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This Isn’t A Game Of Monopoly For The Faint Of Heart

A weekend topic starting with WXYZ. “Among the states with the highest foreclosure filings? Michigan. Michigan ranks third in the nation behind Delaware and Illinois. Bankruptcy attorney John Kallabat told 7 Action News, ‘I’ve been doing this for about 28, 29 years, and this is about the most I’ve seen, all at once happening.’ Kallabat said his office is seeing a huge influx of people coming in desperate because they’re facing foreclosure. ‘I can only speak to the bankruptcies and seeing the rise, the calls, and the desperation of people,’ said Kallabat. ‘On Monday I had someone come who had a foreclosure Tuesday morning, and yesterday I had someone come who has a foreclosure tomorrow morning.'”

“One of those people is ‘Rob’ from Eastpointe. We’re not revealing his real name. Rob shared with us he’s self-employed and has a business that requires him to go inside of peoples’ homes, something he was unable to do when COVID caused shutdowns in 2020. Rob said his bills started to pile up, and even now that his business is picking up again he says inflation and higher interest rates are making it extremely difficult to pay off his accumulated bills. In the last year, he knew what he was going to have to face, foreclosure.”

“Rob shared that the dread of it was terrible, saying, ‘I would think, ‘Should I go to sleep, or should I try to go to sleep? Do I eat in the morning, or can I eat in the morning?’ It’s that gut feeling.’ Rob is far from alone. According to data from ATTOM, one in every 2,617 Michigan housing units had a foreclosure filing in January. One out of every 1,575 housing units had a filing in Detroit.”

“When asked why Michigan and Detroit seem to be suffering worse than other areas, ATTOM CEO Rob Barber said in a statement: ‘One of every 12 mortgages in Detroit was seriously underwater in Q4 2022, meaning that homeowners owed at least 125 percent of the estimated value of their homes. That was way above the national rate of one in 34. That higher rate could be prompting more homeowners behind on their mortgages to throw in the towel and let their lenders foreclose.‘”

The New York Post. “Despite bringing in the top guns to sell her longtime New York City townhouse, Sonja Morgan just can’t catch a break. In the last decade alone, the ‘Real Housewives of New York City’ star has had her Upper East Side residence on and off the market — but still, no takers. In July, after a year off the market, it listed for $8.75 million. Six months later, the home’s price has lowered by $1.25 million to $7.5 million, The Post has learned.Morgan, 59, attempted to remodel the home, located at 162 E. 63rd St., during the pandemic in hopes that it would attract a buyer. She even thought bringing in the top townhouse seller could finally make it work.”

“But unfortunately, plagued by rising interest rates to combat lingering inflation, it doesn’t appear the television personality and socialite was able to secure an offer. Sonja first listed the home for sale in 2013 for $9.95 million amid her divorce from J.P. Morgan heir John A. Morgan. She struck gold in 2017, when she found an offer, but ultimately decided to turn it down so her daughter could have stability during the separation.”

“The reality star and entrepreneur was allowed to keep the townhouse in 2015 after she settled her lengthy bankruptcy case following her divorce. ‘At this point, this house is nothing more than a financial drain, an emotional drain,’ she said on Season 12 of the Bravo series.”

The Brattleboro Reformer in Vermont. “I’d always known that I wanted to work for myself. In 1983, fresh out of school and starting my career as a freelance consultant, I began to wonder how I could plan for some kind of retirement income. One day as I walked into town, I noticed a for sale sign on a somewhat rundown two-family building. It occurred to me that this could be a solution. I could buy the building, fix it up, and maybe the rents could cover the mortgage, taxes and expenses. I could live in one unit and the other would provide some income. Not a big plan, but a start.”

“The owner was a woman who lived in one of the apartments. Her husband, who had taken care of the property, had recently passed away. The other apartment was now empty and she was desperate to get rid of the building. If I could make the apartments a bit nicer the rents might be able to pay off the mortgage in less than 30 years. The owner was thrilled to sell and be rid of the property.”

