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The Projects That Have Sold Are Often Accompanied By Rumours Of Widening Discounts

A report from Everything Lubbock in Texas. “Real estate professionals said they have seen a shortage of homes in the Lubbock area. ‘Sellers will have multiple offers, so it creates a bit of panic for those who are wanting to move up and put their homes on the market,’ said Smith Teresa Smith, president of the Lubbock Realtors Association. ‘They’re afraid they won’t find something and have a place to go.'”

The Express News in Texas. “Four San Antonio partnerships sought refuge in bankruptcy two years ago to stop foreclosure actions on their apartment complexes. The partnerships, Terravista Corp. affiliates, weren’t able to hang on to the properties through the bankruptcy process. They ended up selling them to a Los Angeles nonprofit for what Terravista says was a ‘fire sale’ price — almost $42 million combined in a deal the court approved last year.”

“Now, Terravista and the partnerships are accusing a New York finance company of fraud over its alleged failure to secure a Housing and Urban Development loan that the partnerships were counting on in a refinancing so they could retain ownership. Dwight Capital’s actions were part of a ‘loan to own’ scheme to cause the partnerships to default on their loans and allow Dwight to wrest control of the apartment complexes in foreclosure ‘at a steep discount,’ Terravista alleges in recently filed lawsuit.”

“Losses to Terravista’s business due to the acts of Dwight and others may exceed $50 million, the suit says. That’s largely the future earnings of the apartments had they not been sold, said Kyle Watson, a San Antonio attorney representing Terravista in the litigation.”

The Real Deal on New York. “The coronavirus could soon claim another victim in Thor Equities’ real estate portfolio. East West Bank filed a lawsuit in New York State Supreme Court to foreclose on Thor’s mixed-use property at 17 West 125th Street in Harlem. The lender claims that Thor is delinquent on three loans totaling about $20 million.”

“In 2015, California-based East West Bank provided three loans to Thor for the property: a $13.5 million acquisition loan, a $3.82 million building loan and a $5.6 million project loan. The developer subsequently renovated the properties. In 2019, Thor allegedly missed two loan payments and reached an agreement with the bank to extend the loan into 2021, according to the complaint. Thor then reached a payment deferral and repayment agreement in April 2020 after the pandemic began. But the complaint alleges that Thor missed its loan payments in November and December, triggering new defaults.”

“‘Overall, our global portfolio has performed well for the past year but, unfortunately, the difficulty some tenants are having paying their rent in this challenging environment, have thrust us into this situation,’ Katie Smith, Thor’s director of marketing and communications, said in a statement to The Real Deal.”

From Bisnow New York. “New York City’s prime retail properties suffered another brutal three months at the start of the year. Direct ground-floor availabilities in the major Manhattan retail corridors reached a new high, hitting 275, according to CBRE data. That figure marks a 21.7% jump year-over-year, with Upper Madison Avenue the worst-hit area. The once-glorious retail stretch saw seven new spaces added, an 11% jump on the year before, meaning there are now 53 spots available there.”

“Overall, the average asking rent dropped for the 14th quarter in a row to hit $618 per SF, marking a more than 13% fall from last year and the lowest in a decade. For the available spaces, the average asking rent is down 20% year-over-year, now at $533 per SF.”

“SoHo’s Prince Street rents fell 40% from the first quarter of last year to hit $414 per SF, the worst drop across the borough. Meanwhile, Washington Street in Meatpacking experienced a 28% decline in average rents, with asking prices now at $413 per SF. Times Square, with Broadway closed and tourists still absent from the city, had a more than 21% drop in rents, with the average now sitting at $1,293 per SF, its lowest level since 2010.”

“The four-quarter aggregate leasing velocity hit 1.5M SF, the lowest rate since 2014. Overall, leasing volume for Q1 was down a whopping 58% from the same period in 2020.”

The Los Angeles Business Journal in California. “Los Angeles offices can reopen as the county loosens restrictions during the coronavirus crisis. But that doesn’t mean they will. Direct vacancies and sublease availabilities for office space across the metro hit all-time highs in the first quarter, according to Kidder Mathews’ first-quarter Los Angeles Office Market Report. Direct vacancies in the first quarter reached 12.6%, and sublease availabilities reached 2.6%, according to the West Coast commercial real estate firm.”

