There Are Some Really Frustrated Sellers, Because Some Feel Like They Have Missed The Market
A report from Fortune. “That Pandemic Housing Boom coincided with a staggering 42% jump in U.S. home prices between March 2020 and June 2022. Of course, that demand boom hasn’t just fizzled out—it’s doing a 180: On a year-over-year basis, mortgage purchase applications are down 41%. There’s actually fewer purchase applications now than at the bottom of the 2008 crash. This swift pullback in demand also has more economists uttering the most feared word in housing: Bubble.”
“‘It was a pandemic-induced [housing] bubble, which was stoked by work-from-home migration trends: High wage workers going to lower second tier middle markets for more space,’ said Diane Swonk, chief economist at KPMG. ‘We went to an extreme on WFH [spurred housing demand], but it has pretty much abruptly ended. It is part of the reason I think you’re seeing housing prices fall as well. The local incomes don’t support a lot of these home values.'”
“‘Once you start the process of prices falling nationally, there is a self-fulfilling momentum to it because no one wants to catch a falling knife,’ Swonk says. ‘We’re easily going to see large double-digits declines. I think 15% next year is very conservative. We’re already turning.’ ‘Let’s face it, where is one of the biggest pushes on inflation right now? It’s in shelter costs. And it’s where they [the Fed] have the most power,’ Swonk says. ‘And so, yeah, it was a stunning rise in [home] prices. An unsustainable rise—some kind of correction is needed. The problem is you don’t get to choose how big that correction is.'”
The Commercial Appeal in Tennessee. “Median home sale prices in the Memphis area declined in October along with total home sales as inventory ticked up. The median home sales price in the Memphis area declined 7% from October 2021 to October 2022. In October 2021, the median home sales price was $215,000. In October 2022, that figure dropped to $200,000. There were 3,054 local active listings reported as of October 2022. That’s an increase of 119 from September’s 2,935 reported active listings. Inventory is nearly 700 homes higher compared to October 2021’s total of 2,384.”
The Atlanta Journal Constitution. “No doubt now, the brakes are engaged: the metro Atlanta housing market has continued to slow, as higher mortgage rates depress prices and sales. The median sale price in October $379,455, a slight decline from the month before, and a nearly 8% drop since June, according to the Georgia Multiple Listing Service, which tracks sales in a 12-county area centered on the city of Atlanta. ‘There have been four straight months of price declines,’ said John Ryan, the group’s chief marketing officer. ‘Historically, we usually see a seasonal decline, but the decline is accelerated from what we’ve seen in the past.'”
The Norman Transcript. “The hair-on-fire housing market may be cooling off, but don’t look for housing to crash and burn — in Norman or Oklahoma — any time soon. High mortgage rates, inflation, seasonality and uncertainty are prepped to sprinkle water on the hot market. ‘Everybody’s a little scared,’ said Norman real estate agent Tammy Waller. ‘They’re saying, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s going to be 7 percent [interest rates].’ I’m, like, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s kind of normal.’”
“The ugliest house looked gorgeous all glammed up in 2.98% mortgage rates in June 2021. Would-be buyers sometimes learned the house was already under contact before they could even walk out the door, Waller said. But, as mortgage rates doubled, ugly house warts inevitably popped out. Steven Admire, president of Tulsa-based Advantage One Mortgage said he’s noticed a recent change in attitudes coinciding with mortgage rates’ recent rock ‘n’ roll moves. ‘It’s flipped. I’ve never seen that in my entire career,’ said Admire, who’s been in the mortgage business 29 years. ‘Not that psychology. Not that mindset.'”
From Bizwest in Colorado. “Realtors tend to view a housing inventory of six to seven months’ supply as a market that’s balanced between buyers and sellers. But today’s housing market in the Boulder Valley and Northern Colorado belies that maxim. Even though inventories remain far below that six-month mark, buyers continue to gain leverage, with rising interest rates, inflation and still-high housing prices dampening demand.”
“‘I think it’s pretty clear right now that what we’re feeling out there really resembles this buyer’s market,’ said Todd Gullette, managing broker with Re/Max of Boulder. ‘The seller certainly is not experiencing the feeling, generally, that they’re in the driver’s seat. I’m a firm believer of ‘what it feels like,’ he added. ‘There are some really frustrated sellers, because some feel like they have missed the market. And now, who knows how long it will stay kind of soft?'”
“‘The market is just correcting itself. We’re not crashing,’ said Cecilia De Villiers, broker/owner of Shasta Realty Inc., a Longmont-based brokerage that focuses primarily on Boulder, Larimer and Weld counties. But the incline that prices went up was way too high, too steep. ‘I do see some properties dropping quite significantly in price now, so hopefully, [sellers are becoming] more reasonable.'”
“Greeley recorded a $414,000 median sales price in October, up just 1.5% from a year ago and down from $453,000 in September. Loveland’s median sales price in October was $510,000, up 6.3% from a year ago and down from $530,000 in September. Fort Collins’ median sales price stood at $575,000 in October, up 8.1% from a year ago and down from $592,000 in September. Broomfield’s median sales price declined to $607,200 in October, from $688,000 in September, but up 2.4% from a year ago. Longmont posted a $587,500 median sales price in October, up 6.5% from a year ago and down from $645,155 in September.”
“Brandon Wells, CEO of The Group Inc. noted that the current market has begun to take a toll on home builders. ‘They’ve certainly been impacted. They really have been faced with a lot of cancellations,’ he said. ‘And so in order to offset those cancellations, they’ve had to get creative and offer a lot of concessions as well. With the movement of rates and the continued increase in price appreciation, that’s kind of been the two-headed monster that has really impacted affordability and really curbed overall buying power and buyer demand out there.'”
Bisnow New York City. “A small, relatively unknown company has been quietly taking over struggling hotels across the country in recent months, hoping to build an empire from the rubble of the pandemic. LuxUrban Hotels Inc. has snapped up more than 1,000 rooms this year alone, signing long-term leases with hotel owners grateful for a reliable stream of income in trying times. But the Miami-based company, eager to capitalize on market distress, has serious questions of its own to address, including dozens of customers waiting months for promised refunds, employees suing for unpaid wages, a CEO who has been fined by the Securities and Exchange Commission, and an executive team with little hotel experience.”
“The company spent the first four years of its existence as short-term rental provider CorpHousing Group, changing its name to LuxUrban Hotels earlier this month. The collapse of its short-term rental business when the pandemic hit has left financial scars that still haven’t healed. But LuxUrban executives say its legal and operational troubles have been resolved and that its new business model is sound. Real estate experts likened LuxUrban’s strategy to that of WeWork, the mercurial coworking firm that signed long-term leases at office buildings around the world in a relentless search for growth, only to be nearly crushed under the weight of its obligations. WeWork has lost $12B since 2019.”
“The financial statements it released as part of the IPO reveal a company that has been functioning on a razor’s edge. It was operating at a stockholder deficit of nearly $9.5M and had just $556 in cash on hand at the end of the second quarter, according to an investor prospectus. But LuxUrban also reported a nearly $2.2M profit in the first half.”
“Multiple LuxUrban employees said the company’s phone number goes straight to a voicemail service. Team members have been instructed to respond to refund requests by assuring customers the refund was on its way, but not to provide a specific timeline. ‘It felt like our job wasn’t customer service,’ one former employee said. ‘Our job was to buy time for refunds.'”
“A current employee said LuxUrban was still experiencing cancellation problems as recently as mid-October. The company learned that a deal fell through on a hotel at 741 Eighth Ave. in Manhattan, the employee said, but LuxUrban had advertised the property via online travel agencies before the deal was complete. The property has one review on Expedia dated Oct. 17, 2022. ‘This property does not exist. I was forced to find a hotel once I arrived,’ the review reads. ‘Waiting to hear back from Expedia on a refund for this fraudulent hotel. It literally does not exist. At the location of the hotel is a buffet style restaurant. The property phone number is an international number that no one answers. THIS IS FRAUDULENT. DO NOT SELECT THIS HOTEL.'”
“Current and former full-time employees of LuxUrban told Bisnow it was hard to buy into that corporate ethos while the frequency and amount they were getting paid was inconsistent. Pay is supposed to arrive every two weeks, per their employment contracts; instead, multiple employees said they have been paid inconsistent amounts at seemingly random times, even after the IPO. ‘For a long time, I was a hostage to the debts that they had,’ one employee said. ‘There was this big connotation of, ‘If you leave, you may not get what you’re owed without having an attorney.’ One current staffer told Bisnow it felt ‘terrible’ to show up at work knowing they wouldn’t get paid. ‘And then to be running what feels like an online scam?’ they said. ‘Even worse.'”
From Global News in Canada. “When Tamara Saeed and her husband were looking for a way to save for their children’s education a few years ago, the allure of Airbnb caught their eye. The family bought a cottage near Grand Bend, Ont., in late 2019, with plans to host the property on the platform. She recently doubled down and bought a second cottage property in Selkirk, Ont. and has also put it up on short-term rental sites including Airbnb and Vrbo. But now, with bookings slowing down heading into the holidays, mortgage costs rising and a possible recession on the horizon, she’s wondering whether she might be forced to sell her rental properties.”