“I had just rented the first apartment when the gentleman who owned the three-family next door approached me. He asked if I would be interested in buying his building too. One of his apartments was boarded up because the last tenant had trashed it. The other two were very dated, but rentable. It looked like it could work and the buildings were an eyesore. I liked that these buildings were just a few doors down from where I lived. This seemed like a way I could help make my neighborhood a nicer place to live. I was all in. My plan had just gotten a bit bigger. Over the next 10 years I spent most of my free time and every dollar the buildings made, fixing them up.”

“Most of my tenants were and are wonderful, respectful people. They appreciated the apartments and took good care of them. Several tenants have become good friends over the years. But I also learned that some applicants were not as they appeared to be on their application. Once they moved in, pets would appear, or they would have numerous guests, some moving in, or just visiting for a few minutes. Possessions would collect in the hallways and yard, trash cans would overflow, the building would constantly smell of smoke, there would be loud music or arguing heard throughout the building. And my requests to be respectful neighbors and follow building safety codes would be ignored.”

“And so, I learned about Vermont courts and evictions. They are complicated, they take a long time, and they are expensive. You can hire an attorney for thousands of dollars, or try to do it yourself. But if you miss a deadline by a day, or one form isn’t quite right, you have to go back to ‘Go’ and pay another $295 filing fee and start over. This isn’t a game of Monopoly for the faint of heart.”

“Even though the problems I mentioned are technically lease violations, they are all hard to prove. If the tenant says ‘that wasn’t me’ or ‘oh, I cleaned that up,’ or ‘that was my friend’s dog, he was just visiting’ or such, the judge will say ‘OK,’ or ‘make sure that doesn’t happen again,’ and ‘case dismissed’… The benefit of the doubt always goes to the tenant.”

“Since then, I have picked up a few more buildings. Usually a foreclosure or a distressed property. Many of them are boarded up and unlivable. The banks have been happy to loan me money if I would take a property off their hands. My consulting career has fallen by the wayside. Property renovation and management is too consuming.”

“In 2019 and 2020 we had more than 10 apartments turn over with damages exceeding $10,000 each. The worst was over $23,000. That was when we sold our house and moved into one of our apartments. Every dollar went into renovations. That was also the year the Brattleboro Select Board passed a bylaw prohibiting the collection of a last month’s rent in advance, and limited a security deposit to just one month’s rent. An apartment can cost hundreds of thousands to buy and renovate, and I am only permitted to collect a security deposit of a single month’s rent.”

“And now the town is considering another bylaw which will prohibit a rental property owner from deciding not to renew a tenancy. The owner will have to file an eviction to end a tenancy. This will make it harder, take longer, and be more expensive to remove a problem tenant. The losers will be anyone living nearby, the owners who are trying to provide good, safe housing, the town who’s neighborhoods and downtown will decline.”

“And now, I am in my 70s and working more hours than I did when I bought my first building. I’m repaying loans that will exceed my lifetime. And someday, when I’m gone, someone will come along and buy these buildings from my widow who will be desperate to get rid of them.”

The Los Angeles Times. “Chu Fei thought she was doing everything right in life. At 30, she lived in Beijing and worked at one of the world’s largest tech firms. She had attended China’s top school, Peking University, and gotten a master’s degree at Stanford. She felt the same pressure as anyone else to work hard, buy a home and settle down. But last year, the striving that came so instinctively suddenly lost its meaning. She was exhausted by 12-hour workdays and long commutes, then nightmarish pandemic lockdowns. None of it seemed worth the financial payoff, the promise of which dwindled as the economy worsened.”

“In October, she quit her job, sold most of her possessions and moved to a provincial village some 800 miles from Beijing. ‘It just felt like my plan wouldn’t work anymore,’ she said.”

“The growing aversion to conventional expectations — build a career, get married, buy a home, have children — is discouraged by the ruling Communist Party, which prizes social stability. But China’s economic slowdown, jarring after years of supercharged growth and exacerbated by harsh COVID restrictions, has forced many to put their lives on hold. Tech companies, once among the most reliable and coveted employers, have slashed jobs. Millions of college graduates are struggling to find work in the toughest labor market in decades.”

