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We Can Use The Word Bubble For This, As Long As We Don’t Then Assume It Has To Pop

A weekend topic starting with the Globe and Mail. “Breather Products Inc., the Montreal startup that raised more than US$150-million to build a global flexible workspace operator, is abandoning hundreds of leases in an effort to reboot the pandemic-stricken company. ‘The decision I’ve made is that Breather in its current form as an operator doesn’t make sense and, to be frank, I’m not sure it ever made sense,’ said Chief executive officer Bryan Murphy. ‘I want to be like Airbnb.'”

From WGNO in Louisiana. “A New Orleans Airbnb owner says never again after a guest caused thousands of dollars in damages and theft. The homeowner, Corey Ball says her guests used a stolen identity to rent her home and then stole her and her husband’s identities in the process. Ball was excited about the month long rental income, but things quickly changed when her guests checked out.”

“‘When we got to our home, we realized they completely turned it upside down, they had stolen a bunch of items, they kicked open our closet door to access the attic,’ Ball said. Once upstairs, the guests found boxes of personal information. Ball said, ‘Pretty soon we were getting credit card applications and thank you for signing up for accounts in our name.'”

“As Ball and her husband were taking inventory of their home, they noticed her grandmother’s ring was stolen from the locked attic, items were stolen off furniture and their antique wood floors were scratched up. They also found used syringes and blood splattered on the walls. The guests were verified by Airbnb before the stay.”

From CBS 5 in Arizona. “A house party in north Phoenix turned deadly. Police said a teen was killed and another person was injured following a shooting at the home off 28th Street and Greenway Drive. Now, neighbors in the area are voicing concerns about the short-term rental home they say has caused major issues for a year. ‘All of my fears of someone being shot, of us potentially being hurt, it is realized. It is real,’ said one neighbor who didn’t want to be identified for her protection.”

“In 2016, Arizona lawmakers passed legislation preventing cities and counties from banning short term rentals. Some people who live near the home where the shooting took place are pushing for the bill to be repealed. ‘This is our starter home. I was born and raised here in Phoenix, this was supposed to be our dream of starting a family and now it is a nightmare and it is not going to stop,’ said one neighbor.”

The Fountain Hills Times in Arizona. “Fountain Hills Mayor Ginny Dickey has signed on with 32 other Arizona mayors in a letter to Airbnb corporate executives describing issues the communities have with short-term rentals and asking for company help to address concerns. The letter goes on to cite specific examples of difficulties and hardships municipalities are having with short-term rentals, which include: *Once peaceful neighborhoods suffer from unsupervised groups coming in and out for daily stays, which include unruly, disruptive and noisy large gatherings.”

“*Neighborhoods are experiencing dangerous criminal activity from short-term rental properties, including shootings, sexual and physical assaults, and the use of short-term rental properties as locations and staging places for other criminal activity (over the summer, looting and rioting). *Affordable housing stocks are being gobbled up by investors who are focused on short-term commercial uses of their properties, rather than neighborhood stability and prosperity.”

“*Some communities have seen over half of citizen police calls relate to problems with short-term rentals. This is a direct result of our local communities’ inability to enact and enforce responsible regulations.”

The Real Deal on California. “A slew of apartment landlords are suing the City of Santa Monica, claiming a law that bans short-term rentals is ‘arbitrary, capricious, and lacking in evidentiary support.’ The property owners behind 32 limited liability companies filed the lawsuit, which seeks to toss a measure the Santa Monica City Council passed in September. Those firms include Scott Walter’s WS Communities — which is building 850 rental units in the city — and Neil Shekhter’s NMS Properties.”

“Filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court, the lawsuit paints a picture of once-powerful property owners who now feel blindsided by local government, and are trying different ways to fight back. The measure also goes against the property rights of landlords, the lawsuit argues. Because of the pandemic, landlords say they are still collecting far less in rent from tenants in downtown Santa Monica, some up to 25 percent less.”

From US News and World Reports. “Are U.S. stocks and real estate prices overinflated? Is this just one big asset bubble? On Wall Street, special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs, became the vehicle du jour. Scores of these ‘blank-check companies,’ which are merely sloshing gobs of money for SPAC creators to take private companies public through acquisition, went public in 2020.”

“Elsewhere in the initial public offering market, DoorDash and Airbnb went public and quickly reached a combined valuation of nearly $150 billion. Trailing revenue for the two companies was just $5.8 billion, and neither was profitable. ‘I don’t think there’s any question that certain large segments of the stock market are in bubble territory. What you have is a situation where several years’ worth of anticipated growth and future sales and earnings have been pulled forward in today’s valuations,’ says Matt Argersinger, lead investor at Millionacres, a Motley Fool service.”

“Argersinger specifically cites what he calls ‘technology platform’ companies like Airbnb, Okta, Roku and even Netflix as having potentially runaway valuations, with other industries like e-commerce and electric vehicles also looking frothy. ‘While different in some important respects, today’s stock market really does harken back to the 1990s dot-com bubble,’ Argersinger says.”