“‘It was a great idea and I still think it is. But the fact is things have changed,’ Saeed says. She cites new taxes from municipalities and rising interest rates from the Bank of Canada as hurting the business case and earning potential for her cottage properties. Inflation is also drawing down revenues amid higher costs for cleaners and maintenance crews who rely on the cottage industry. ‘We are worried that with the cost of everything, it might not be as feasible to hang onto these properties. We’re hoping that’s not the case,’ Saeed says.”
“Saeed says she has fixed rates on her home in Brantford, Ont. and her property near Grand Bend, but her Selkirk cottage is on a variable rate and she says payments have increased ‘exponentially’ this year. She says she’s not feeling ‘oh, poor me’ about her situation. ‘There are many people who unfortunately have it a lot worse than we are, but we do feel the pinch. We’re not multimillionaire corporations. We’re just your average mom and pop just trying to get a little ahead and leave something for their kids,’ she says.”
The Korea Times. “Many young Koreans are struggling these days to overcome stress and anxiety triggered by the abrupt end of the bullish asset market. Those in their 30s comprise the bulk of investors here who took out loans to engage in a buying frenzy of stocks and real estate during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic between 2020 and 2021, emboldened by ultra-low lending rates. Few of them would have expected the market to enter the current period of acute adjustment prompted by the U.S. Federal Reserve’s unprecedentedly hawkish monetary policy.”
“The decline in asset values was just the beginning. They now face a mounting financial burden caused by increased interest rates. ‘I took out a non-collateralized loan of 100 million won ($73,500) in 2021, and invested all of it in Korean and U.S. stocks, hoping that the market will remain bullish for more years to come,’ an office worker in his 30s said. ‘But the value of my assets ended up decreasing by half less than a year after I made the investments. I came to realize that I entered the market at the end of a bull cycle.'”
“He also expressed frustration over the growing interest burden. ‘I did not hesitate to take out the loan last year when the benchmark rate was close to zero,’ he said. ‘But my interest burden almost doubled in about a year. Falling stock values and rising interest pressure keep giving me stress every day.’ Another office worker surnamed Kim said he recently sold all of his stocks at a loss on fears of further price falls. ‘I started investing in stocks after taking out loans worth around 30 million won last year, but decided not to wait for their rebound, as the bearish market sentiment keeps disturbing me,’ he said. ‘I recently dumped all of them at a loss of around 10 million won. Even if the loss is painful, I cannot turn back the clock. I will try not to make such a mistake again.'”
“Another 30-something worker at a major conglomerate here recalled the buying spree in the local housing market in 2020 and 2021. ‘After getting married a few years ago, I purchased an apartment in Gyeonggi Province soon after the outbreak of the pandemic,’ he said. ‘Many young people must have felt a similar urge due to escalating fears that apartment prices would keep soaring at an alarming pace, which pushed most of them into engaging in a panic buying of apartments in Seoul and its surrounding cities.'”
“Most home prices in the capital area have fallen to pre-pandemic levels, so most young people who jumped on the apartment-buying bandwagon for the past two years probably feel frustrated by their decision, he said. ‘One lesson that I learned is that we should not make investments when most other people do amid bullish sentiment,’ he said. ‘One botched investment can cause a lot of damage in terms of opportunity costs. If I had not purchased the apartment back then, I could purchase a better one at a lower price now.'”
“But others said they will stay focused on the market, undeterred by the recent losses. ‘I invested in cryptocurrencies during the pandemic era, and enjoyed the inherent volatility of the crypto market,’ an office worker in his mid-30s said. ‘Many people still have a negative perception of crypto investments due to their volatility, but few of them understand the industry and market. I also wince with pain when I think about my losses from the crypto investments, but firmly believe opportunities will come again after the macroeconomic uncertainties clear away here and abroad.'”
“The office worker said he intends to hold on to his financial assets. ‘I will never sell major cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum at a loss, and will keep doing my best to grab forthcoming opportunities in the market,’ he said. ‘Cryptocurrencies’ rebound will be way more powerful than any other assets.'”
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“The financial statements it released as part of the IPO reveal a company that has been functioning on a razor’s edge. It was operating at a stockholder deficit of nearly $9.5M and had just $556 in cash on hand at the end of the second quarter, according to an investor prospectus. But LuxUrban also reported a nearly $2.2M profit in the first half’
ShitCo strikes again. It’s appears the entire state of Colorado is sinking like a turd in a well.
‘had just $556 in cash on hand at the end of the second quarter’
Hard to make refunds when yer down to coffee money.
It’s appears the entire state of Colorado is sinking like a turd in a well.
Colorado housing prices sure are.
Lakewood, CO Housing Prices Crater 17% YOY As Denver Housing Market Swirls The Bowl
https://www.movoto.com/lakewood-co/market-trends/
And I’m proud to be Undocumented
Cause at least I know I’m free
And I won’t forget Joe Biden who gave that right to me
And I’ll gladly stand up take my SNAP and live off you here today
Cause there ain’t no doubt I love this land, God Bless the USA.
“‘The market is just correcting itself. We’re not crashing,’ said Cecilia De Villiers…I do see some properties dropping quite significantly in price now”.
Relitters must look in the mirror each morning and say to themselves, “There is no bubble, we are not crashing. There is no bubble, we are not crashing. There is no bubble, we are not crashing.”
A local relitter thinks buyers should just accept sellers’ rate buy downs rather than price reductions so that “we all can move past this log jam.”
Tell that relitter you’ll buy their house now at 50% off, or in foreclosure in about 12 months for the same price.
My landlord swears home prices aren’t falling.
Meanwhile I can go on Zillow and in 5 minutes I can find 20 properties with huge price cuts.
They aren’t where they should be- they are still way over priced; however, a 30k price cut is not indicative of a market that is growing.
My landlord swears home prices aren’t falling.
Predictable. Were you asking for a rent decrease?
Nope. He’s actually a good landlord. I lived in my apartment for 4 years before he did a rent increase, and our rent is still about $400 behind the rest of the market.
I don’t understand how he thinks about money, though. He bought a bunch of properties before the last crash and has sold a few of them in the last year at a major profit. However, he also lost a ton of properties to bankruptcy when the 08 crash hit. He said he’s putting all his money in CDs because of the interest rate. Perhaps that’s because he’s in his mid 60s and something like a series I bond may not make a lot of sense for him. -shrug-
So a guy who just went bankrupt in 2008 is already a “housing mogul” again? LMFAO. I can see where this is going….
TBH as long as he doesn’t hike our rent through the roof I don’t care what he does.
Does anyone remember this commercial? It was always on TV when I was a kid.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0HX4a5P8eE
Why did this comment get left under a thread? Must have not reset the comments when I refreshed the page. :/
Does anyone remember this commercial?
Stanley Johnson is a member of the HBB Hall of Fame.
anyone remember
Indeed!
” ‘I invested in cryptocurrencies during the pandemic era, and enjoyed the inherent volatility of the crypto market,’ an office worker in his mid-30s said. ‘Many people still have a negative perception of crypto investments due to their volatility, but few of them understand the industry and market. I also wince with pain when I think about my losses from the crypto investments, but firmly believe opportunities will come again after the macroeconomic uncertainties clear away here and abroad.’”
“Few of them understand the industry and market like I do. That’s why I’m down 80% in my investments.”
“but few of them understand the industry and market. ”
For years the crypto nuts have been telling me that I “didn’t understand” crypto and I needed to “educate myself.” And yet, this guy “understood” the industry and market and still got Joshua Tree’d.
Have fun staying poor!
“but few of them understand the industry and market. ”
Every time I have asked a crypto gambler to “explain crypto,” it’s been followed by cringeworthy word salad. It’s 100% the greater fool theory. There’s no fundamental justification for any of it.
“Few of them understand the industry and market like I do. That’s why I’m down 80% in my investments.”
Funny, but sadly, he probably truly believes “he’s the smartest one in the room.”
Sam Bankman-Fried where did all the money go?
Where is the money, Sam?
SHIBA INU?
This $hit STILL has a market cap of ~5B as of this morning. Somone’s Hodlin’ it
Because it’s fun to HODL Shib. It’s a $hit coin. No one actually holds that stuff seriously.
“It’s a $hit coin.”
As opposed to what exactly?
Something like a quarter, which is also a $hit coin, but at least it’s made of real metal.
like a quarter
Except that you can legally pay your debts with quarters and your debts are denominated in quarters. This will hold true until the government of the country passes to the dust bin. When that happens, you’ll probably find some real money useful.
Fiat isn’t real money, but like I said, at least quarters are made of money and one can usually trade metals.
Only Silver and Gold are “real money”. Copper maybe.
“Only Silver and Gold are “real money”. Copper maybe.”
Only power is true money. And those who have it decide in what form they circulate it. That’s the mystery the crypto clueless will never understand. Take it from Nori.
“Only power is true money.”
God ain’t made a man yet that can stand up to the power that lays between a woman’s thighs.
“Everybody’s a little scared,’ said Norman real estate agent Tammy Waller. ‘They’re saying, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s going to be 7 percent [interest rates].’ I’m, like, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s kind of normal.’”
You’re right Tammy. That is normal. What isn’t “normal” is today’s home prices. And until they drop to “normal” stop spinning your “everything is just dandy” stupidity!
