, group head of solar cell printing technology at Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE, a major German research group, expects the industry to be able to halve its use of silver per cell over the coming decade. “A reduction down to 50 [milligrams] per cell is still expected to be possible within the next 10 years,” Clement said. ”

            I do silver plate my PCB for best Microwave performance. 👍

        4. The current hype around crypto is at an all time high around the net. Posters are claiming they’re buying houses, etc. with some of their gains and hodling for 100k or more per digital coin, lol. I do see a lot of people trying to dodge any future tax increases should the demoncrats somehow gain power and crypto would be the most obvious candidate.

          I tried to do a little reading about the latest hypebeasts like link but I found slick websites promising me the future but little substance. I’ve gone through a number of bitcoin white papers, the designers (sorry, not a lone japanese guy, my hunch is possibly some of the original paypal crew) were brilliant but its got its limitations, particularly with regard to the transaction rate.

          I felt a long time ago it could be used for secure voting and I recall the USPS getting a patent in that regard recently.

          1. buying houses, etc. with some of their gains

            That’s where I’m feeling the FOMO. It’s one thing to hodl it all and then lose it all. But these people learned their lesson from the dot bomb. They are smart enough hodl just long enough for their BTC to cover their major debts such as a mortgage. Then they “get rich by selling too soon,” as the saying goes, even if it’s nowhere near the top. The rest is gravy. I think an acquaintance of an HBBer did the same with TSLA stock.

          2. to dodge any future tax increases

            That’s amusing. Have read of numerous cases of the Feds confiscating so-called wallets.

          4. Posters are claiming they’re buying houses, etc. with some of their gains and hodling for 100k or more per digital coin, lol.

            My friend was telling me he was going all in on Tesla and crypto (Bitcoin and another one – I forget) in December 2018. I told him he was a fool, and that Tesla was going BK and crypto was a scam. They’re both up like 7x+ since then. He then went and bought a house at what I thought was the peak a year later.

            His Tesla gamble paid off his entire mortgage on a nearly $600,000 house. I have no idea how the crypto is doing because I do not ask and do not want to hear about it, but he has indicated he has banked huge profits. His father in law is his “partner” in all of this – a wealthy TX oil exec who is retired.

            But I’m saving my pennies. LOLZ. I am getting crucified because I didn’t want to be a speculator. I don’t believe in Sh!tcoin and never will, but just look at what it’s doing. It’s outrageous.

          6. I could tank the market for you. I’d only have to buy a little.

            Same here. The moment I bought, it would undoubtedly crash.

  24. I remember a couple of days ago hearing a really caustic audio rant about the global impact of the English private school system. I wish I had saved it but didn’t. Anybody here know where that was from?

    1. I wish there was a massive military operation which seized all voting machines and servers, and arrested hundreds on charges of treason. I know I’m engaging in fantasy, but it’s what should happen.

    3. I think it’s a certainty that Trump will not leave the White House and allow Biden to become POTUS without exhausting every possible resource and power that he has as President. If it comes down to it he will act on Executive Order 13848 and seize control of everything in the election–hardware, software and data. He’ll force a Constitutional showdown to save the country from this completely corrupt and rigged election. It’s obvious that Trump believes that this country is doomed if the Democrats and Courts are allowed to ignore all the laws of the land and the Constitution. America would end up turning into a dystopian nightmare.

  26. First Comes A Rolling Civil War

    Biden is on a double precipice of the worst-ever economic depression coupled with imminent explosions of social rage

    …The key actor is the Deep State, which decides what happens next. They have weighed the pros and cons of placing as candidate a senile, stage 2 dementia, neocon warmonger and possible extorsionist (along with son) as “leader of the free world”, campaigning from a basement, incapable of filling a parking lot in his rallies, and seconded by someone with so little support in the Dem primaries that she was the first to drop out…

    https://www.unz.com/pescobar/first-comes-a-rolling-civil-war/

  27. Question for the HBB:

    Proctor and Gamble (PG) pays dividends, but Berkshire Hathaway (BRK/B) does not. Which one is better?