“With subleases on the rise, many landlords are starting to offer discounts and concession to attract tenants. Asking rates for new sublet space on the market are averaging 25 cents less per square foot than direct space. Leasing activity plummeted more than 43% year over year, with just over 2.6 million square feet leased in the first quarter.”

From Realtor.com on California. “After listing their glamorous Beverly Hills, CA, home for $23.95 million last August, the musician John Legend and his wife, the social media star Chrissy Teigen, have chopped the asking price by a hefty $6 million. Since first putting their home up for sale last summer, the A-listers have slowly whittled away at the price tag. After a couple of months on the market, the price dropped to $23 million, eventually hitting $22 million in the new year. The ultrastylish home of the celeb couple recently bounced back onto the market for $17.95 million.”

From Storeys in Canada. “Hamilton’s condo market has already recorded nearly triple the number of condo sales compared to the same time last year, according to a new report from Strata. Though, despite the surging activity, prices appear to be cooling off amid the pandemic’s third wave. Despite the rising sales numbers, overall condo prices appear to be coming down in Hamilton, as the price-per-square-foot is currently sitting at $501, down from February’s record-high of $535, according to Strata.”

“Robert Van Rhijn, Broker of Record at Strata.ca, believes a rise in condo inventory could be the reason why overall prices appear to be coming down in Hamilton. ‘Although appreciation values are up 5% over the past year, we’re noticing what appears to be a levelling-off since a pricing surge that kicked off in December. A lot of this is likely due to a rise in inventory, forcing sellers to bring down their asking price so they can stay competitive,’ says Van Rhijn.”

From Bloomberg on the UK. “London new-home sales fell to their lowest level in almost nine years in the first quarter, led by a lack of interest from landlords and a dearth of buyers for central properties. Sales of the homes tumbled 39% to 3,703 compared with the same period last year, according to data compiled by Molior London and seen by Bloomberg News. The researcher calculates the numbers based on transactions at projects with at least 20 units.”

“Landlords were deterred from buying purpose-built units as rents fall. Overseas buyers acquired 210 new homes in the quarter in projects with at least 12 units, less than half the amount in the same period last year, Molior’s data show. ‘The projects that have sold more than a steady trickle of units overseas over the last three months are often accompanied by rumours of widening discounts,’ according to a draft report by the researcher.”

From Dutch News. “The cost of renting housing outside the social housing sector fell across the five big cities in the Netherlands in the first quarter of this year, according to rental housing platform Pararius. Rents fell in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Eindhoven in the previous quarter but have also gone down slightly in Utrecht over the first three months of this year, Pararius director Jasper de Groot said. The drop was biggest in Amsterdam, where new tenants will pay an average of €1,300 a month for a 60 square metre property – down 7.4% year on year. The reduction is the biggest since Pararius started keeping records and marks a return to 2015 levels, De Groot said.”

“Tom Booij of real estate agents Booij Makelaardij, who rents out furnished property in the city centre, said that demand from international clients had gone down since the coronavirus crisis hit. ‘And if rental properties are empty because it is harder to rent them, it is only logical that rents will go down,’ he said.”

“In Rotterdam, the average price fell by 7.8% to €912 for a 60 square metre home. Rental prices also fell in Alkmaar, Amstelveen, Haarlem, Hilversum, Leiden and Roermond.”

From Euro Weekly News on Spain. “The coronavirus pandemic has transformed the way most home owners rent their houses in Spain. With tenants out of a job, many property owners were forced to drop their rent or pause payments altogether, while still more people that are used to receiving hefty rents for their apartments in the summer months have been forced to switch to long-term rentals. Another favour is that since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, the supply of apartments on the market has skyrocketed.”

“This abundance of properties means that the prices, which actually rose by an average of 10 per cent throughout Spain in the month before the pandemic hit, have suddenly started to plummet. In fact, as of March this year, the average rental value in Malaga on Spain’s Costa del Sol was €9.40 per square meter, some 5.3 per cent less than the same month the previous year.”