’ I’m, like, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s kind of normal.’
In a sea of sleeze, I kinda like this one. She’s mocking her clients.
“‘It was a pandemic-induced [housing] bubble, which was stoked by work-from-home migration trends: High wage workers going to lower second tier middle markets for more space,’ said Diane Swonk, chief economist at KPMG. ‘We went to an extreme on WFH [spurred housing demand], but it has pretty much abruptly ended. It is part of the reason I think you’re seeing housing prices fall as well. The local incomes don’t support a lot of these home values.’”
The pandemic insanity was caused by three things- record low inventory, record low interest rates, and work from home nonsense. All three of those are either gone or on their way out. So of course the entire pandemic gains are going bye bye, which means a 25-30% drop for starters. Then factor in a recession/depression and the fact that crashes overshoot. I think 40% will end up being a conservative estimate.
Let’s not forget the theme of houses only go up so we’ll buy two or three. Seeing that go away must be good for an additional 20% drop.
Sounds good to me!
My husband is on permanent work from home status. The way his company is organized allows for it and it’s a great deal for us. He said his company announced that his NYC office is opening back up in the next month or so, and people are going to have to go back to the office if they aren’t on permanent remote status.
Ah, so those on “permanent remote status” get to stay remote, and those on “temporary remote status” have to move back to NYC and go into the office and that won’t cause any bad blood or issues within the company? Unless your husband is irreplaceable (and as my boss used to love to tell us, no one is irreplaceable) that ain’t gonna last.
I have a family member who lives in Florida, works for a NYC company, and is allegedly “getting paid NYC money”. Hmm, if there is a layoff (big assumption I know), I wonder who would be the first to go?
I love the “live in Florida making NYC money” people.
We live in Florida, make “NYC money” and can’t afford $hit because we refuse to pay 4 or 5x our income for a house, car, whatever. We’re in a small apartment. The whole “NYC in Florida” thing is a load of BS. It’s more like “Live in Florida, leverage like you work for Wallstreet.”
As for your friend- it depends entirely on the type of company for which he or she is working. Most tech companies are going belly up right now, and really, no one is safe no matter where one is employed. My husband is in a bit of an odd niche in a company that isn’t a start up, so while he’s not immune to anything bad happening- he is a bit more…sheltered. Only time will tell what will actually happen.
Tech companies that actually sell useful stuff that customers need will weather the storm. Those that sell unicorn farts won’t.
Exactly.
Speaking of layoffs… Amazon employees are Amagone.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/14/technology/amazon-layoffs.html?smtyp=cur&smid=tw-nytimes
“She recently doubled down and bought a second cottage property in Selkirk, Ont. and has also put it up on short-term rental sites including Airbnb and Vrbo.”
Greed is a terrible thing. If they had simply sold the first place they bought after it had run up 50-60% in three years, I’m sure their kids’ college funds would have been fully funded. Oh well, live and learn!
‘One lesson that I learned is that we should not make investments when most other people do amid bullish sentiment…If I had not purchased the apartment back then, I could purchase a better one at a lower price now’
Well, it was cheaper than renting office worker.
Renton, WA Housing Prices Crater 18% As Ballooning Housing Inventory And Plummeting Prices Ravage Seattle Area
https://www.movoto.com/wa/98057/market-trends/
As one Renton broker declared, “We’re inundated with housing inventory…. and there isn’t a buyer in sight at any price.”
said Diane Swonk
That woman is a born liar. Suddenly she tells the truth after decades of tall tales.
What gives?
10% for the Big Guy.
Sam Bankman-Fried, make sure the Big Guy gets his 10%.
A report from Fortune. “There’s actually fewer purchase applications now than at the bottom of the 2008 crash. This swift pullback in demand also has more economists uttering the most feared word in housing: Bubble.”
“‘It was a pandemic-induced [housing] bubble, which was stoked by work-from-home migration trends: High wage workers going to lower second tier middle markets for more space,’ said Diane Swonk, chief economist at KPMG. ‘We went to an extreme on WFH [spurred housing demand], but it has pretty much abruptly ended. It is part of the reason I think you’re seeing housing prices fall as well. The local incomes don’t support a lot of these home values.’”
“‘Once you start the process of prices falling nationally, there is a self-fulfilling momentum to it because no one wants to catch a falling knife,’ Swonk says. ‘We’re easily going to see large double-digits declines. I think 15% next year is very conservative. We’re already turning.’ ‘Let’s face it, where is one of the biggest pushes on inflation right now? It’s in shelter costs. And it’s where they [the Fed] have the most power,’ Swonk says. ‘And so, yeah, it was a stunning rise in [home] prices. An unsustainable rise—some kind of correction is needed. The problem is you don’t get to choose how big that correction is.’”
– It’s a bubble, but it wasn’t a pandemic-induced housing bubble. It started in earnest mostly about 14 years ago, after 2008 and the GFC. It’s a Fed and Government-induced housing bubble. Both Government fiscal policy (enabled by the Fed’s money printing and balance sheet expansion) and the Fed’s monetary policies of ultra-low mortgage interest rates, led to asset price bubbles and then general price inflation. Keynesian central bank policies spread throughout the OECD countries like a virus. It’s a financial pandemic, with worse outcomes that SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19.
https://www.dlacalle.com/en/keynesian-policies-have-left-high-debt-inflation-and-weak-growth/
Keynesian Policies Have Left High Debt, Inflation and Weak Growth
13 November, 2022 | Sin categoría | Daniel Lacalle
“The evidence from the last thirty years is clear. Keynesian policies leave a massive trail of debt, weaker growth and falling real wages. Furthermore, once we look at each so-called stimulus plan, reality shows that the so-called multiplier effect of government spending is virtually inexistent and has long-term negative implications for the health of the economy. Stimulus plans have bloated government size, which in turn requires more dollars from the real economy to finance its activity.”
“As Daniel J. Mitchell points out, there is evidence of a displacement cost, as rising government spending displaces private-sector activity and means higher taxes or rising inflation in the future, or both. Higher government spending simply cannot be financed with much larger economic growth because the nature of current spending is precisely to deliver no real economic return. Government is not investing; it is financing mandatory spending with resources of the productive sector. Every dollar that the government spends means one less dollar in the productive sector of the economy and creates a negative multiplier cost.”
“When society decides to use a certain part of the resources generated by the productive sector for non-economic return activities, be it social spending or mitigation of threats, it can only do it by understanding how much of the productive capacity of the economy is able to sustain a larger cost. When costs are not considered as a burden, but considered as entitlements that can only grow, the productive capacity is not strengthened, but weakened.”
“The main problem of the past decades, but particularly since 2008, is that government spending and monetary policy have become solutions of first resort to any slump in economic activity, even if that decline was created by government decisions, such as shutting down the economy due to a health crisis. Furthermore, government spending increases and loose monetary policy continued even in growth periods. This, in turn, creates an unsustainable public deficit that needs to be monetized or refinanced. Both mean a larger harm for the productive sector as the debt increase leads to higher taxes for everyone but also a soaring cost of living coming from the destruction of purchasing power of the currency.”
“Higher government spending financed with rising taxes and weakening of the purchasing power of the currency is just a form of nationalization of the private sector.”
– Nationalization = Socialism: The State owns the means of production, and we all know from history as well as current events what a complete economic failure Socialism is.
– And yet “The Blue Wave” in the 2022 mid-term elections. Good and hard.
A reader sent these in:
This is exactly the behavior that should give any doubt to the accuracy to a Zillow forecast. They are not credible. They have been the fox guarding the hen house. NAR, MBA, Redfin are no better. RE data sources are knee deep interested in home price growth. Conflicts of interest
https://twitter.com/windgineering/status/1591984860834705409
CarDealershipGuy
1. ✅ Buy a Luxury vehicle >$40k: This vehicle segment has seen the MOST price deflation and currently has the lowest consumer demand. Dealers need to get rid of these vehicles. Fast.
https://twitter.com/GuyDealership/status/1591599836679241729
CarDealershipGuy
3. ✅ Pay cash: Don’t take expensive financing in current high interest rate environment. The national average rate for a Used car loan is almost 10%! Dealers won’t love this (financing is profitable) – but if you have some cash set aside, now is the time to consider using it.
https://twitter.com/GuyDealership/status/1591599839556558854
Fed governor Christopher Waller on the October CPI report: “The market seemed to get waaaa-aaaay out in front…. I just cannot stress this is one data point.” “We’ve still got a ways to go.”
https://twitter.com/NickTimiraos/status/1591910781331046400
Lyft driver to the Phoenix airport today: “I’m a real estate investor with multiple rental properties, but I drive Lyft during the day to keep myself busy”
https://twitter.com/2x4caster/status/1591163955111940096
Remember lots of people borrowed against equity in their houses to buy crypto.
https://twitter.com/HniReal/status/1591115031038808066
“Like bears grabbing for honey” ☠️ Go get your home, millennials!
https://twitter.com/texasrunnerDFW/status/1591931490757382144
FED’S WALLER: HOUSING MARKETS IN THE US WILL BE FINE.