    P&G makes stuff, ‘Murican people like buying stuff they can use up and throw away. Berkshire also owns companies that make disposable stuff, and some that include significant infrastructure like railroads.

    I am also interested in Fidelity’s new zero expense fund that aims to mirror the Russell 2000.

    I am all cash right now (and as a renter, there’s plenty of it).

    1. You’re so far ahead of the game with the fact your shelter costs are a tiny fraction of the typical home-debtor, you don’t need to take any risk.

  29. Another Rules for thee story

    Dem. Rhode Island Gov. Caught at Wine Event – Days After Telling Citizens to Stay Home

    by Adan Salazar
    December 16th 2020, 5:37 pm

    The Democrat East Coast governor was seen in photographs taken by another diner at a wine and art event at Barnaby’s Public House in Providence over the weekend.

    The governor’s non-essential outing came just days after she instructed Rhode Islanders to “Please, stay home except for essential activities & wear a mask anytime you’re with people you don’t live with.”

    Gina Raimondo
    @GovRaimondo
    It’s week two of our pause. I know it’s been hard, but I want to thank every Rhode Islander who’s following our guidance. Please, stay home except for essential activities & wear a mask anytime you’re with people you don’t live with. Together, we can turn our case numbers around.
    2:01 PM · Dec 7, 2020

    The woman who took the photo, Erica Oliveras, claimed Raimondo “only took her mask off whenever she was drinking her wine,” but the photo clearly shows the governor’s glass and mask both down.

    Another photo shows Raimondo masked, but in close proximity to the person conducting the event, who is likely not a member of her household.

    https://www.infowars.com/posts/dem-rhode-island-gov-caught-at-wine-event-after-telling-citizens-to-stay-home

      1. I am honestly not sure. I read that they dumped everything just recently, so there’s a bunch of new stuff in there.

  32. A healthcare worker in Alaska has reportedly been hospitalized with a serious allergic reaction after taking Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine. They had no reported history of drug allergies, unlike others who’ve suffered such reactions. The afflicted individual remains in the hospital on Wednesday after suffering a powerful reaction Tuesday, three sources who had seen official reports of the victim’s health told the New York Times.

    I wonder if it will be marked up as a Covid-related hospitalization.

    1. “A healthcare worker in Alaska has reportedly been hospitalized with a serious allergic reaction after taking Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine.”

      Won’t be long before you can’t say that.

      Twitter Says It Will REMOVE All Posts Claiming Vaccines Can Harm People

      by Steve Watson
      December 17th 2020, 4:02 am

      Despite widespread reports of health workers having allergic reactions to Pfizer shot

      https://www.infowars.com/posts/twitter-says-it-will-remove-all-posts-claiming-vaccines-can-harm-people

  34. Black Lives Matter Raised $10.6 BILLION Since May

    by Chris Menahan | Information Liberation
    December 17th 2020, 2:34 am

    Donations to Black Lives Matter-related causes over the past 7 months rival Amazon’s total profits for all of 2019 — which was a record-breaking year for the online retail giant.

    The Economist continues:

    Early next year [BLM] hopes to launch a bank to push capital to black-owned firms and non-profit groups.

    Nothing says “black liberation” like taking donation money and loaning it to black people so you can profit off interest!

    https://www.infowars.com/

    2. $10B? Holy shakedown, Batman. I’ll bet most of the “donations” are from corporate America. Because we know that true Libs never donate squat to anyone. They want “other people” to pay for stuff, preferably at gun point.