“Even before the pandemic, backlash was growing over the punishing hours in China’s high-powered industries, a grind known as 996 — 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week. Employees endured because they believed with enough ambition and grit, anyone could make their fortune. But social mobility has stalled in recent years, undermining that premise. ‘It’s kind of like an adrenaline rush, a boost that drives people to work 996. But now the boost is gone,’ Chu said. ‘People are saying, Whatever you do, you’re not going to get rich, you’re not going to make a lot of money, you’re not going to be successful. So why not do something you like?'”

“For Chu, that means leisurely mornings and afternoons spent writing, making videos and selling goods online. With income from those new endeavors, she calculates she has enough savings to support herself for a few years in smaller, cheaper cities as she fleshes out her longer-term plan. For now, she’s settled in a once-bustling tourist town nestled between mountains and the shore of West Lake, a 40-minute drive from the city of Hangzhou.”

“She rents space in a villa that had been used as a hotel before the pandemic, living among the owner and his family — who moved in after tourism dried up — and often joining them for home-cooked meals. Around the village, neighbors tend to their vegetable fields and tea farms. ‘There’s kind of a feeling, like what have I done for all these years? I’ve wasted so much time,’ she said. ‘I can say I went to some good universities and worked at some big companies, but it’s not something you want to write on your tombstone, you know?'”

“Even if the economy recovers, Chu can’t imagine going back to Beijing, or her former life. ‘If I turn off my phone, this place is like paradise,’ she said. ‘I just hope that this life can last longer.’ At night, she often takes long walks around the tranquil village. She doesn’t remember the air ever smelling quite so sweet.”

Related Posts

The Housing Market Appears To Have Officially Crashed

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tizB9-tggyI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fccD0gXHib0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTPHbPyXtpk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5H5NWzoZ68s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVRNa3hNqvY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJWI9-v1BXA

This Post Has 88 Comments

  1. ‘I would think, ‘Should I go to sleep, or should I try to go to sleep? Do I eat in the morning, or can I eat in the morning?’ It’s that gut feeling’

    I’m not going to say I care more or know more. But the globalist scum media could find thousands and thousand of Robs to interview, yet they don’t. They have a ‘narrative’ to pitch 24/7, year after year. Get on that hamster wheel and wait for the easy riches to roll in. This whole thing goes back to the fatally flawed idea that we can run an economy based on selling each other shacks. Now, who’s idea was that? Jerry? Jerry?

    Bueller?

  2. 𝗧𝗮𝗺𝗽𝗮, 𝗙𝗟 𝗛𝗼𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗣𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗲𝘀 𝗖𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝟭𝟲% 𝗬𝗢𝗬 𝗔𝘀 𝗖𝗼𝗮𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗹 𝗔𝗻𝗱 𝗥𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗿𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗽𝗲𝗿𝘁𝘆 𝗗𝗲𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗙𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘀 𝗟𝗶𝗸𝗲 𝗔 𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗱 𝗕𝗮𝗹𝗹𝗼𝗻

    https://www.movoto.com/fl/33608/market-trends/

    𝐴𝑠 𝑜𝑛𝑒 𝑒𝑥𝑎𝑠𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑑 𝑠𝑒𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑟 𝑒𝑥𝑝𝑙𝑎𝑖𝑛𝑒𝑑, “𝐼 ‘𝑙𝑙 𝑑𝑜 𝑎𝑛𝑦𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔. 𝐼 𝑗𝑢𝑠𝑡 𝑤𝑎𝑛𝑡 𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝑢𝑛𝑑𝑒𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑠𝑒.”

  4. “Michigan ranks third in the nation behind Delaware and Illinois.”

    Who knew heartland states Michigan and Illinois were subject to the real estate mania?

    “Bankruptcy attorney John Kallabat told 7 Action News, ‘I’ve been doing this for about 28, 29 years, and this is about the most I’ve seen, all at once happening.’”

    29 years ago was 1994. So he is including pretty much the entire duration of the Great Housing Bubble, including the 2007-2012 crash and foreclosure crisis, in this statement.