https://twitter.com/financialjuice/status/1591915405995548674
BREAKING: A potential bank run on http://Crypto.com may be in progress. Nearly 90,000 unique transactions have been processed in the last few hours, suggesting that users are scrambling to get their funds off the exchange 👇
https://twitter.com/chainsawdotcom/status/1591993317138784256
Idiots saying FTX is not a regulatory problem, are just that, idiots. FTX is a huge regulatory blow-up that doubles as a political scandal.
https://twitter.com/INArteCarloDoss/status/1591926711377186817
So by now we know
BlackRock
Ontario Pension Fund
Sequoia
Paradigm
Tiger Global
SoftBank
Alan Howard
Multicoin
VanEck
And Temasek
Had FTX exposure. The question remains how much exposure did theY have and how much is left? Did they deleverage on Wednesday’s bloodbath?
https://twitter.com/chigrl/status/1591552716475858944
You wouldn’t even know housing is contracting from the inflation data. But look closely at the last recession: housing inflation didn’t turn negative on a YOY basis until April of 2010!
https://twitter.com/housing_alex/status/1591228521518862336
John Wake
“These bubbly housing markets look like busts—and they just sank Redfin’s flipping business”
https://twitter.com/JohnWake/status/1591834455039246338
Danielle DiMartino Booth
Un-f-ing-believable. When was the last time that FedEx furloughed workers in the middle of “peak season”?https://transportdive.com/news/fedex-fre
https://twitter.com/DiMartinoBooth/status/1591831640778895360
Next shoes to fall. Fed tightening(higher rates work on a lagged effect), including QT, leads to recession & falling earnings(from record margin levels) & lower stock prices. Sharp bear market rallies(such as last week’s) suck in money to maximize losses
https://twitter.com/htsfhickey/status/1591850414932107264
Lance Lambert
These groups are forecasting that U.S. home prices will fall further 🏡🍂
Goldman Sachs
Wells Fargo
Morgan Stanley
KPMG
Moody’s Analytics
Zelman & Associates
Zonda
Fannie Mae
John Burns Real Estate Consulting
Capital Economics
Pantheon
Amherst Group
https://twitter.com/NewsLambert/status/1591851522060881921
Lyn Alden
It seems to me like the small business rent delinquency trend isn’t getting enough airtime.
https://twitter.com/LynAldenContact/status/1591855770752409600
TWITTER ELIMINATED 4,400 OF ITS 5,500 CONTRACT EMPLOYEES – PLATFORMER REPORTER TWEET
https://twitter.com/FirstSquawk/status/1591855738724683776
FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried funded the Democratic Party’s midterms to the sum of $40 million using customer deposits from the now-bankrupt crypto exchange. Customers have lost everything. This is a major SCANDAL and the mainstream media is dead silent on it.
https://twitter.com/TrackInflation/status/1591935695886639105
The Kobeissi Letter
New data shows that 49% of restaurants in the United States were unable to pay rent last month. Furthermore, nearly 40% of all small businesses were unable to pay rent in October. Damage from inflation is spreading from corporations to small businesses. This is a recession.
https://twitter.com/KobeissiLetter/status/1591919380040146944
The Kobeissi Letter
This Month:
1. Mass layoffs expand beyond tech
2. Used car prices down an alarming 10%
3. Rates now higher than 2008, credit card debt near $1 trillion
4. Mortgage demand lowest since 1997
5. $2.2 trillion lost in crypto, 2008-like FTX bankruptcy
The recession is worsening.
https://twitter.com/KobeissiLetter/status/1591862708017709065
“However, Bankman-Fried’s holdings of Robinhood shares were under an entity called Emergent Fidelity, which is not among the entities listed in Friday’s bankruptcy filing.” Alexa, what is a fraudulent conveyance?
https://twitter.com/EpsilonTheory/status/1591874881570078721
Lance Lambert
#NEW KPMG says U.S. home prices are likely to fall 15% from peak-to-trough. “It was a pandemic-induced [housing] bubble” says @DianeSwonk
https://twitter.com/NewsLambert/status/1591925450049466369
Sam Bankman-Fried’s fraudulent FTX got a higher ESG score on “Leadership & Governance” than Exxon Mobil 😂 ESG ratings are all a fraud.
https://twitter.com/WallStreetSilv/status/1591873139574808577
Mortgage rates are reaching the point where most new construction will come to a halt for years. They will finish in progress work while they can, but most new projects are DOA.
https://twitter.com/WallStreetSilv/status/1591956538125869056
Buying conditions for houses declined to the lowest in history… Everything is fine …🔥🔥🔥
https://twitter.com/WallStreetSilv/status/1591956045412585472
Another billion $$$ withdrawn from #Tether today.
3 Billion this week … the collateral damage from #SBF_FTX is perhaps causing people to find the off ramps?
https://twitter.com/WallStreetSilv/status/1591777903057829888
Two people who 100% need the Fed to make money free again to be successful
https://twitter.com/AnomalistV/status/1591590641338929153
Money printer probably jammed… The FED balance sheet is only $300bn down from peak of $9T. Look at all of the chaos in the economy from such a tiny tightening from the Fed. 💣🔫🔥
https://twitter.com/WallStreetSilv/status/1591793007380074497
‘housing inflation didn’t turn negative on a YOY basis until April of 2010!’
This is happening all over the world. Sydney just wiped out the entire CCP virus bubble.
When was the last time that FedEx furloughed workers in the middle of “peak season”?
😳
Usually trucking is crazy busy from now until Christmas. then it slows WAY down. (esp flatbed, because construction, winter, etc). But it all slows way down. Now there’s no busy season since they always lay off too late (cuz drivers are hard to hire) so that means ti’s been slow since summer and no holiday boost. Which means January/Feb/March could be really really bad.
Two people
Cathie Wood and Elon Musk
When was the last time that FedEx furloughed workers in the middle of “peak season”?
Wasn’t it announced weeks ago that Target and WalMart were cancelling billions of $ in orders? This going to be an unhappy “holiday season” for retailers, both bricks and mortar as well as online.
Indeed. How much stuff do people need anyway? Our kid will be 6 months old come Christmas. We can get a zoo pass that will last all year for $90. We figured since she’s little and she’ll probably get plenty of crap from her grandmother we’ll spend $90 plus gas money and take her to the zoo next year. Merry Christmas! You get to see Harambe!
Just wait ’til it’s time for braces, name brand teen clothing, a reliable car, etc., and then college.
By that time only the “people who matter” will have cars.
As for braces, that’s a very American thing. In other countries people have orthodontia only in extreme cases, and not to have “the perfect smile”
When I wanted name brand teen clothing I had to get a job and buy it myself.
I wore a lot of shirts and sweaters that had my mom’s name sewn in the collar.
PFreely regarding your stupidity theory here is the link to the WEF page for their partnership with FTX which you can see was just recently deleted.
https://www.weforum.org/organizations/ftx
But here is the link to the way back machine showing the original WEF page with a direct link to the FTX website for “investors”.
https://web.archive.org/web/20220613111008/https://www.weforum.org/organizations/ftx
If that doesn’t work for you, you can go to the way back machine yourself and use the first URL to find previous versions of the WEF FTX partnership page. SO was that by “stupidity” that of all the financial trading platforms in the world WEF would pick FTX to partner with? I mean is Klaus Schwab that stupid?
And of all the countries in the world that FTX could have a major partnership with it turned out to be the Ukraine, the epicenter of money laundering in the western hemisphere?
And could you tell us exactly how 50 million dollars of stolen investor funds gets moved from FTX into the democratic party by “stupidity”?
And how by “stupidity” most of FTX’s capital was being syphoned off into a secondary entity that was created before FTX?
How was it that by “stupidity” that FTX was funneling over 100 million dollars into a shadowy 50 billion$ spider web of NGOs through his previous employer The Center for Effective Altruism while the head of the US office was a partner in FTX itself?
https://time.com/6204627/effective-altruism-longtermism-william-macaskill-interview/
Also was by stupidity that one of his social media profiles shows him wearing a t shirt with the “child love’ pedo symbol on it and the logo of his money laundering secondary entity appears to be a stylized pedo concentric triangle symbol?
Was it Asperger stupidity that all this was being operated out of the Caribbean to avoid regulatory scrutiny just like all the CDO MBS shenanigans during the last housing bubble?
Was there anyone else based in the Caribbean who was a big shot in crypto?
Oh look Jeffrey Epstein said Bitcoin is “bursting with potential”!
https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-bursting-with-potential-says-billionaire-jeff-epstein
Oh look Jeffrey Epstein was neck deep in the MIT cryptocurrency operations.
https://www.yahoo.com/video/jeffrey-epstein-bitcoin-intrigue-deserves-080028939.html
Where did Dr FTX stupidity get his degree? MIT.
Oh look more MIT and crypto Jeffrey Epstein connections:
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/lifestyle/lifestyle-news/strange-saga-jeffrey-epstein-s-link-brock-pierce-1240462/
OMG even more connections to Epstein at MIT this time in the physics department.
https://www.masslive.com/boston/2020/12/massachusetts-institute-of-technology-disciplining-professor-with-ties-to-disgraced-financier-jeffrey-epstein.html
Don’t tell me Dr FTX stupidity was a physics major at MIT during this same period! That can’t be!