“According to Idealista, for example, Barcelona has dropped 14.3 per cent from last year and in Madrid, rental prices have fallen by 10.7 per cent compared with March last year. Likewise, Sevilla has fallen 6.1 per cent and Valencia has dropped by 6.3 per cent. ‘The upward trend that had been taking place stopped short,’ explained director of the Southern area of ​​Idealista, Carlos Rueda, emphasizing that, in Malaga ‘vacation rentals and all those homes have completely disappeared. They have switched to long term rental.'”

From Banking Day. “The story of fast-declining Australian urban residential rents is going to spell the end for thousands and thousands of small time developers. Big names, totems of property are going to tank. In our second story today Banking Day reports on the 10 per cent plus plunge in Melbourne rents and the pandemonium in the rental market. But the big story for banking is the fall over of developers of units, town-houses, medium density and high density towers and fortresses.”

“In modern finance, the breakdown in bank credit quality almost always centres on commercial property developers. Some crooked players in property development are in cahoots with organised crime and allowing for their ‘see no evil’ allies in the banking system, it seems fair to say that organised crime is the biggest and one of the most successful businesses around.”

“And the entire banking system is overexposed to property development. In its March 2021 Financial Stability Review, the Reserve Bank of Australia tells the same story in muted tones. In Melbourne the vacancy rate is 6 per cent and in Sydney the vacancy rate is 5 per cent, both climbing fast. ‘Rental conditions have also been weak,’ the RBA wrote, ‘particularly in Melbourne and in the inner and middle suburbs of Sydney where vacancy rates have increased sharply and rents for units have fallen.”

“Digressing from the Banking Day version, the RBA said near-term risks of oversupply – and therefore sharp price declines – ‘are mitigated by the considerably smaller volume of higher-density inner city apartments due for completion in 2021 relative to previous years.’ A trend reversing for the worst.”

From Vietnam Express. “The ratio of luxury apartments in HCMC rose from 7 percent last year to 39 percent in the first quarter of this year. The high-end segment accounted for another 20 percent, real estate consultancy CBRE Vietnam said in a note. The mid-priced segment, which used to account for 55-60 percent of supply in the past, accounted for the remaining 41 percent.”

“CBRE classifies apartments priced at over $4,000 per square meter as luxury, at $2,000-4,000 as high-end and at $1,000-2,000 as mid-priced. Those below $1,000 are categorized as affordable. Speaking to VnExpress, Nguyen Loc Hanh, CEO of Asia Gem Real Estate Investment JSC, said the rapid expansion in luxury apartment supply is unsustainable and the disappearance of affordable units from the market is worrisome because they are the main market driver.”

“Le Hoang Chau, chairman of the Ho Chi Minh City Real Estate Association, said over 60 percent of high-end apartments are bought by speculators, and sounded a similar warning that it is threatening the sustainable development of the housing market.”

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This Post Has 100 Comments

  1. ‘they have seen a shortage of homes in the Lubbock area. ‘Sellers will have multiple offers, so it creates a bit of panic’

    I included this one but it could have been any number of similar reports I see every day.

    Smith Teresa Smith – they don’t have a lot of imagination in west Texas.

    1. “‘they have seen a shortage of homes in the Lubbock area.”

      So called shortages in every town, every city and every state and every country….and it has been this way for few years now.

      How can that be? It’s not congruent with the location argument, does it?

    2. Seems like bid wars fueled by home inventory shortages are happening all over the U.S. When and how the unsustainable trend ends should be interesting…especially given that we witnessed similarly, though less extreme, market conditions cerca 2006.

      1. The attitude is definitely different than it was in 2006. 2006 was more price-driven. A lot more flipping, a lot more creative finance, and all dwellings were fair game. Builders were slapping up condos just to sell. This time seems, I dunno, more family-oriented? Buyers are looking for townhomes or SFH to raise families, or for mini-homesteads to do w@h in 4 days each week. No more condos in the vibrant cities. And buyers are in a real hurry, likely driven by the low inventory.

        1. Will people rent a hotel room in the city for the other 3 days (four nights)? That will get old real fast.

          1. Only the ones who have a 7-day workweek. 😛

            Some cubicle dwellers have (had) a 60-minute commute every day. So they would gladly move out another 30-45 minutes and just make the 2-hour drive one day a week. 2-hours drive will get you from skyscraper to cow almost anywhere in the country.