  36. I hear from Doctors on line that these vaccines are different in that they are injecting a foreign gene into the body. One Doctor was saying in essence that the FDA should not of approved it because they really don’t know the long term effects.
    So a bunch of people are going to take this vaccine for a virus that has a 99.8 survival rate and mostly affects very old people. One Doctor said that it’s simply not justified to give this vaccines to entire populations.
    I heard another Doctor actually admit that they were killing a lot of Seniors when Covid-19 first came out because they were giving them the wrong therapy.
    I have hear many Doctors before they were suppressed from disputing the narrative say that the tests aren’t accurate. Another Doctor said they are counting the regular flu and phemonia as Covid-19 deaths as well as your yearly deaths from his hospital germs that kill a certain percentage of people yearly.
    I heard another Doctor say that it’s common practice in China for people to wear masks because of the air pollution. Another Doctor said that Covid-19 is a strain from virus that’s been around for a long time.
    I could go on and on about what honest Doctors have said about Covid, but these Doctors are being silenced
    So, a friend called me yesterday in a panic because a friend he knows called him to tell him that 6 members of his family got Covid, all in their 70’s, including a 90 year old Mother. However he kept saying they had pnemonia. I finally questioned him on if they have Covid or do they have pnemonia. He than said that they had Covid. So I flashed how all the Respiratory diseases are being labeled Covid, so God knows what this family got .
    But, when you hear highly credential Doctors disputing this panadamic that are now being censored, you know it’s being used for another purpose. I hear one Doctor say that it’s false about what they are saying about the ICU wards being overwhelmed.
    So, I’m just saying that at this point the truth seem to be hard to find and a narrative for whatever purpose is being employed.
    Today, in Calif on the news they said 1 in 80 have Covid pursuant testing. Based on many Doctors saying the test isn’t accurate, than it’s no doubt a scam for some purpose.
    So, I think it’s obvious we are being lied to.

    1. injecting a foreign gene into the body

      The central dogma of molecular biology is DNA makes RNA (transcription), and RNA makes protein (translation). Pfizer’s and Moderna’s vaccines inject messenger RNA (mRNA) assuming that our bodies will make the protein that will then stimulate an immune response. Vaccines heretofore haven’t required this translation step. Presumably, there is also an immune response to the messenger RNA delivery system.

  37. So, firstly it looks like they used Covid to mess with the election laws to rig the election and blame Trump for deaths they claimed were from Covid.
    They also allowed the Antifia and BLM groups who were financed to reek havic for a while with their other false narrative of the racism or America is bad false narrative.

    So this big industrial complex of Globalist Monopolies with the Medical Cartel are making a big power play to take over in conjunction with corrupted government. They are controlling the news, the Politicians and they are in bed with Foreign Governments like China .
    So, it appears they are using Covid 19 and Commie rioting and fake narratives to change America to be under their rule, under some kind of a Great Reset, which God knows what that means.
    The Medical and Industrial complex has become so powerful in the last 25 years that it’s frighting.
    They seem to be destroying small business on purpose by these lockdowns.
    So, God knows what comes next.
    But, as some posters have expressed, only the people can stop this take over because voting has been elimated so we can’t throw the bums out. But, if people are locked down and your getting nothing but fake news than how can people unite in a rebellion against this takeover? I mean is it going to be by word of mouth and emails or what?
    It seems to me that they have thought of everything and they have everything on some kind of a time line .
    I’m just saying they are making it much harder for rebellion outright by the populations and they aren’t reporting on the rebellion that is taking place .
    Control of information is really powerful as well as suppression of dispute to
    the narratives or facts .
    So, it’s really seems to be playing out exactly as they have planned so far. What is going to stop this?

    1. They seem to be destroying small business on purpose by these lockdowns.

      I was thinking about that. In the old days it was the self sufficient farmers that you couldn’t starve out…not many of those left now. Now the most difficult to starve out (and therefore most likely to resist) would be the productive small business types because people who need what they produce will continue to trade goods and services to them for as long as they can. So looking at it from that cynical perspective it makes sense that you would want to take them out first if you were trying to take over the country. I think the goal is to avoid fighting the deplorables, at least for now, and starve them until they will gladly trade their guns and ammo for food and energy.

      What is going to stop this?

      I don’t know. If you can convince people they are being starved fair and square or that things will get better soon if they behave, by the time they realize your real plan for them they might be too weak to fight it. And the first ones to notice that and try to rise up will be easy to label as paranoid crazies. If you can keep them from freely communicating it might be almost impossible to fight effectively.

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