Crypto visionary found dead in Puerto Rico day after tweeting that intelligence agencies are running a pedo ring out of the Caribbean and that he is going to be murdered.
https://nypost.com/2022/11/09/drowning-death-of-crypto-visionary-fuels-conspiracy-theories/
Crypto wizard found dead after 250 million $ in investor funds go missing
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/11/the-strange-tale-of-quadriga-gerald-cotten
Anyway IPFreely it reassures me to know that all of this is just coincidence and the whole fiasco was a silly ruse with no malice or shadowy criminal intent. Your analysis was so trenchant and insightful about how his parents were old and gave him Aspergers. I can put all this other stuff out of my mind now. I also thought it might be significant that the entire crypto universe is saturated with mafias, drug traffickers, human traffickers, sex traffickers, money launderers of every stripe, deep state globalist money moguls, intelligence agencies, and a various and sundry cadre of scammers and highly sophisticated wall street derivate juggling rip off artists conning deli workers and bus drivers into buying into the most delusional get rich quick scheme in human history. But it was all just an innocent misadventure by misguided nerds with Aspergers.
‘his social media profiles shows him wearing a t shirt with the “child love’ pedo symbol on it and the logo of his money laundering secondary entity appears to be a stylized pedo concentric triangle symbol’
I posted a video showing this in the comments to the previous video thread.
+1
Great post.
We live in a world in which you can’t do 600$ of transactions in a year on eBay without being reported to the government but somehow this multibillion $ money laundering ponzi scheme flew under the radar and the explanation is his parents were old and gave him Asperger’s? I’ll give IP the benefit of the doubt and just assume they gave him stronger bud than he asked for at the dispensary yesterday.
I’m always up for some friendly banter 🙂
So your position is that he is a genius? Is that why his father immediately flew to the Bahamas to rescue him? Is that what most ‘leading scholars in the field of tax law’ would do? Gotta go bailout the 30 year old genius again! I find it all very comical. The reality is that most of the people you have mentioned are serious headcases so it is no surprise that they are attracted to each other. Perhaps ‘smart’ isn’t the right word because it depends on how we are measuring. Personally, I don’t consider running a pedo island to be an example of a smart person but I’m sure he could have passed a test or two. I also don’t consider WEF positions to be those of smart people either. Frankly, most of their positions sound quite moronic to me. Do you consider them smart? I can think of many things I would call them but smart wouldn’t be how I would characterize them.
Most of these people/groups you have mentioned are greedy opportunists running various scams. I’m curious why you think they are so smart when their scams are all imploding? Smart people don’t jet around the world trying to con everyone they come into contact with and then hope Daddy can bail them out. The egregiousness of his balance sheet really goes against your fantasy of a tightly coordinated global conspiracy. Wouldn’t such smart people be able to shield themselves a little bit better than this? If this is the best we can hope for from such smart people then we are truly screwed. We should probably leave Earth immediately. The reality is these are some dumb mf’ers. For the record, I did state that he exhibits some sociopathic tendencies and I never said there was no malice or criminal intent but it is highly probable that he is delusional. Have you listened to any of his pitches? Unfortunately, crypto has an entire cast of clowns. Did one of them take your money? You sound upset.
The silver lining is that he has given us a very nice list of future short positions and places to look for property liquidations. I seriously hope to pick up some of Larry Fink’s property for pennies on the dollar some day soon. That would make me all warm and fuzzy inside. I just found out this week that he is in fact, a moron.
P.S. I will review your links soon as I truly enjoy high quality irritainment, it is what attracts me to market spectating. Thanks for taking the time to post them.
“The silver lining is that he has given us a very nice list of future short positions and places to look for property liquidations.”
Proceed cautiously as the fed doesn’t care much for the downside of free market economics.
Pay cash: Don’t take expensive financing in current high interest rate environment. The national average rate for a Used car loan is almost 10%! Dealers won’t love this (financing is profitable) – but if you have some cash set aside, now is the time to consider using it.
Now would be an absolutely horrible time to pay cash for a vehicle. Prices are still near record levels. I’m just hoping to get a gently used 2 year old vehicle with an msrp of $45k for under $30k cash when it all shakes out. That doesn’t seem a huge ask, but we are nowhere near that right now.
I think it’s still a bad time to buy a car, new or used.
Agreed.
My second car is a 2007 Chevy suv with 160k miles, leaks oil, has lots of error codes and just lost heat last week and it’s going below freezing for the rest of the week. But I’m still driving it because I’m not paying overpaying for a car now while cars are about the most expensive they’ve ever been.
As I watch people drive I am leery of buying used. Too many morons that trash their transmission.
And a lot of those transmissions are CVTs. They get better mpgs, but are delicate and don’t handle abuse as well as a slushbox.
New data shows that 49% of restaurants in the United States were unable to pay rent last month. Furthermore, nearly 40% of all small businesses were unable to pay rent in October. Damage from inflation is spreading from corporations to small businesses.
This is why the speculators forecasting (praying for) a FED pivot are so delusional. Inflation destroys everything. They literally have to fight inflation or it takes down the currency and the entire country.
Notice how Waller just came out to say that the FED’s job is far from done, but then Brainard followed his comments with a little hopeful nugget for speculators that soon it will be time to lessen the rate hikes. They are trying to prevent an all-out panic in stocks while continuing to raise. There is no pivot coming anytime soon. PPI is still rising, and the drop in CPI was only because of the healthcare adjustment, which will be muted going forward.
They literally have to fight inflation
Sorry to be repetitive, but a step is missing. Fire the guys who did the inflating. They are not gods. They are evil idiots.
bingo. Plus let’s not forget that into every piece of GDP Is energy and the regime has decided to make energy very expensive. Inflation is nowhere near going down and until they start drilling again, it’s not going to have a hope of coming down. Remember 1982? It wasn’t just high rates, it was a massive change in the cost of oil.
Nurse Knows The Jab Is Killing Her Patients, Says It’s Not Her Choice & Jabs Away – John O’Looney
https://www.bitchute.com/video/hvon0q01VFWq/
2:20.
Nurse Knows The Jab Is Killing Her Patients, Says It’s Not Her Choice & Jabs Away – John O’Looney
How did that excuse work out for the SS guards?
Seriously, anybody that would jab somebody while they know it could cause death and injury can’t be forgiven. You had to do it to keep your job. NO WAY!
Nurse
Despicable!
My previous primary care provider berated me for not being jabbed, which is one of the reasons he is no longer my doctor.
About 95% of the medical community can go in the same helicopter ride as the journalists. You choose to serve evil, hope you sleep well.
How can it be any clearer than this?
He said Zillow data shows the monthly payment required for a $400,000 house about 18 months ago now roughly matches the payment of today’s $250,000 house.
The models claim that the club bouncer looked them both up and down before saying, “not tonight.”
Two Plus-Sized Models Claim Discrimination After Los Angeles Nightclub Refuses Entry
PAUL BOIS
14 Nov 2022
“Jay said she first spotted Halikas, a friend and fellow plus-size model, while standing in line with others who were also invited to the party and as their group got closer to the entrance, the women say everyone was allowed in—except them,” reported CNN.
“It doesn’t matter your race, your size, your sexual orientation, if you have acne, if you are pretty, if you are ugly, it does not matter,” Alexa Jay said.
https://www.breitbart.com/pre-viral/2022/11/14/two-plus-sized-models-claim-discrimination-after-los-angeles-nightclub-refuses-entry/
This is not unprecedented.
https://youtu.be/80TUlmVOEAQ?t=101
the club bouncer
What’s the most likely reason a club bouncer would not let you in?
Never been clubbing, so I have no idea.
Because he thinks you might cause trouble?
A bouncer knows body language.
someone who looks like they are desperate for some company.
body language and just plain talking to people will weed them out
“What’s the most likely reason a club bouncer would not let you in?”
After a quick search of the place, one click on more photos from thehighlightroom should give you a pretty good idea why the plus size girls were turned away.
https://www.instagram.com/thehighlightroom/?hl=en
Crypto bros can always work fast food
https://www.yahoo.com/news/farmland-values-hit-record-highs-154819502.html
Farmland Values Hit Record Highs, Pricing Out Farmers
Looks like we’ll be eating garden snails from our yard. That’s a delicacy, right?
We’ve been in a farmland bubble for almost a decade. Interesting that $11,000 per acre for tillable soil is too extreme to make a profit from, yet a half acre of desert scrub out west was approaching a million dollars in certain places.
Ag commodities aren’t profitable at any price more than $500 an acre.
Desert scrub should be free.
Tense
“They Are All Equally Risky”
The guy who saw the collapse of FTX coming has a warning.
By Nitish Pahwa
Nov 11, 2022 2:47 PM
A red warning banner reading “FTX is currently unable to process withdrawals. We strongly advise against depositing.”
A notice warning about FTX is displayed on a screen in London on Thursday. Leon Neal/Getty Images
When Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto empire began to crumble this week and reach unbelievably stupid new lows, I knew I had to get on the phone with the writer behind the Substack newsletter Dirty Bubble Media. Since January, Mike Burgersburg (a pseudonym) has been diligently tracking the sketchy mechanics of the crypto economy. He plumbs the complicated blockchains and wallets and clarifies them for readers both interested in and weirded out by crypto. He’s often uncovered important developments before the rest of the tech and crypto press covers them, making Dirty Bubble an essential resource for anyone who wants to understand celebrity NFTs, market crashes, and the rich people who’ve poured all their money into these strange finances. For a while now, he’s also been keeping close watch on Bankman-Fried and his companies—Alameda Research and FTX—and warning of potential dangers to come.