            I’ve heard of some jobs where you only have to be in the office two days for every two-week pay period. That’s a good setup for a place like or NY. You drive in on Friday morning last day of the pay period, work on Friday, stay in a hotel and sightsee on Saturday/Sunday, work on Monday first day of the next pay period, drive home.

          2. stay in a hotel and sightsee on Saturday/Sunday,

            When you a family, you don’t spend your weekends sightseeing alone.

        3. “The attitude is definitely different…”

          My take is that the little people are buying real estate as a hedge against anticipated inflation seeing how the fed is buying near zero coupon Treasurys, and Biden is pissing it away rather than investing in real infrastructure.

        4. from my circle of friends / co-workers and the general internet — it seems like a decent amount (not majority by any means), is taking the lockdowns/pandemic as an excuse to overbuy on a upgraded home.

  2. ‘Terravista and the partnerships are accusing a New York finance company of fraud over its alleged failure to secure a Housing and Urban Development loan that the partnerships were counting on in a refinancing so they could retain ownership. Dwight Capital’s actions were part of a ‘loan to own’ scheme’

    This loan to own thing seems to be a New York specialty.

  3. Why are nonprofits buying apartments?

    Or is this a woked social justice thing?

    “They ended up selling them to a Los Angeles nonprofit for what Terravista says was a ‘fire sale’ price”

    1. “Why are nonprofits buying apartments?”

      It’s probably a front “they” created to hold the bags. It’s easy to bail-out non-profits, no?

      1. It’s probably a front

        It’s important to remember that almost everything is an illusion.

        1. Yes, I wade through red hotcakes every morning. Seems like it’s every city and burg. Yet I can find a$$ poundings galore, selling at a loss on a decade old purchase, etc. For instance, I recently saw a red hotcakes article on one N TX town that I happen to get “off market” listing for. About 10 days ago I saw two adjacent residential lots for 5 grand. A week later it dropped to 3.5k. Yesterday in the same place I saw two shacks offered for 50k. One rented for $650/month, one empty needing work.

          So are there people acting out the red hotcakes? Maybe. If you’ve ever spent any time in Lubbock, you’d know it’s a sh$t hole. Read the article: the one woman “missed out” on a HUD shack. If it’s so hot, why was there a foreclosure at all? Things like that don’t add up.

  5. ‘New York City’s prime retail properties suffered another brutal three months at the start of the year’

    I saw recent day time photo of Times Square this morning. Deserted. I said last year they were shooting themselves in the fook.

    1. How is the M&M store going to survive????

      Every time I go there I am on the lookout for the xxx stores returning.

      It is that bad.

  6. I walked it about 6 months ago.

    And it was pretty sad and lifeless then.

    But, then I thought, fook them. They voted for it. So I got an awesome pastrami sandwich to help with the schadenfreude.

    “That figure marks a 21.7% jump year-over-year, with Upper Madison Avenue the worst-hit area. The once-glorious retail stretch saw seven new spaces added, an 11% jump on the year before, meaning there are now 53 spots available there.”

  7. ‘And if rental properties are empty because it is harder to rent them, it is only logical that rents will go down’

    This is why you make the big bucks Tom.

    ‘The ratio of luxury apartments in HCMC rose from 7 percent last year to 39 percent in the first quarter of this year…CBRE classifies apartments priced at over $4,000 per square meter as luxury…said over 60 percent of high-end apartments are bought by speculators’

    Jeebus, these guys are screwed.

  8. BTW, wordpress sent me an email saying this blog updated itself last night. Kinda like one of those Hal computer things.

  9. Is that alot for a communist country?

    “Le Hoang Chau, chairman of the Ho Chi Minh City Real Estate Association, said over 60 percent of high-end apartments are bought by speculators, and sounded a similar warning that it is threatening the sustainable development of the housing market.”

      1. LOL, agreed.

        Reminds me of the old cliché, “Here it’s man against man. Over there it’s the other way around.”

      2. When I visited Vietnam over a decade ago, I was impressed to see one of the most vibrant informal free market economies I have ever witnessed on the streets of the first nominally communist country I have ever visited.

        Somehow, free market capitalism finds a way to thrive, despite government efforts to kill it. The reason is mutual self interest in trade between houeholds and firms, something Adam Smith noticed a few centuries before Karl Marx spent his life explaining communism to the world.