“David Kass, clinical professor of finance at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, disagrees. What follows from low rates, and especially low rates that investors know will stay in the gutters for years, is a natural flow of money into riskier assets. ‘Since rates of return on fixed-income investments are at historically low levels, investors have focused on other asset classes such as equities, real estate and cryptocurrencies in order to earn a non-zero rate of return,’ Kass says.”

“It’s not just a benign preference for these higher-risk assets that low interest rates engender. Low interest rates effectively force certain kinds of investors, especially large institutions, into riskier assets, says William Goetzmann, professor of finance and management studies and director at the International Center for Finance at Yale School of Management. Charitable foundations, for example, ‘have a mandated 5% payout,’ Goetzmann says. ‘For them to avoid declining in real terms, they really have to invest a lot more into these risky assets.'”

“As for real estate, few see apt analogies to the 2008 financial crisis, which was driven by a combination of wild speculation, high leverage and shady underwriting standards. Eventually, interest rates, which had been rising for years, combined with those forces to start triggering defaults, setting off its own chain reaction in the world of obscure financial instruments.”

“Today’s real estate market is much different. ‘Housing starts have badly lagged household formation since the Great Recession. And while 2020 was initially looking like it was going to be a strong year for housing starts, COVID-19 put a major dent in construction activity,’ Argersinger says. ‘With inventories of ‘for sale’ existing homes so low in many markets, there’s a real demand-supply imbalance that favors higher home prices, irrespective of today’s historically low interest rates.'”

“‘Is a run-up logically followed by a decline? The good news is that a big jump up in price is not regularly followed by a decline in price,’ says Goetzmann, who has studied how markets across the world perform after doubling in price. ‘I would avoid looking for a red flag’ to indicate the top of the market, Goetzmann says. He argues that the market is well aware of past bubbles and that this knowledge is already incorporated into prices.”

“There are certainly pockets of irrationality in markets, evidenced by the flurry of SPACs and euphorically priced IPOs in 2020. But assets at large have plenty of justification for their current levels – even if much of that justification comes from the central bank and elevated fiscal spending instead of more organic growth. ‘We can use the word ‘bubble’ for this,’ says Peter Davies, CEO of Jigsaw Trading, ‘as long as we don’t then assume it has to ‘pop’ soon.'”

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This Post Has 114 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

          1. “Most secure election evah!!!”

            Just recount the fraudulent votes for Biden and put them in the pile where they belong for presidential votes.

            SOS official: “So you need to move forward with the audit so we can get the numbers, so we can see how many ballots are here.”

            Scrutineer: “Ok so when we’re done with the audit, there is still the opportunity to challenge the fact that we have multiple ballots with the very same signature.”

            SOS official: “I don’t know if challenge is the right word.”

            SOS official: “When you get done with the audit part of it, not an investigation, not counting. That’s not, that’s not your role right now this very minute.”

            Scrutineer: “We’ll have the numbers, whether valid or invalid.”

            SOS official: “That is, that is not the process right now, the process is for you right now is for you to put them in the piles where they belong for the presidential votes and count the presidential votes.”

            SOS official: “So what I need for you to do right now is finish the Presidential race audit, not separate them out and then we’ll move forward from there.”

        2. ‘Former national security adviser Michael Flynn said he was provided information that foreign intelligence agencies were monitoring the U.S. election on Nov. 3 and are willing to provide evidence to President Donald Trump.’

          “We have evidence now of foreign countries … were watching the attacks on our election system, our election process, on the 3rd of November,” Flynn told Fox Business on Friday. “So we now have that evidence and we received that today,” he said.’

          ‘He didn’t elaborate on what foreign intelligence agencies were involved, how he obtained that information, or the nature of the alleged attacks on the election system.’

          ‘But the foreign governments “are willing to provide that directly to the president,” Flynn remarked. “There are foreign partners and allies that are willing to help us,” he said.’

          ‘“I would say is SolarWinds is an entry point into the rest of our entire U.S. critical infrastructure,” Flynn added. “So everything that touches the United States government, if you enter through this SolarWinds attack that we perceive you basically have keys to the vault.”

          ‘Earlier in the week, the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) cybersecurity agency warned that the hack presents a risk to the Federal Government and state, local, tribal, and territorial governments as well as critical infrastructure entities” as well as the private sector.”

          ‘These hackers compromised agencies, critical infrastructure programs, and private sector organizations starting in March 2020 or possibly before that, according to the agency.’

          “You’re able to rummage around and do [expletive] near anything. So it’s a very, very serious attack … We’ve known about it for about six months as I understand it,” Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general, added to Fox’s Lou Dobbs. “So when we talk about our election security, Lou, I think this is all part of it because there’s a relationship between these SolarWinds attacks which has basically penetrated our entire infrastructure as well as our election securities.”