    “Kallabat said his office is seeing a huge influx of people coming in desperate because they’re facing foreclosure. ‘I can only speak to the bankruptcies and seeing the rise, the calls, and the desperation of people,’ ”

    Could this be a consequence of the end of pandemic era government intervention in the housing market?

    1. I live in IL and IL’s problem is that like all communist utopias, no one actually wants to live there, so they flee with whatever they can fit into the moving van and leave the house for the bank. The government is run by the worst ideologues who care little for day to day governance. It’s unbearable for anyone to the right of progressive. And yet they’ve got the ballot harvesting and fraud down to a T that no other normal political party will usurp power. It’s awful here.

    1. “But she ‘breathed a sigh of relief’ after just a few hours. She realised she had ‘detected the source across a wide range of frequencies, so the power it would take to generate it could only come from a natural source; not artificial (and not aliens)!'”

      Interesting article. She seems to be spending her whole career looking for aliens and hoping that they don’t exist.

  6. GlobeSt
    Powell Expects Housing Disinflation in Second Half of Year
    Powell addressed the Federal Reserve’s overall efforts Tuesday in Washington.
    By Paul Bergeron | February 08, 2023 at 08:20 AM

    Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell has spent a lot of time talking about disinflation in the US economy and how his efforts in the past half-year have led to those results – a reduction in inflation.

    However, housing is one economic component that has not experienced it – at least not to the degree Powell would like.

    Powell shared those sentiments while speaking Tuesday during an event in Washington, D.C., hosted by The Economic Club of Washington.

    “We’ve not seen it in housing, but we expect to in the second half of 2023,” he said, responding to event interviewer David Rubenstein, co-founder and co-chairman of The Carlyle Group.

    Housing is measured as a lagging indicator in the data the Federal Reserve considers.

    Speaking in November, Powell said, “Housing inflation tends to lag other prices around inflation turning points, however, because of the slow rate at which the stock of rental leases turns over.

    “The market rate on new leases is a timelier indicator of where overall housing inflation will go over the next year or so. Measures of 12-month inflation in new leases rose to nearly 20 percent during the pandemic but have been falling sharply since about midyear [2022].”

    It’s All About Getting to 2%

    Powell repeatedly said on Tuesday that the Fed’s goal is to get inflation to a 2% annual rate while “preserving maximum employment.” (Powell said that 2% is the current global standard for inflation.)

    Inflation measured at 6.5% at the end of 2022.

    “We expect to make significant progress this year; we’re going to react to the data that we see along the way,” he said. “Inflation is not going to go away quickly and painlessly. It’s not going to be smooth. It’s probably going to be bumpy. We have the tools to reduce it. It will take into 2024 to achieve this.”
    …
    https://www.globest.com/2023/02/08/powell-expects-housing-disinflation-in-second-half-of-year/?slreturn=20230111085839

      1. From DuckDuckGo because Google is Globohomo:

        Deflation is when there are too many goods and not enough money, leading to a drop in prices.

        Disinflation is when inflation begins to cool, either by market forces or government action (like interest rates hikes).

      2. Powell Expects Housing Disinflation

        Deflation is a monetary event. Having the head of the Central Bank pretend that it is otherwise just makes him a bold liar who thinks we’re idiots.

      3. Disinflation is a BS term. It just means a reduction in the rate of inflation. So you’re still losing ground, just not as fast as last month.

        Deflation is what happens in the normal course of things. Productivity means the price of goods goes down over time. Not the mess we have today. Every normal person should cheer for deflation.

        2% inflation means the cost of everything doubles every 35 years. So by the time you retire things cost 4x as much as when you were a kid. Gosh, what a bargain.

        Dear SMOD, please hurry.

        1. 4x

          Also that the money distributors are collecting rent on 3/4 of everything after that period of time. This is the real genius of the 2% “inflation” target.

          Don’t buy anything on credit. There is no Good Debt.

        2. 2% inflation means the cost of everything doubles every 35 years. So by the time you retire things cost 4x as much as when you were a kid.