        1. Karl Marx never worked a real job a day in his life.

          Engels, who took over management of his family’s Manchester cotton business, paid Marx an allowance, this coming from the profits of cotton picked by slaves in the U.S. South. Marxism’s origins were financed by slavery.

        2. Capitalism is superior to Communism, in terms of it creating more prosperity . The only problem is there has to be rules with Capitalism that prevents the formation of Monopolies and the rule of law and regulation against harm to Society.

          Communism is just Big Government having Top down control of the means of production, and Big Government doles out what the populations get that in theory is suppose to be equitable.

          So what we have today is some kind of Oligarchy where Monopolies have merged with Government for Top Down control of commerce, without the Government owning the means of production, but being the pawn of the private ownership Monopolies.
          This is a weird mix of the worse of Communism and Capitalism where the Monopolies suck up the wealth and the harm gets socialized to the Government.
          So, all the rigged economic systems create economic outcomes that are detached from wages and allocation of resources to bubbles or fake wealth creation, or price fixing Monopolies sucking up a greater amount of money from the populations than normal regulated capitalism would prevent.

          Its the Rule of the Monopolies again , like in the 1850’s in US, where the Monopolies eliminated all competition and sucked up great wealth on the back of slave labor at the time where the working class got very little.
          So, where was the Government in stopping Monopolies? The Monopolies corrupted Government and even got bailed out by Government, and Government is the treasonous bought off stooges for these Entities.

          So, the word is the Dems are making moves to stack the Court now with 4 extra Justices to get the rulings they want, just like the prediction was what they would do.So, the protection and check and balance of the High Court is going to be tainted by this move against the Constitution.

          Its all so predictable what they will do in this epic power grab to change America into something that nobody would want. Hopefully all damage can be reversed, but it goes without saying we can’t have rigged elections . The Puppets in the White house are not the Majority choice and its just criminal.

          The Monopolist of the 1850’s use to rig elections and put who they wanted in the White House also.
          Also the Rockefeller/ Rothschild influence in politics seems to be pulling strings according to some analysts.
          Its mandatory that these Entities be rejected and defeated by the people because they are up to no good for populations of people by their agendas that are anti populations of people. They have always been reeking havoc with the World with their schemes .

        3. The interesting thing about free markets is, at the smallest level, that they’re self-organizing.

          As Housing Wizard noted, as they become larger, emergent properties emerge, one being the tendency towards monopoly. Also, public costs – pollution from the tannery, financial bets gone the wrong way then bailed out – must be guarded against. Of course collusion and regulatory capture occur.

          Finally, what we have today is this huge crony-capitalistic system in which regulatory capture and legalized bribery lead to large amounts of public funds being funneled towards moneyed insiders.

          1. Nothing is static, i.e., efficiencies are discovered everywhere and in everything.

            The fed and our various layers of governments are trying to support the baby-boomer’s pensions whose actuarial calculations (and contributions) were based on workers expiring in their mid 70s, but thanks to technology, many are still with us well into their 80s.

            A quick glance at the federal budget pie chart depicts roughly 2/3rds consumed by social spending. The last 3rd, except for roughly 11%, is being devoured in the middle-east on efforts that are just buying time, accomplishing little considered permanent.

            The enormous deficit spending seen today is being concealed in a virtual financial world resembling a house of mirrors; the debts are so large now they’ll never be paid off let alone serviced despite near zero rates.

            The likely end game would be the loss of the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency, the result being a marked decline living standards.

      3. Not many VN personas remember that cluster money making fark. But on a lighter note:

        The Twitter account got suspended this evening. Some anti-jab tweets. Albeit factual.

        Less than .1% of people understand what’s actually going on with C-Scam, technocracy and the globalist agenda. And as you can tell — I have a low tolerance for idiots.

        Here’s the clip on YT.

        15 seconds.
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bU3xt17lksM

        1. She tipped over like a stop sign in a wind storm. FWIW, soldiers in formation often tip over like that when they lock their knees for too long.

    2. The world is awash in speculative greed thanks to central bankers. I don’t know how this ends, but the whole thing is revolting.

      3. ‘They’re afraid they won’t find something and have a place to go.’