I spoke with Burgersburg on Thursday evening, after FTX lost a chance at getting bailed out. Since our conversation, even more has happened: The Securities and Exchange Commission is looking into Bankman-Fried, his net worth has plummeted to zero, he’s seeking the counsel of a former Enron lawyer, and his companies have registered for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. (All the other firms that depended on them are also going for broke.) Oh, and Bitcoin is crashing again. Still, Burgersburg had plenty of valuable things to say about tracking crypto, how to be a properly skeptical follower of this strange world, and what could happen next as the disaster compounds. Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Nitish Pahwa: As someone who’s been following FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried, and the ties between them and all these other crypto companies that have imploded this year, what was your initial feeling upon seeing the news about Alameda and its balance sheet?
Mike Burgersburg: I’d actually already gotten that information a couple of days before the article was published, so I wasn’t really surprised. I was already working on my own piece. Once I saw that, I knew that they were in very serious financial trouble as long as that information was accurate, which, of course, it turns out it was.
How did you start getting into crypto investigation?
I always have had this weird fascination with financial fraud going back to when I was a kid: Enron, the 2008 crisis. Once you learn enough about how fraud works, you know what it looks like. When I started learning about all of these companies in crypto, like Celsius and Tether, I recognized it pretty quickly. Celsius, in particular, is something that had all the signs of being some type of scam, likely a Ponzi scheme in particular. So I started digging into the backgrounds of the people involved in the company and published a couple of articles based on that.
I’m pretty skeptical of the value of crypto in general. However, one thing about it is that every single transaction is immediately and publicly recorded and available for you to look at. What I realized was that this might be the first chance in history where you have the chance to investigate fraud in real time and actually see what they were doing as they did it.
That’s why I started teaching myself how to use these tools. I also realized that as I talked to investors in these companies, most of them didn’t actually really understand how to even investigate this stuff. That kind of blew my mind. If you’re putting all your life’s savings into it, why haven’t you done even the most basic attempt to understand what you’re looking at? I decided to try and make a story out of it, and that’s what I’ve been trying to do over the last few months.
That’s interesting how crypto holders weren’t even bothering to follow the money.
They had no clue. Most of them don’t understand. I asked incredibly basic questions. I mean, I’m not an expert by any source of the imagination. I’m just a guy screwing around. The crazy thing is that one guy screwing around in his spare time with no special knowledge or abilities, as far as I’m concerned, could go so much further than almost anybody, just because I was looking at the details and nobody else was.
Were you writing or doing any other financial analysis before you started Dirty Bubble?
I don’t have any financial or programming background or anything like that. I’m a physician, resident position.
And you find a lot of time outside of work to do this?
Not a lot of time. It was toward the end of medical school that I started looking into this. In that period, you have a lot of time with electives. I was still working 40 or 50 hours a week, but when I went home I didn’t have to do anything. And when I was doing my Ph.D., I spent all my free time reading articles and doing data analysis and stuff. So later I filled that time with something I actually found interesting.
I assume the name Dirty Bubble came about because you’re a SpongeBob SquarePants fan?
I actually don’t remember. I think it was October when I first came up with that. It just popped into my head. People were calling these last couple of years “the golden age of fraud,” and I was like, “No, it’s just another dirty bubble.” Then I thought, “OK, well, it’s kind of a catchy name. It’s a little different.” Once I came up with a little avatar for it, I think it definitely burned into a few people’s brains now.
Once you started publishing the newsletter, how long did it take for other crypto insiders, critics, or journalists to start really noticing it?
There were a few journalists who noticed fairly early. The ones who were really on the ball. They saw what I was doing, and they realized that nobody else was doing it. The first article that really got a decent amount of attention had nothing to do with Celsius or FTX or any of it. It was actually [about] Justin Bieber’s NFT project—which I might need to revisit shortly, because I think it’s pretty crazy how badly the people that invested in that got screwed.
That piece was when I first started really doing that, because it was so simple: There are only a few walls involved, transfers are very direct, and NFTs are easy to track through the blockchain. That’s when I really started getting serious about it.
No one loves anything more than a celebrity scam story, right?
Exactly.
I’ve been covering crypto on and off since college, but I feel like a lot of people started noticing it once there were a bunch of ad spends, celebrity endorsements, and Instagram ads. I’m curious, what was running through your mind when you saw the pop culture presence of it?
I think some of these people didn’t really know what they’re doing. Their PR people or their agency told them, “Hey, you’re going to be showing NFTs now.” They go, “OK, whatever, you tell me what to do, and I do it.” Bieber’s was different because he was directly involved with the projects.
Regardless, it’s just the irresponsibility of it. When you look at Tom Brady on FTX, it’s like, these guys are already incredibly wealthy, they have all these people that look up to them and trust them for whatever reason. They feel like they know these people, because you see them everywhere, you like their music, you like their team, or whatever. Then they screwed their fans over to the extent that few endorsement deals have ever done, as far as I can tell.
Did it take you a while to figure out how to track these projects, companies, and tokens? Or did you find it was even more intuitive than you’d thought?
It was a mix. It’s kind of about finding the right tools. It’s also about thinking through it the right way. There’s certain tricks that you can use to try to identify the very first transaction someone’s wallet ever did, you can also use that as a tool to figure out, “OK, who funded it? Another wallet.” Then you could make a map of those wallets. For example, for [Celsius founder and former CEO] Alex Mashinsky, I was able to work out the whole network of his wallets before I actually had the information that ended up confirming that they were, in fact, his. It’s a lot of using Excel and downloading a bunch of data, combing through it, and clicking on a bunch of random stuff.
I’m not an expert. I really have brute-forced it to an extent that a lot of other people in the space would probably think was just hilarious because it’s so inefficient, but I guess it’s worked out.
Once you started tracking these companies, did you start hearing from any of their employees?
The people going after me were mostly customers or ambassadors, but I don’t think I’ve had any direct employees of a company come after me publicly. I had some message me privately, and I did have a few individuals who had some knowledge about how a company functioned. That was very helpful, and a couple of my stories were based off the hints and tips that they gave me. According to those people, I was able to figure out what’s actually going on, which is really helpful.
Since I’ve been regularly covering crypto, a lot of people who don’t know as much about the scene ask me to explain it to them. I do my best, though it’s sometimes hard to get these concepts through. My go-to is usually: “If something about this sounds super dumb and obvious, it probably is.” How did you figure out how to explain this stuff for a lay audience?
Honestly, I’ve learned as I’ve gone. Because of my academic background, I’ve written a lot of other papers, and part of that job is learning how to explain really complicated information as safely and directly as possible. That was very helpful for me, and I’ve evolved as I’ve written. I’ve learned what worked and what didn’t work just by experimenting. If you’ve read my articles, you’ll see they’ve changed over time. I’m not trying to make money off it, so I can write about whatever I want to write about, whenever I want to.
What have you made of the tech press’s approach to crypto over the past few years?
I’m relatively new to this whole thing. I didn’t start really looking into this until later 2021. But I’ve been incredibly disappointed for the most part. There are individual reporters who are doing excellent jobs: people at Bloomberg, the Financial Times. But I think journalists feel like they have to pretend to be unbiased, even when they aren’t. The fact is, you can prove a lot of these things are fraud by just looking into them a little bit. You literally have a beautiful record of everything that can’t be denied—the blockchain—yet you’re not willing to use it, and I think that was a big failing.
Why do you think so many people are just so willing to give crypto figures the benefit of the doubt?
I don’t know. I think it’s human nature, honestly. I wouldn’t say I’m a suspicious person by nature, but I definitely check people’s work, particularly when it comes to money. Something my grandfather would always say is that nothing is free, and if somebody’s trying to tell you they’re giving you something for free, you should ask, “Why me? Why are you doing this big favor?” That was the Celsius thing. They sold it as: “We’re doing what the banks don’t do. We’re giving you back all the stuff the banks are stealing from you.” It’s like, “Well, why are you doing that? Why are you being so generous with me?” That’s the question you have to ask.
…
https://slate.com/technology/2022/11/ftx-collapse-sam-bankman-fried-dirty-bubble-cryptocurrency.html
Fake Russian Hoax
Faked 2018 election
Fake Impeachments
Fake riots, fake racism to defund police
Fake decision to divide and conquer
Faked Pandemic//Fake PCR tests
Faked Lockdowns and masks
Faked looting by Cares Act
Faked news with censorship
Fake treatment for Covid in hospitals
Fake 2020 election
Fake Jan 6 Innsurrection
Fake transgender attack on children
Fake attack on capitalism and family structure and religion.
Fake destruction of business
Fake vaccines// Fake Science
Fake Biden energy production stoppage, Fake border control , open border invasion
Faked inducement of Wars
Fake suppression of meds that cured Covid
Fake vaccine / Fake Mandates//
Faked Job loss extortion/
Faked Covid is disease of Unvaccinated.