          ‘Flynn noted that there is “evidence of foreign influence in the election and this too,” adding that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), North Korea, Iran, and Russia are involved.’

          ‘But Flynn said that “we are in an information war,” the main perpetrator “is China,” and the CCP are “masters at it.” “We’re in a very, very dangerous period right now for our country,” he said.’

          https://www.theepochtimes.com/flynn-foreign-intelligence-agencies-were-monitoring-us-election-willing-to-provide-information-to-trump_3626171.html

  2. ‘Some communities have seen over half of citizen police calls relate to problems with short-term rentals’

    Let that sink in. Look at the photo of the first AZ article and note the shell casing markers.

    2. Look at the photo of the first AZ article and note the shell casing markers.

      If you draw a line between the shell casings, it spells out “Realtors are liars.”

  3. ‘The decision I’ve made is that Breather in its current form as an operator doesn’t make sense and, to be frank, I’m not sure it ever made sense,’ said Chief executive officer Bryan Murphy. ‘I want to be like Airbnb.’”

    In a world awash in Yellen Bux, nothing needs to make sense for insane stawk valuations and CEO compensation, Bryan.

  4. From the first link:

    ‘Breather’s U.S. subsidiary on Wednesday filed in California for an insolvency process called assignment for the benefit of creditors, while its British unit began a similar process known as creditors’ voluntary liquidation. These subsidiaries, which lease 315 office spaces in the United States and 40 in Britain – amounting to hundreds of thousands of square feet of space – will be assigned to third parties to wind them down and repay Breather’s creditors. Breather informed its tenants of the move Wednesday afternoon.’

    ‘That leaves Breather operating 79 spaces in Canada, but not for long. Chief executive officer Bryan Murphy told The Globe and Mail that Breather will try to get out of those leases as well in the next 90 days. The company, which furloughed most of its 120 employees this year, will make those cuts permanent and shrink to 30 people.’

    ‘By early 2019, when Mr. Murphy, a former eBay executive, succeeded Mr. Smith (now chair) as CEO, Breather had raised US$120-million. It had 16,000 clients, including Apple, Google and Royal Bank of Canada, and 500 spaces in New York, San Francisco, London, Toronto and six more cities. Revenue surpassed US$35-million last year.’

    ‘Then, in August, 2019, the parent of co-working giant WeWork filed to go public. Investors balked at its business model, governance and losses. The company slashed its valuation, pulled its IPO, laid off thousands and ousted its CEO. That debacle dried up investor interest in flexible office providers just as Breather sought new funding.’

    ‘Breather did raise between US$35-million and US$40-million, but at a steep cost. Only past investors ponied up, devaluing Breather to about US$100-million postfunding. It laid off 17 per cent of staff last December, part of a sweeping cost-cutting effort.’

    ‘Still, Mr. Murphy was optimistic when he spoke to The Globe 12 months ago. Breather was 95-per-cent sold out for extended rentals on new spaces, planned to add dozens more and would be profitable by the end of 2020, he said. “The market for flexible workspace continues to accelerate,” he said.’

    ‘Then the pandemic hit. Demand for short-term rentals, accounting for about half of Breather’s business, vanished. Mr. Murphy said last week that Breather spaces are now 25-per-cent occupied. Breather tried to delay or renegotiate lease payments, but seven landlords in four U.S. cities sued the U.S. subsidiary for non-payment of more than US$475,000 in obligations, court records show.’

    ‘Other flexible workspace providers have been hit, too. New-York-based co-working space provider Knotel Inc. faces 20-plus lawsuits from landlords; Switzerland’s IWG plc, parent of Regus, has put 100-plus locations into bankruptcy; and co-working startup Serendipity Labs of Rye, N.Y., filed for creditor protection.’

    1. ‘We can use the word ‘bubble’ for this…as long as we don’t then assume it has to ‘pop’ soon’

      How many billion$ have to go poof?

  5. ‘As for real estate, few see apt analogies to the 2008 financial crisis, which was driven by a combination of wild speculation, high leverage and shady underwriting standards. Eventually, interest rates, which had been rising for years, combined with those forces to start triggering defaults, setting off its own chain reaction in the world of obscure financial instruments’

    It’s ground-hog day:

    March 26, 2020

    “As America heads into a deep recession, the $11 trillion residential-mortgage market is in crisis. Investors who buy home loans packaged into bonds are dumping even those with federal backing because of panic that millions might not make their payments. Yet one risky sector had started to show cracks long before the coronavirus pandemic sparked the worst financial meltdown in 12 years: the federal government’s largest affordable-housing program, whose lenient terms are geared toward marginal borrowers.”