        Reminds me of the popular saying in my circle as Housing Bubble 1.0 approached the point of collapse: “I couldn’t afford to buy my own house.”

        1. “I couldn’t afford to buy my own house.”

          I remember hearing people in San Diego saying that as far back as the late 1980’s

    1. “After a couple of months on the market, the price dropped to $23 million, eventually hitting $22 million in the new year. The ultrastylish home of the celeb couple recently bounced back onto the market for $17.95 million.”

      What many people who try to sell by Dutch auction fail to grasp is that they need to keep reducing their price until discovering the market value, at the point when it buyer steps forward to make a sale.

      Without enough price reductions to reach market value, it won’t happen.

      1. “…the musician John Legend and his wife, the social media star Chrissy Teigen, have chopped the asking price by a hefty $6 million….”

        Discussed many times here on the HBB, but it sure seems that Hollywood showbiz / celebrities have a very special talent to lose big money on Real Estate.

        Oh well, I’m sure John Legend had some great parties.

        1. A quick google search show that this dude owns multiple mansions and his net worth is supposed to be $75M.

          I’m gonna guess he’s having cash flow issues and this is why he’s unloading the shack. Plus maybe he wants to get out of LA, should there be more peaceful protests coming later this year.

          1. “…should there be more peaceful protests coming later this year….”

            Come to think of it, all those big, flat, white exterior walls are spray paint ready…

        2. A Moment for His Real Estate Portfolio, Plz

          John and Chrissy own several mansions in California and New York, because truly, why stop at just one home on one coast? Actually, the couple went on a bit of a buying spree in 2020, purchasing a $5.1 million West Hollywood home in April as well as a $17.5 million Beverly Hills home in September. Cool-cool-cool, that’s def also what I was doing in 2020.
          …

          1. Reading these entertainment legend turned real estate investing genius stories always makes me wonder: Did they invest their own money, or was leverage somehow involved?

            Without leverage in play, it’s hard to imagine why Legend would be dropping his asking price lower and lower to sell at a loss in a sinking luxury market. Just sayin’…

    2. “… I guess factory chic is popular with these celebs….”

      To each his own, of course, but this one to me has about as much appeal as a jazzed up warehouse.

      For $17.5mm?. Come on, somebody is yanking somebodies something.

      Must be passing around a lot of something at those parties.

    3. “Except for a 2200-sqft bump in size, the new house looks exactly like the old house.”

      In a good neighborhood the trees would be mature, you’d know many of your neighbors, etc., but in a struggling middle-class place these days 25% of the houses are rentals, many have “garage to bedroom” conversions with a wall and single door replacing the garage door, most of the driveways and streets have oil leak stains, etc., so yeah, the 2,200-sqft increase likely means a better neighborhood too.

    4. I guess factory chic is popular with these celebs.

      It does feel very sterile. The architecture reminds me of a newer government office building. It does have a view, which along with the zipcode are probably the true selling points.

    5. As long as I can fly out o California and hike on the PCT when time allows, that is all I need of California. So glad I can avoid the poisoned contract that the state has foisted upon its citizenry.

    1. The mills are bursting with product. There’s nowhere to put it. They have tractor trailers parked on side streets. I smell some serious BS on this one….

  15. “This abundance of properties means that the prices, which actually rose by an average of 10 per cent throughout Spain in the month before the pandemic hit, have suddenly started to plummet. In fact, as of March this year, the average rental value in Malaga on Spain’s Costa del Sol was €9.40 per square meter, some 5.3 per cent less than the same month the previous year.”

    When prices rise 10% in a single month – you have a completely irrational market. Will be interested if prices in southern Spain and Portugal get to very interesting (low) levels circa 2023 and 2024.

  16. Discovered on our front doorstep this morning:
    “Homeowner Looking to Sell?
    …
    I offer full Real Estate services for a 1.5% listing fee
    Saving You $$$”

    All right! The discount trend in real estate sales has spread to used home sales services.

    Hotcakes?

  17. “In 2015, California-based East West Bank provided three loans to Thor for the property: a $13.5 million acquisition loan, a $3.82 million building loan and a $5.6 million project loan. The developer subsequently renovated the properties. In 2019, Thor allegedly missed two loan payments and reached an agreement with the bank to extend the loan into 2021, according to the complaint. Thor then reached a payment deferral and repayment agreement in April 2020 after the pandemic began. But the complaint alleges that Thor missed its loan payments in November and December, triggering new defaults.”