Fake cover up of death and injury from vaccines
Fake Climate Change/ fake withdraw of energy and food, fake destruction of supply lines
Fake lable that over half of Country are enemies of State,
Fake UN , in collusion with One World Order. Fake destruction of sovereign States over medical tyranny and faked Climate Change
Fake printing of money, fake bubbles, rigged economies
Fake 2022 midterm election.
Fake destruction by inflation
Fake food promotion, bugs, fake food
Fake Innsurrection by Globalists for a One World Order Dictorship and Great Reset.
Fake destruction of current systems for
One World Order, technology to enslave mankind.
Fake replacement energy
Fake Climate Change and fake vaccines for genocide and forced hacking, for take over of humanity that was pre-planned.
Treason collusion with foreign Countries like China,
So, if fake election prevents stopping this One World Order Dictorship, than how do you stop it?
Two more years of mass destruction and looting and Gods knows what else will be done by the One World Order powers.
I think they would love to start a Civil War in US. Get the groups to fight each other while they steal the World.
How do you stop something that these Entities have been planning, going back a Century, where they socially engineered every step?
Fake attack on capitalism and family structure and religion.
Actually, that attack is quite real.
Fake grassroots support for Ron Desantis. The Lincoln Project is about as grassroots as they come.
Diane Swonk and her herd of helpless donks.
Deering, NH Housing Prices Crater 24% YOY As Excess, Empty And Defaulted Housing Inventory Floods US Housing Market
https://www.movoto.com/deering-nh/market-trends/
No Mention of Chinese Fentanyl in Joe Biden’s Meeting with Xi Jinping
CHARLIE SPIERING
14 Nov 2022
President Joe Biden met with Chinese dictator Xi Jinping on Monday, but there was no public mention of Chinese-manufactured fentanyl, a scourge in the United States.
China provides fentanyl to Mexican drug cartels, who in turn smuggle it into the United States, where it has a devastating impact on communities across the nation.
The Qing Dynasty failed for many reasons, but the narcotics attacks pushed by the British and Japanese certainly didn’t help.
The British imported opium to China as a means to gain hard currency and to weaken the population and society. People became addicts to the drug while bureaucrats along with businesses became addicted to the easy money.
The Japanese imported narcotics to historical Manchuria, the valuable farmland they sought for living-space in the hopes it would weaken and eventually wipe out the local population. AFAIK, the Japanese during occupation did not import large quantities of narcotics to valuable Chinese-holdings in place like Taiwan, Canton, and Shanghai. I could be wrong though.
Today, many openly import narcotics to America, likely for similar ends. It’s disgusting.
When I say ” fake attack” I mean that its being socially engineered and forced , rather than the people voting for this destruction of capitalism, family and religion.
The other day the Archbishop of Dumver declared that parochial schools should not admit trans students. The good people at the Dumver Post almost lost their minds over that.
Carl Quintanilla
Page One in SFO:
https://twitter.com/carlquintanilla/status/1591958763275423747
A comment:
Soon all the homes there goes on sale; fire-sale
Imagine buying a grotesquely overpriced shanty thinking your “job” of sitting at home deleting comments on Twitter was a sustainable venture.
China Has Reached New Levels of Insanity!
China Fact Chasers
Nov 14, 2022
The clown show in China continues!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4E9p1dmMiBo
6:28.
How is China supposed to function if everyone is locked down?
I was reading about the most recent outbreak in Shanghai where people were desperate to leave Disneyland before it was locked down. I mean, good grief, on any given day you have no idea if you’ll be able to leave your home, workplace or a store (remember the people bursting out of the Ikea?)
Tim Robbins Apologizes To Unvaccinated For Being Wrong On Covid Policy
The Jimmy Dore Show
Nov 13, 2022
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFVgwGYeiJU
11:46.
“Tim Robbins Apologizes To Unvaccinated For Being Wrong On Covid Policy”
Maybe Andy Dufresne should give some financial aid to families where the bread winner lost their job for not taking the death jab. I’m sure it would be appreciated with the holidays right around the corner.
Mike Pence who just said he is giving prayerful consideration to running for President is on ABC World News Tonight with David Muir doing their well rehearsed somber voiced made for teevee January 6 Trump and his supporters Bad script.
As of yet, no sign of Ray Epps, the dude taking down the security fence or the Capitol Police holding doors open and waving actual Trump supporters in.
Hey Mike, just speaking for myself, you should have given our President just a tiny bit of support at various points along the way, and you didn’t. Nobody trusts a turncoat. Ever.
FMP
Andres – Dealer of 🟧 💊’s – BTC fundamentalist.
@sonofsats
The FTX memes are savagery. 🤣😂
https://twitter.com/sonofsats/status/1591806653925564416?s=20&t=ch1KCxyq8ku51cYWxSza7A
Kalvous
@Kalvous
https://twitter.com/Kalvous/status/1591511301628788737?s=20&t=dgD7koAoelwtw6O0iIEk9A
Citing analysis of public blockchain data from analytics firm Argus, the Wall Street Journal reported that on the days FTX said it would be listing “new” tokens between 2021 and March of this year, Alameda had already amassed roughly $60 million worth of tokens ahead of time, arguably to sell into the burst of customer demand and make a huge risk-free profit.
All crypto is a pump and dump scam. That being said, what’s the problem? CNBC does this sort of shilling for their masters every single day.
Dr. Peter McCullough: Boy do we have a David & Goliath and I can tell you, I am not going to flinch
https://www.bitchute.com/video/hnF5Zd8gKmoU/
1:31.
“In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
― George Orwell
Richard Royea is homeless nomo.
VIDEO: Man steals Amazon truck, leading police on chase, authorities say
Richard Royea, 40, faces multiple charges
https://www.wpbf.com/article/video-police-chase-amazon-truck-manchester-new-hampshire/41954261
FMP
“There’s actually fewer purchase applications now than at the bottom of the 2008 crash.”
That’s very good news for those who are interested to see affordable housing prices again.
For reference, prices in the 2008 episode fell towards more affordable levels from roughly 2006-2012 before the Fed’s Housing Bubble Bubble reflation program kicked in.
I can’t wait for the movie about FTX to come out. You literally can’t make up a story that incredible.
Pack of 10 poodles attacks California beachgoer and her elderly corgi service dog
Meet Caroline Ellison, Sam Bankman-Fried’s top exec — and rumored ex-girlfriend
By Thomas Barrabi and
Lydia Moynihan
November 14, 2022 1:05pm Updated
Caroline Ellison — the 28-year-old CEO of doomed crypto firm Alameda Research — is facing scrutiny not only over the firm’s multibillion-dollar meltdown, but also over rumors that she’s the ex-girlfriend of disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried.
Ellison and Bankman-Fried were part of “cabal of roommates” based in a “luxury penthouse” in the Bahamas that were behind the machinations at FTX and Alameda, according to a bombshell report by CoinDesk. Alameda was one of about 130 FTX Group affiliates included in a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing last week.
The housemates are reportedly Bankman-Fried’s former college classmates at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and former coworkers at the quantitative trading firm Jane Street.
Relationships between the group of 10 insiders weren’t strictly business – members of the inner circle “are, or used to be, paired up in romantic relationships with each other,” the report said.
Ellison and Bankman-Fried have occasionally dated while running the now-bankrupt cryptocurrency empire – the value of which went from an estimated $32 billion at its peak to effectively zero following a rapid decline.
“The whole operation was run by a gang of kids in the Bahamas,” a person familiar with the matter told CoinDesk.
“They’ll do anything for each other,” another source told the outlet.
…
https://nypost.com/2022/11/14/meet-caroline-ellison-sam-bankman-frieds-rumored-ex-girlfriend/
The Financial Times
FTX Trading Ltd
FTX bankruptcy case stalls as lawyers confront crypto chaos
New directors sought, with Sam Bankman-Fried’s governance described as ‘wild west’
Sujeet Indap in New York 2 hours ago
The multibillion-dollar FTX bankruptcy case has stalled at the starting line, reflecting murkiness and disarray inside the crypto platform before it sought US court protection from creditors last week.
FTX had not filed so-called first-day motions to formally commence proceedings as of Monday, according to court records. Companies are usually quick to provide such documents to describe the circumstances leading up to their bankruptcy and ask the court to approve emergency financing to pay employees and vendors during the proceedings.
The crypto exchange and dozens of its subsidiaries filed for bankruptcy protection in a Delaware court on Friday after FTX said it could not meet customer withdrawal requests. A day before, FTX’s main international exchange held less than $1bn in liquid assets against $9bn in liabilities, the FT has reported.
The Delaware bankruptcy court has appointed Judge John Dorsey to oversee the case, but a customary initial hearing to consider such motions has yet to be scheduled.
“This is playing out in a much more slow and opaque way than usual,” said one restructuring adviser who has been fielding calls from people seeking aid. The dearth of information and legal filings has been an obstacle to giving advice to creditors, said this person.
FTX has announced that John Ray III would serve as chief executive after the resignation of founder Sam Bankman-Fried. Ray is a seasoned restructuring executive, having served in oversight positions in the bankruptcies of Residential Capital, Overseas Shipholding Group, Nortel Networks and Enron.
The company also named Stephen Neal, a Silicon Valley lawyer, as FTX board chair. But Neal later said that he had decided to not take the post.
According to one person in contact with the company, FTX is trying to quickly secure new directors experienced in bankruptcy cases who will become responsible for making decisions for FTX stakeholders.