    “As real estate prices soared in recent years, working-class adults everywhere have increasingly relied on mortgages backed by the Federal Housing Administration — and U.S. taxpayers. Since 2007, the FHA’s portfolio has tripled in value to more than $1.2 trillion, almost 11% of the market. While private lenders make these loans, they are packaged into Ginnie Mae bonds, common in mutual funds and pensions.”

    “Before Covid-19 started roiling China, a November FHA report found that 27% of borrowers last year spent more than half their incomes on debt, a level it describes as ‘unprecedented.’ The share of FHA loans souring in their first six months has doubled over the last three years to almost 1%.”

    “Not long ago, Alex Castillo drove his shiny black Infiniti SUV through an office park north of the San Antonio airport, along a busy seven-mile stretch of highway that loan officers call ‘Mortgage Row’ because of its abundance of small independent mortgage companies that dominate FHA lending. Castillo, who has the words ‘The Dream Starts Here’ stitched into his jacket, works for Pennsylvania-based American Residential Lending. Oddly, amid the pandemic, his business is booming. His customers locked in FHA mortgages after interest rates plunged this month — adding to federally backed mortgage debt.”

    “‘If the government tells me you’re good enough to get a loan, I have to trust and believe in the government,’ Castillo said. ‘Then we just hope and pray that the client doesn’t get foreclosed on.’”

    “In downtown San Antonio, scores of investors stood on a parched lawn beside the city’s historic granite-and-red-sandstone courthouse. It was the first Tuesday of February, the day of the foreclosure auction. Matt Badders, a San Antonio lawyer who represents lenders, auctioned off two houses. The failed mortgages remind him of the run-up to the financial crisis 12 years ago, when lending to customers with spotty credit nearly brought down the world’s financial system. ‘We’re almost back to 2007, when mortgage originators are waking people up on park benches, saying sign here,’ Badders said.”

    “At the auction, the crowd bid on 338 homes, a third with FHA mortgages, according to Roddy’s Foreclosure Listing Service. One house had dual master bedrooms, a game room and granite kitchen counters. It sold for $202,000 — $52,000 less than the homeowner borrowed only two years ago. The taxpayer-backed FHA insurance fund will take a loss.”

    “Dave Stevens, FHA commissioner under President Barack Obama and former chief executive officer of the Mortgage Bankers Association, said a recession will expose hidden risks in home lending. ‘This should be an alarm bell to policymakers,’ Stevens said. ‘Sometimes you get blinded by a good economy and suddenly look at it and see a bubble of defaults coming.’”

    “The federal government has decided it doesn’t want to pursue — and has asked a judge to dismiss — a lawsuit against Utah-based Academy Mortgage Corp. The judge refused. The suit claims the company’s staff would repeatedly feed information into an automated federal underwriting system, manipulating it until the computer gave the green light. ‘Decline is a curse word,’ Plaintiff Gwen Thrower, a former underwriter, quoted a manager as saying. ‘We don’t use it.’”

    http://housingbubble.blog/?p=3070

      1. “It can be argued that this is the most important election since our country was founded,” the open letter from the retired officers said. “With the Democratic Party welcoming to socialists and Marxists, our historic way of life is at stake.”

        1. “With the Democratic Party welcoming to socialists and Marxists, our historic way of life is at stake.”

          The Democrats haven’t just “welcomed” socialists and Marxists. They have become explicitly Marxist-Leninist, as well as being Quislings and accomplices for the globalists, who are the real threat to “our historic way of life.”

          I think the electoral fraud and systemic complicity, either passively or actively, by all of our supposed systems of checks and balances, is going to go down as the last straw for the people who pay the bills and make this country what it is, but who have been robbed of any voice in a system that has become openly hostile to them and their interests.

          http://raconteurreport.blogspot.com/2020/12/nut-up-or-shut-up.html

      2. Dozens of Retired Generals, Admirals Sign Letter Backing Trump for Reelection

        This is all the more remarkable, in that anyone publicly backing Trump is going to be targeted by both the Deep State and the globalists’ BLM-Antifa domestic terrorists, as well as all the garden variety nut jobs collectivist ideologies attract.

      1. Huge : Dan Scavino Posts Series of Tweets After Raucous Oval Office Meeting – Trump Is Ready to Take Action
        Dan has been President Trump’s social media director since before the 2016 election. He is a trusted and loyal Trump aide.

        There was much talk today in the news today that Attorney Sidney Powell reportedly met with Trump in Oval Office Friday evening where the President discussed naming Powell as special counsel to investigate massive Democrat voter fraud that took place in the 2020 election.

        General Flynn also joined Sidney Powell on Friday. Deploying the US military was reportedly raised in the meeting but was nixed by Trump’s advisers.
        But it was reportedly a raucous meeting.

        And it was reported that General Flynn and Sidney Powell urged President Trump to fight this historic theft!