    Yer brought yer shack too high! Note the default before the Pandemic.

  18. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon is bullish about the economy, but he remains concerned about the growing wealth gap, particularly for Black people, in the United States.

    A banker is concerned about the growing wage gap?

    I suppose that the answer is (of course) to saddle low income blacks (and other po’ folks) with mortgages they couldn’t possibly afford.

    1. More knee slappers from the artcle (at C N N website):

      “The consumer today has a tremendous amount of money, mostly from stimulus and unemployment checks, etcetera. Their balance sheets are in very good shape. Their confidence levels are going up,”

      “Their balance sheets are in very good shape”? They’re up to their eyeballs in debt. They’re clamoring to have student loans and mortgage forbearance forgiven.

      1. Those of us who rent and consistently live below their means are solvent. Bidding wars, escalation clauses in offers, writing letters about feeding the squirrels doesn’t happen here.

      2. If you can go onto debt to buy a house, stop making payments, then get Uncle Joe’s minions to forgive your debt payment shortfall, then why not go for it?

        Same comment goes for those who were enabled by debt to overpay for their college educations. If you can get free money handed to you legally, why not go for it?

        1. AFAIK neither student loans nor forbearance back payments have been forgiven, not yet. Maybe after we beat Russia in that pesky war that is brewing over parts of Ukraine. Not to worry, thought, I’m sure that our diverse and woke military will defeat the Russkies without breaking a sweat,

  20. Looks like the Arizona Senate is finally moving forward with a hand recount of Maricopa County’s 2 million election ballots. The Dems have been kicking and screaming the whole way.

    1. Today is Thursday, April 15th and Joe Biden is not the legitimately elected president of the United States.

      The 2020 election was stolen.

  22. While the Democrats are the political arm of the globalists, BLM and Antifa are their enforcement arms. Their common goal: the destruction of the last vestiges of heritage Americans.

    Black Lives Matter activist Bree Newsome defends rioting and looting as ‘a legitimate, politically-informed response to state violence’

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9475715/Black-Lives-Matter-activist-Bree-Newsome-defends-rioting-looting.html

    A prominent activist who supports the Black Lives Matter movement has appeared to support violent protests, arguing that rioting and looting are ‘a legitimate, politically-informed response to state violence’.

    Bree Newsome, 35, made the passionate remarks in a series of tweets this week, arguing that police are not limited to non-violence, and that a violent response to injustice can be appropriate and justified.

  23. Breaking new re: J&J and AZ jabs. Oh, wait! This scientific publication is from 2007. Perhaps the FDA division most familiar with this technology should have been reviewing these jabs.

    Adenovirus-induced thrombocytopenia: the role of von Willebrand factor and P-selectin in mediating accelerated platelet clearance

    Abstract
    Thrombocytopenia (low platelet count) has been consistently reported following the administration of adenoviral gene transfer vectors. The mechanism underlying this phenomenon is currently unknown. In this study, we have assessed the influence of von Willebrand Factor (VWF) and P-selectin on the clearance of platelets following adenovirus administration. In mice, thrombocytopenia occurs between 5 and 24 hours after adenovirus delivery. The virus activates platelets and induces platelet-leukocyte aggregate formation. There is an associated increase in platelet and leukocyte-derived microparticles. Adenovirus-induced endothelial cell activation was shown by VCAM-1 expression on virus-treated, cultured endothelial cells and by the release of ultra-large molecular weight multimers of VWF within 1 to 2 hours of virus administration with an accompanying elevation of endothelial microparticles. In contrast, VWF knockout (KO) mice did not show significant thrombocytopenia after adenovirus administration. We have also shown that adenovirus interferes with adhesion of platelets to a fibronectin-coated surface and flow cytometry revealed the presence of the Coxsackie adenovirus receptor on the platelet surface. We conclude that VWF and P-selectin are critically involved in a complex platelet-leukocyte-endothelial interplay, resulting in platelet activation and accelerated platelet clearance following adenovirus administration.

  24. This particular sentence doesn’t sound good: The virus activates platelets and induces platelet-leukocyte aggregate formation.