Previously, Bankman-Fried appeared to have had almost free rein at the company despite a nominal board of three people, said a person approached about becoming an FTX director, describing governance inside the company as the “wild west”.
…
Do you want to know the problem with trying to recover cryptocurrency assets in bankruptcy?
Quite literally, there is no there there.
The Financial Times
FTX Trading Ltd
Global investigators pounce as FTX collapse leaves potentially 1mn creditors
Dozens of regulators around world showing ‘substantial interest’ after crypto group’s demise
FTX and its affiliates face at least 100,000 creditors but that number could expand to more than 1mn, according to a court filing
Joshua Oliver 55 minutes ago
The collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto empire has sparked a vast global investigation, with dozens of authorities circling the company as lawyers warn there could be 1mn creditors in its bankruptcy proceeding.
FTX said in court filings it was in contact with US federal prosecutors, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and “dozens of federal, state and international regulatory agencies” in the three days since the cryptocurrency exchange and more than 100 affiliated companies filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in Delaware.
The companies face at least 100,000 creditors, but that number could expand to more than 1mn, according to the filing. Most of the creditors were clients of Sam Bankman-Fried’s companies.
“There is substantial interest in these events among regulatory authorities around the world,” the filing said.
The statements provide fresh details on the sprawling scale and complexity of the multibillion-dollar bankruptcy of Bankman-Fried’s digital asset group, and the intense legal and regulatory scrutiny of the 30-year-old former billionaire’s businesses.
“The events that have befallen FTX over the past week are unprecedented,” the court filing said. “Barely more than a week ago, FTX, led by its co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried, was regarded as one of the most respected and innovative companies in the crypto industry.”
…
Quite literally, there is no there there.
Space, the final frontier.
Cryptocurrencies
Bitcoin Is Now Vulnerable to a Tumble Below $14,000 as Crypto Faces the FTX Fallout
By Jack Denton
Nov. 15, 2022 5:34 am ET
The shocking failure of cryptocurrency exchange FTX last week continues to hang over Bitcoin (BTCUSD +2.23%) and other digital assets, with cryptos vulnerable to even further declines after already breaching key technical price levels.
The price of Bitcoin was rising slightly over the past 24 hours to $16,800. The largest cryptocurrency was changing hands near $21,000 just over a week ago, before concerns around FTX began in earnest, but has recovered from lows near $15,500 reached in the trough of last week’s panic selling.
…
https://www.barrons.com/articles/bitcoin-crypto-markets-today-ftx-fallout-51668508467
Bloomberg
Crypto
Bitcoin Futures Slide Below Spot Price as FTX Fallout Spreads
– Futures drop into ‘backwardation’ didn’t occur in other routs
– Marex’s Solot says it likely shows short bets, withdrawals
By Vildana Hajric
November 14, 2022 at 12:33 PM PST
…
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-14/bitcoin-futures-slide-below-spot-price-as-ftx-fallout-spreads#xj4y7vzkg
The Financial Times
FT Alphaville FTX Trading Ltd
Wait, wasn’t bitcoin supposed to solve this?
Back2basics
Jill Gunter yesterday
Jill Gunter is a co-founder of blockchain company Espresso Systems. Previously, she was a venture capitalist focused on crypto. She started her career as a trader at Goldman Sachs.
A popular refrain among crypto advocates over the years has been “bitcoin solves this”. But the same phrase has also become a popular meme among critics of cryptocurrencies and blockchains.
Sceptics offer the phrase in reply to overzealous crypto acolytes who try to apply blockchain technology to everything from salad provenance to social media. “Bitcoin solves this,” they eye-roll, gesturing to the fact that no amount of blockchain will be a panacea to the problem at hand.
Over the last week, as crypto exchange FTX crumbled into bankruptcy amid revelations of misappropriation of customer funds, imaginary marks and risky bets, crypto’s proponents and detractors alike have turned that phrase into a question. “Wait, wasn’t bitcoin supposed to solve this?”
After all, cryptocurrency was invented explicitly to counter Wall Street’s opaque and overleveraged practices. The original Bitcoin whitepaper proposed a system that would end the reliance on trusted financial institutions, reduce fraud and protect consumers. At the moment, this couldn’t feel more ironic.
…
Users who do not want or need to hold their own crypto can do it the old fashioned Wall Street way: they can trust a custodian. Custodial exchanges not only enable crypto users to cash in and out of coins and tokens, they also hold on to users’ assets as deposits. Of course users who hold and trade on exchanges are not really using crypto. They aren’t deriving any of the features crypto was designed to offer, like self-custody and censorship-resistance and transparency. They are just holding or speculating on whether “number go up” or “number go down”.
Still, it’s fair to say that millions of users benefit from the convenience of holding their assets on these exchanges. Today it turned out that at least a million of those users — namely the ones who used FTX — would have been better off if they had taken advantage of crypto’s value proposition and held on to their funds themselves.
And the grim reality is that despite bitcoin and other blockchain products offering alternatives, as of today, the cryptocurrency market has created more intermediaries than it has eliminated. For the last several years, no one has really cared about the genuine utility that may be found in crypto.
With global floods of easy money pouring into asset classes of all kinds, and pushing people further out the risk spectrum, entrepreneurs, developers, and investors found themselves incentivised to play into the building of a large speculative bubble as opposed to delivering durable value.
Too much of the time, energy, money, and attention that has gone into crypto over the past few years has gone toward building gambling markets around magic beans — instead of creating products taking advantage of the openness, transparency, and autonomy that the tech offers.
FTX and its violation of user trust serve as the starkest reminder the industry could ask for in returning it to its original vision. The demise of FTX feels like the end of crypto at the moment, but it may become the catalyst to drive the industry to the areas where cryptocurrencies and blockchains can solve real problems.
…
cryptocurrencies and blockchains can solve real problems.
Magic beans do not solve real problems.
Culture
How Did So Much ‘Smart
Money’ Get Tangled Up in FTX?
Sam Bankman-Fried, crypto’s boy wonder, lured in big names before it all collapsed.
By Michelle Celarier
November 14, 2022
For much of this year’s rolling crypto crash, Sam Bankman-Fried and his FTX Exchange — until last week the second largest in the world — looked like the white knight charging in to save the day.
The 30-year-old crypto kingpin offered to prop up peers reeling from the collapse, including bankrupt crypto banks Voyager and Celsius as well as BlockFi, another exchange. But last week, when Bankman-Fried could not raise $8 billion to fill a massive hole in his own balance sheet, critics could be forgiven for wondering whether he was trying to save himself all along — and why investors didn’t notice.
There was certainly plenty of smart money along for FTX’s wild ride — notably Sequoia Capital, SoftBank, and Tiger Global, among the most sophisticated investors in the world. Sequoia said it has written down its entire $210 million investment, and SoftBank is reported to have lost $100 million. Tiger Global lost about $38 million, according to an individual familiar with the situation.
Millennium Management’s Izzy Englander and Brevan Howard’s Alan Howard were also counted among FTX’s gold-plated investors. Even the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan said it ponied up $95 million, though a statement on its web site did not say whether it was writing the investment off.
All told, investors plowed $1.9 billion into FTX since 2019, according to PitchBook.
…
https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/b20nnq0gxctxy5/How-Did-So-Much-Smart-Money-Get-Tangled-Up-in-FTX
Jesse Coghlan
9 hours ago
Bitcoin buyers drawn by rising prices, not dislike for banks: BIS report
The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) studied the main motives behind Bitcoin adoption by retail investors.
Bitcoin investors are more likely enticed by the cryptocurrency’s rising prices, rather than their dislike of banks or its perceived use as a store of value, a new report from the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) suggests.
In a “BIS Working Papers” report published on Nov. 14, the central bank body looked into the relationship between Bitcoin prices, crypto trading and retail adoption.
It studied the drivers of crypto adoption by retail investors using crypto trading app downloads as a proxy for adoption and user investments at the time of download.
It found that “a rise in the price of Bitcoin is associated with a significant increase in new users, ie entry of new investors” and that most retail investors “downloaded crypto apps when prices were high.”
…
https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-buyers-drawn-by-rising-prices-not-dislike-for-banks-bis-report
Is this a good time to buy the dip?
Sam Bourgi
15 hours ago
Amid FTX collapse, crypto funds see largest inflows in 14 weeks
The Bitcoin price briefly fell below $16,000 last week as Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX Group filed for bankruptcy.
Inflows into cryptocurrency investment products rose sharply last week as institutional investors bought the dip amid the marketwide collapse triggered by FTX and Alameda Research’s bankruptcies.
Digital asset investment products saw inflows totaling $42 million in the week ending Nov. 13, the largest increase in 14 weeks, according to CoinShares data. Bitcoin
investment products saw the largest inflows at $19 million, followed by multiasset and Ether funds at $8.6 million and $5.9 million, respectively.
Investors were also betting on a further deterioration in market conditions, with short Bitcoin products registering $4.8 million in weekly inflows.
Net inflows were recorded across all major regions, led by the United States ($29 million), Brazil ($8 million) and Canada ($4.3 million).
…
https://cointelegraph.com/news/amid-ftx-collapse-crypto-funds-see-largest-inflows-in-14-weeks