        Now it appears that President Trump has made a decision.
        Trump is going to fight.

        https://globalwavenews.com/huge-dan-scavino-posts-series-of-tweets-after-raucous-oval-office-meeting-trump-is-ready-to-take-action/

  7. ‘Montreal startup Element AI Inc. was running out of money and options when it inked a deal last month to sell itself for US$230-milion to Silicon Valley software company ServiceNow Inc., a confidential document obtained by the Globe and Mail reveals.’

    ‘Materials sent to Element AI shareholders Friday reveal that while many of its institutional shareholders will make most if not all of their money back from backing two venture financings, employees will not fare nearly as well. Many have been terminated and had their stock options cancelled.’

    ‘Also losing out are co-founders Jean-François Gagné, the CEO, his wife Anne Martel, the chief administrative officer, chief science officer Nick Chapados and Yoshua Bengio, the University of Montreal professor known as a godfather of “deep learning,” the foundational science behind today’s AI revolution.’

    ‘Between them, they owned 8.8 million common shares, whose value has been wiped out with the takeover, which goes to a shareholder vote Dec 29 with enough investor support already locked up to pass before the takeover goes to a Canadian court to approve a plan of arrangement with ServiceNow. The quartet also owns preferred shares worth less than US$300,000 combined under the terms of the deal.’

    https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-element-ai-sold-for-230-million-as-founders-saw-value-wiped-out/

    1. ‘Materials sent to Element AI shareholders Friday reveal that while many of its institutional shareholders will make most if not all of their money back from backing two venture financings, employees will not fare nearly as well. Many have been terminated and had their stock options cancelled.’

      Oh dear. I sure hope no employees signed on Mr. Banker’s dotted line for insanely overpriced shacks in the expectation of future windfall earnings from their Ponzi stocks.

  8. This is a direct result of our local communities’ inability to enact and enforce responsible regulations.”

    “Sometimes the law defends plunder and participates in it. Sometimes the law places the whole apparatus of judges, police, prisons and gendarmes at the service of the plunderers, and treats the victim – when he defends himself – as a criminal.”

    — Frederic Bastiat

  9. “*Neighborhoods are experiencing dangerous criminal activity from short-term rental properties, including shootings, sexual and physical assaults, and the use of short-term rental properties as locations and staging places for other criminal activity (over the summer, looting and rioting).

    Wha?!! This couldn’t possibly have been written by a Real Journalist or slipped past the editor/censor at a globalist media outlet. Such assertions would be defamatory right-wing slanders against the mostly peaceful protests by social justice advocates. Any criminal activity cited was committed exclusively by white supremacists who infiltrated the peaceful protests. The Narrative has been very clear on these points.

    1. Theres that 13% of the population committing 75% of the violent crime again. Ship them back to their continent where they won’t be so “oppressed”, then watch this country have a renaissance of low crime, low taxes (don’t need a police state) and schools that might actually educate students.

        1. The media called Floyd a “doting dad.” In reality he was a deadbeat dad whose own children didn’t even recognize him.

  12. Things that make you go hmmm….

    https://twitter.com/Bill_Binney

    With 212Million registered voters and 66.2% voting,140.344 M voted. Now if Trump got 74 M, that leaves only 66.344 M for Biden. These numbers don’t add up to what we are being told. Lies and more Lies!

    1. ‘It appears SCOTUS can’t see evidence of large scale corruption. GA data has some suspicious entries – almost 2 million voters with the same birth date-01/01 in various years.’

      1. I can see two million voters being CONCEIVED on New Year’s Day, but not being born then.

        It isn’t just the magnitude of the electoral fraud, but the sheer brazenness with which it was carried out. That kind of confidence comes from knowing a crooked, complicit system has your back.

        1. Again, these statistically impossible events, 3AM ballot spikes, happen only in swing states. And is there any doubt should these 2 M votes be examined, the rate for the President would be less than 3%? It would probably take 5 minutes to search the voter database and determine how many registered voters were born on January 1st.

          1. It would probably take 5 minutes to search the voter database and determine how many registered voters were born on January 1st.

            The FBI and the MSM’s hard-boiled investigative reporters will get right on that.

          2. This is a massive operation to distort the truth and reality, involving many countries. Somebody, somewhere needs to start singing.

          3. “Somebody, somewhere needs to start singing.”

            Once the federal prison sentences start happening the culpable will start falling like those dominoes.