    2. If this is what I think it is, it’s not new news. Medcram covered it months ago. The spike proteins on the virus act as little hands which grab red blood cells and glue them together into mini-clots. They think this might be the cause of the wide variety of symptoms sometimes seen in COVID patients; it just depends which organ is micro-clotted. You know what prevents and breaks up these clots? Ivermectin.

        1. Yup, I saw that, sorry. 😔 Hopefully the FDA and CDC are looking up this kind of research. I’m sure they’re also pooling with the Astra-Zeneca data to look for better trending. But it seems that mice are more susceptible than humans. Certainly they didn’t test a million mice to find one clot. Also, which adenovirus? There are a lot of them, some of which cause common colds. J&J and Astra-Zeneca use different adenoviruses. And for all we know, the background incidence of these clots, pre-pandemic, could be due to a few people in the population having a bad reaction to adenoviruses in general.

          I’m waiting on the CDC. And it seems I’ll be waiting a couple weeks anyway. At least in MD there appears to be a lull in the vaccine supply. Appointments are few and far between.

          1. Also, which adenovirus?

            Adenoviral gene transfer vectors, commonly used in gene therapy. Anything more than that is beyond my pay grade.

    1. The Financial Times
      Oil & Gas industry
      US oil drillers ‘dying on the vine’ as PE flight prompts funding drought
      Stricken operators launch ‘last gasp’ efforts to boost cash flow and attract buyers
      Derek Brower in London and Justin Jacobs in Washington yesterday

      A vital source of funding for the US oil sector is drying up as private investors retreat, prompting stricken operators to make “last gasp” efforts to boost production and cash flow to lure in buyers.

      The exodus mirrors shale’s experience in public markets, where even before last year’s crash investors had soured on an industry notorious for poor returns and weak environmental, social and governance performance.

      “Private equity has been decimated in this downturn,” said Wil VanLoh, head of Quantum Energy Partners, one of the largest PE investors in the shale patch. “The total quantum of money available out there to private companies has shrunk and is going to stay much, much smaller.”

      Now scores of oil producers are “dying on the vine”, said Ben Dell, managing partner at rival Kimmeridge, as they are left without the regular cash infusions to bankroll the capital spending needed to keep on drilling.

      The private flight comes despite oil’s recovery to $60 a barrel — a price that allows many operators to break even and has raised investors’ hopes of a profitable final exit from the sector.
      …

    1. That therapy has nothing to do with vaccines. Moderna tried a treatment and found it unsafe in the lab. This is normal science. People who have never done research have no idea just how high the failure rate is. That’s why pharma companies prowl the faculties and students at research universities, hunting for promising results and proof of concept. That’s where most of the money and effort is “wasted” (for lack of a better word) on chemicals that fail.

      1. That therapy has nothing to do with vaccines.

        Same mRNA technology platform, different application.

        1. “Bancel, a first-time biotech CEO, has dismissed questions about Moderna’s potential. He describes mRNA as a simple way to develop treatments for scores of ailments. As he told STAT over the summer, ‘mRNA is like software: You can just turn the crank and get a lot of products going into development.’”

  28. I think a reexamination of the mysterious world of medicine and the Pharmaceutical approach that they openly admit that 225 thousand die per year in US from adverse reactions or side effects from Pharmacy drugs.
    I don’t find that many dying per year acceptable. God knows what the count is going to be under untested by time vaccines under a emergency Pandemic declared that requires no FDA approval for this new technology in Vaccines.

    It appears that most Government agencies have been corrupted , so I can’t count on Government doing the job of protection of the public. In fact , we seem to have a Oligarchy now where Government has merged with Big Monopoly Business to advance the agendas of that private interest. This is never more apparent than regarding the Pharmacy Monopoly, the Media Monopoly, and all the rigged markets by the Cartels.

  29. There isn’t anything that isn’t self serving about a Monopoly dictorship that isn’t a democracy of populations making free choices. Its a rigged deck of Big Monopoly Industries wanting to dictate what the agendas will be. No different than a invasion from a foreign enemy .

    Biden talks about transforming America, as a Puppet for this insurrection of the US by the Monopolies that want Commie programs and top down control. Its a disgusting assault on Government by the people , and any Constitutional protections this Country was established in.

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