    2. It’s one giant fraud campaign by the deep state. Thousands need to swing from the gallows. We need to eliminate them.

  13. If a person is paying attention , the Entities that are exercising this massive control over the populations are willing to inflict suffering, poverty, death and destruction on populations, just to usher in their evil agendas. You judge things by the fruit they bear.
    Look, if they have to control information and they have to have false narratives, than they are evil and their agendas are evil.
    It appears that certain factions have teamed up with each other on this attempt to take over the USA, and rig the election, and use Covid 19 scam to accomplish their goals.
    This is a invasion of this Country and the Politicians have already sold out to it because they turned into a treasonous Swamp and didn’t protect the USA Citizens from this gradual hijacking .
    I was reading accounts of people being thrown into poverty now by job loss due to the lockdowns. A 57 year old guy now living in his car in a State where it’s cold. Families with children on the brink of becoming homeless.
    Third World people already starting to starve.
    This is more evil than a invading army because it’s being done under the pretense of a medical emergency.
    Yes, I’m angry that these monsters are pulling this off and appear to be winning.
    Want to take one of their Vaccines?
    I’m really pissed because I perceived a long time ago that the Medical Cartel was going to become invasive in our lives in conjunction with the Government. Shows you that Government becomes corrupted when it gets involved with Big Business, and than becomes the PAWN of Big business as they loot the tax coffers and the Citizens.
    It’s obvious that small business is being destroyed and they could care less about this demise and how it will affect these people’s lives.
    I’m just horrified over the suffering these power mongers are willing to inflict while using false narratives and criminal acts and deliberate breakdown of law and order.
    I’m statng the obvious, but it’s clear that they are in bed with Foreign enemies also.
    It’s obvious they are trying to kill all opposition just as a military force would. They even talk like a military operation trying to take out their enemies, which are Citizens of the United States that are losing their rights and Constitutional protections.
    For God Sakes they tried to take out Trump and Flynn by the Russian Hoax and Fake Impeachment, and now a rigged election to put their puppets in.
    This is seriously alarming and I’m sorry that I’m depressed about it.

  14. – Question asked (by the MSM, and pretty much everyone else):

    “From US News and World Reports. “Are U.S. stocks and real estate prices overinflated? Is this just one big asset bubble?”

    – Question answered (by the MSM “experts”):

    “Elsewhere in the initial public offering market, DoorDash and Airbnb went public and quickly reached a combined valuation of nearly $150 billion. Trailing revenue for the two companies was just $5.8 billion, and neither was profitable.”

    – On the one hand:

    “‘While different in some important respects, today’s stock market really does harken back to the 1990s dot-com bubble,’ Argersinger says.”

    And on the other: (Take your pick)

    “David Kass, clinical professor of finance at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, disagrees. What follows from low rates, and especially low rates that investors know will stay in the gutters for years, is a natural flow of money into riskier assets. ‘Since rates of return on fixed-income investments are at historically low levels, investors have focused on other asset classes such as equities, real estate and cryptocurrencies in order to earn a non-zero rate of return,’ Kass says.”

    “As for real estate, few see apt analogies to the 2008 financial crisis, which was driven by a combination of wild speculation, high leverage and shady underwriting standards.”

    “Today’s real estate market is much different.”

    “‘Is a run-up logically followed by a decline? The good news is that a big jump up in price is not regularly followed by a decline in price,’ says Goetzmann,”

    “He argues that the market is well aware of past bubbles and that this knowledge is already incorporated into prices.”

    “But assets at large have plenty of justification for their current levels – even if much of that justification comes from the central bank and elevated fiscal spending instead of more organic growth.”

    “We can use the word ‘bubble’ for this,” says Peter Davies, CEO of Jigsaw Trading, “as long as we don’t then assume it has to ‘pop’ soon.”

    Question answered (by history):

    “The four most dangerous words in investing are: ‘this time it’s different.‘” – Sir John Templeton

    “I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people.” – Isaac Newton

    “Participants in the speculative situation are programmed for sudden efforts at escape. Thus the rule, supported by the experience of centuries: the speculative episode always ends not with a whimper but with a bang. There will be occasion to see the operation of this rule frequently repeated.” – John Kenneth Galbraith

    “Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.” – Charles Mackay

    “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” – George Santayana

    “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” – Mark Twain

    “In the short run, the market is a voting machine, but in the long run, it is a weighing machine.” – Benjamin Graham

    “You never know who’s swimming naked until the tide goes out.” – Warren Buffett

    “Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.” – Warren Buffett

    “When the music stops, in terms of liquidity, things will be complicated. But as long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance. We’re still dancing.” – Chuck Prince, former chairman and CEO of Citigroup (told to the Financial Times on July 10, 2007).

    “You cannot spend your way out of recession or borrow your way out of debt.” – Daniel Hannan, Member of the European Parliament

    ‘I don’t believe there will be another financial crisis in our lifetimes.’ – Janet Yellen, 2017

    ‘We will not have any more crashes in our time.’ – John Maynard Keynes, 1927

    “There is no housing bubble” – Ben Bernanke 2006

    “Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.” —  Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics at Yale University, October 16, 1929

    March 28, 2007: Chairman Bernanke said: “The impact on the broader economy and financial markets of the problems in the subprime markets seems likely to be contained.”

    May 17, 2007: Chairman Bernanke said: “We do not expect significant spillovers from the subprime market to the rest of the economy or to the financial system.”

    February 27, 2008: Chairman Bernanke said: “By later this year, housing will stop being such a big drag directly on GDP … I am satisfied with the general approach that we’re currently taking.”

    February 28, 2008: Chairman Bernanke said: “Among the largest banks, the capital ratios remain good and I don’t expect any serious problems … among the large, internationally active banks that make up a very substantial part of our banking system.”

    June 9, 2008: Chairman Bernanke said: “The risk that the economy has entered a substantial downturn appears to have diminished over the past month or so.”

    July 16, 2008: Chairman Bernanke said that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are “adequately capitalized” and “in no danger of failing.”

    – Summary: We’re experiencing the Central Bank-induced “Everything Bubble,” the Mother of All Bubbles (MOAB). Few wish to recognize the current situation, since there’s money to be made. “Make hay while the sun shines.” This works until it doesn’t. Valuations and historical relationships don’t matter until they do. The bigger the bubble, the harder the fall. The Fed put didn’t prevent it in 2000, or 2008-2009. Will “this time be different?”

        1. – Thanks. It’s helpful to look at history to see where we’re going. I don’t have to write much, just quote those who have famously said it already. 🙂

          “I don’t make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.” – Will Rogers

          “Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others.” – Groucho Marx

          “The problem of the modern economy is not a failure of a knowledge of economics; it’s a failure of a knowledge of history.” – John Kenneth Galbraith

          “Genius is a rising stock market.” – John Kenneth Galbraith

          “Then the sh*t hit the fan.” – John Kenneth Galbraith, A Life in Our Times

          “When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.” – Frederic Bastiat

          “People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage.” – John Kenneth Galbraith

          “Then he went up the chimney himself, the old liar, and the last thing he took was the log for their fire. On their walls, he left nothing but hooks and some wire. And the one speck of food that he left in the house was a crumb that was even too small for a mouse. Then he did the same thing to the other Whos’ houses: leaving crumbs much too small for the other Whos’ mouses!” – Dr. Seuss, How the Grinch [Fed] stole Christmas!

          – Stay safe out there.

  15. Will “this time be different?”

    “Hard to see the curve in the road ahead when you’re driving this fast” DEC 20, 2020 cactus

  16. Doesn’t it go without saying that everything is either rigged, or in a fake bubble, or a price setting monopoly, or corrupted by Governments involvement?
    I don’t know what’s safe anymore, but some people think putting a investment in preppy stuff is warranted now. I don’t really know , but I’m wondering is anyone doing this sort of prep. Are supply lines going to get disrupted?

      1. ‘One of President Donald Trump’s lawyers said YouTube removed his opening statement from a Senate Homeland Security hearing on election fraud. “YouTube has decided that my opening statement in the U.S. [Senate], given under oath and based upon hard evidence, is too dangerous for you to see; they removed it. To this day, ‘our evidence has never been refuted, only ignored.’ Why is Google so afraid of the truth? #BigBrother,” lawyer Jesse Binnall wrote on Twitter.’

        ‘As they probed the alleged irregularities, Binnall told the hearing they were refused access by state election officials to the code of voting machines for a forensic review or whether “they were hooked up to the internet.” He asserted, “We weren’t allowed near them … we weren’t allowed a forensic audit.”

        “We were denied [transparency] at every single turn” in Nevada, he said, adding that one Nevada official “locked himself in his office” and wouldn’t open the door when Trump’s lawyers tried to serve him a subpoena.’

        https://www.theepochtimes.com/youtube-removes-trump-lawyers-opening-statement-from-senate-committee-hearing_3626087.html?utm_source=news&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking-2020-12-20-3

        Here’s the video that’s still up:

        Jesse Binnall’s Opening Statement During Senate Hearing on Election Security and Administration

        •Dec 17, 2020

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fLtD89wKMg&feature=emb_title

        ‘Another video of his testimony at the hearing, uploaded on Dec. 17 by a separate account, appeared to still be up.’

          4. How did this happen?

            I subscribed to the Sound of Hope channel on Utube. Ironically, their segments do not queue up for me.

            This group has 3 million subscribers to their Chinese language broadcast, who urged them to do an English broadcast to share the patriotic view of Chinese Expats in the USA. It’s worth listening to. They do not underestimate the CCP.

          5. comment

            Jerry K
            1 day ago
            3 ways to know when a breaking story is true :
            – Facebook blocks it🤪
            – Twitter deletes it🤪
            – YouTube bans it🤪

      2. Me Banker
        Thanks, looks like that guy is singing.
        I have been feeling for a long time all roads lead to that Traitor Obama and his sidekick Biden.
        Just unreal.

    2. “Doesn’t it go without saying that everything is either rigged, or in a fake bubble, or a price setting monopoly, or corrupted by Governments involvement?”

      https://twitter.com/StephenPunwasi/status/1340344506839953412
      Stephen Punwasi @StephenPunwasi

      Every 🇨🇦 Millennial… [Could be “Every 🇺🇸 Millennial…]

      … Do I start a business and compete against government backstopped monopolies?

      … or speculate on real estate because the government will just give the next generation access to more debt. 🤔

      10:13 AM · Dec 19, 2020·Twitter for iPhone

  17. How cool would it be if a former Marine combat arms officer ended up replacing Comrade De Blasio as mayor of New York City? Seems like a Quixotic quest, given the prevalence of libtards in the Big Apple, but a boy can always dream.

    From Fallujah to City Hall: A Marine’s Uphill Run to Be Mayor of New York

    https://www.military.com/daily-news/2020/12/17/fallujah-city-hall-marines-uphill-run-be-mayor-of-new-york.html

    “One of the things I keep hearing from New Yorkers all over the city is that they can’t sleep at night, whether it’s business owners about to lose everything, [or the unemployed or] homeless parents trying to struggle to get by,” he said. “They can’t sleep at night. I know that we’re already in the middle of a mental health pandemic that’s going to last longer than COVID. I think I am the one best situated to deal with that next emergency the city is going to be facing.”

    Iscol acknowledges having a daunting challenge ahead to gain traction in an already crowded field for the June 22 Democratic mayoral primary. It seems to grow more crowded by the week with candidates seeking to replace Mayor Bill de Blasio, who is term limited.

  18. 🎄 May the peace and joy of falling housing prices be with you all this Christmas season.🎄

    God Bless President Donald J. Trump and God Bless America!

    1. I’m sure that all those white guys who stormed Omaha Beach and had their brains blown out were also privileged.

  21. One of my local news stations just had a story on Donald Trump calling his considering martial law another Fake News story. But the newscaster went on to report a heated exchange at the White House with people screaming at each other while calling for martial law.

    Of course this means local news stations across the country just had a story on Donald Trump calling his considering martial law another Fake News story. But those newscasters also went on to report a heated exchange at the White House with people screaming at each other while calling for martial law.

    https://youtu.be/ksb3KD6DfSI

    This is extremely dangerous to our democracy.

  25. COVID lockdowns and work from home with bay area and socal rich kids moving to Sacramento have made it hell on earth for first time home buyers due to record low inventory causing high prices and bidding wars. I know because I see it now. One can hope that things change post-covid.

  27. “Now, the right of revolution is an inherent one. When people are
    oppressed by their government, it is a natural right they enjoy to
    relieve themselves of the oppression, if they are strong enough, either
    by withdrawal from it, or by overthrowing it and substituting a
    government more acceptable. But any people or part of a people who
    resort to this remedy, stake their lives, their property, and every
    claim for protection given by citizenship—on the issue. Victory, or the
    conditions imposed by the conqueror—must be the result.”
    — Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant: All Volumes

      1. The print edition Denver Post is suitable for use as a birdcage liner and nothing else. And their website is an ad-clogged spammy mess that I stopped reading years ago.

        1. You only get a handful of free views (without a subscription) to the Denver Post website, even though it is chockful of ads.

    2. Scraping a single family used house and replacing it with an ugly box duplex is happening all over South Denver. The asking prices for these are about $600-800K around here.

      Simultaneous to this, there are more homeless / panhandlers / tweakers / junkies on the streets down here now than there have ever been in the decade plus I’ve lived here.

      Denver votes like San Francisco, Denver becomes San Francisco.

      1. Simultaneous to this, there are more homeless / panhandlers / tweakers / junkies on the streets down here now than there have ever been in the decade plus I’ve lived here.

        Which possibly explains why so many Denverites are moving to Larimer County, especially to Ft. Collins, which has that prog vibe but hasn’t been rotten to the core yet.

    2. Ok, for the people that really need relief the Gov. Is giving them peanuts. The big money is going to trickle up to the entities that looted the last relief package.
      Small business has really taken a hit by these lock downs. Big Business just elimated that competition from small business and will become a bigger monopoly.
      So, so much for the Gov. protecting us from Monopoly Control.

    2. The Votes of Black Americans Should Count Twice
      “Vote reparations would empower us to replace oppressive institutions with life-affirming structures of equality.”
      by Brandon Hasbrouck

      Only those who filed a tax return with the IRS in April of the same year should be allowed to cast a vote.

          1. And Jordan Peterson did a good job of outlining why that specifically is a good indicator that the left has gone off the rails. For people who like to watch out for either side heading for disaster…

    3. This is BS. If Blacks want their votes to count in Wyoming, they can move to Wyoming. And what if you’re half black? Do you get 1.5 votes?

  36. We can’t even throw the bums out if they get away with rigging elections.
    Also , one wonders just how many people in high places are compromised by being bribed or blackmailed. Thats why term limits offers some protection against corruption. Washington DC is just so corrupted that it just needs to be purged and start from scratch again.

    1. We can’t even throw the bums out if they get away with rigging elections.

      Hence the old saying about ballot box versus bullet box.

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