          I’d say that most things now cost 10-20x what they cost when I was a kid.

          Small wonder the middle class has been crushed, even with two or more incomes.

  7. Joe Biden’s America.

    “The Big Apple has become a shoplifter’s paradise — with reported retail thefts hitting record levels for the second year in a row in 2022, a Post analysis of police data shows.

    The number of shoplifting complaints surged to more than 63,000 last year — a 45% jump over the roughly 45,000 reported in 2021 and a nearly 275% jump compared to the mid-2000s, the statistics show.”

    https://nypost.com/2023/02/10/we-cant-stop-them-shoplifting-hit-record-highs-in-nyc-last-year/

    “A 30-year-old security guard at a Manhattan Nike store told The Post Friday that at least one person per day tries to make off with some goods.

    “At least four days each week someone walks out with stolen goods,” said Rell Emejuru.

    “This is an expensive store,” he said of the shop at the corner of East 67th Street and Third Avenue. “For the most part, they’re taking anywhere from $700 to $1000 worth of items each time.”

    A general manager of a supermarket on the Upper East Side decried the officers’ inaction if they respond to a shoplifting call.

    “The crazy thing is we call the cops and they come but all they do is tell the criminals ‘give the stuff back and don’t come back here,’” 28-year-old Julio Mato said.

    “I have asked the cops to arrest the shoplifters but they won’t,” said Mato, adding. “They say there’s nothing they can do.”

    “Calling the cops or not calling the cops, it’s the same thing.”

    https://nypost.com/2023/02/10/nyc-retail-workers-are-fed-up-with-citys-soaring-shoplifting/

    George Soros reading these articles and fondling his receipts in glee, knowing he got his money’s worth…

      2. “Why is Albert Bourla meeting with the Republican Governors Association?”

        Because our entire political system has been bought off by corporations. It’s sickening beyond words.

  9. Joe Biden’s America.

    “The box is about is about 9.3 inches wide and 10 inches tall, a good size. But inside the Whitman’s box are 11 candies. Inside the Russell Stover? Nine candies.

    If you take out the molded plastic insert, the chocolates occupy less than half of the box.

    This is not an example of “shrinkflation,” said Ed Dworsky, founder of Consumer World, a consumer advice website. That’s the practice of companies slightly downsizing paper products, salty snacks and other package goods to avoid raising prices when ingredient, labor and transportation costs go up.

    Rather, he alleged, it’s something called “slack-fill.”
    “That’s when a manufacturer deliberately over-packages a product using a package substantially larger than the amount of content inside,” he said.

    Consumers are grouchy about what they perceive as deceptive packaging for boxes of chocolates. “Whitman’s chocolates not what they use to be,” said one Reddit user, who claimed to have a box from the 1990s that showed a higher density of chocolates in each box than now. “I thought I would spoil myself with some chocolates that I remember fondly, but was highly disappointed.”

    https://archive.is/m98SH

    You will eat no Valentine’s Day chocolates.

    2. “I thought I would spoil myself with some chocolates that I remember fondly, but was highly disappointed.”

      Spoil oneself and Whitman’s are mutually exclusive.

    3. “That’s when a manufacturer deliberately over-packages a product using a package substantially larger than the amount of content inside,”

      Brought to you by the Federal Reserve and politicians. They are working in concert, stealing the fruits of your labor.

    4. If you take out the molded plastic insert, the chocolates occupy less than half of the box.

      But let’s take away gas stoves and straws.

    5. How many women will buy their own chocolates in a heart box, a bottle of wine and a flower bouquet, and have them delivered to the office by a florist this Valentine’s Day so the others think they have an attractive guy who cares?

  12. Joe Biden’s America.

    “A two-year decline in yearly suicides ended in 2021, as suicide rates rose among younger Americans and people of color, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

    Among people ages 25 to 44, suicide rates rose 5 percent overall, and even more significantly among Black, Hispanic, multiracial and American Indian or Alaska Native people.

    Suicide rates are rising in communities hit hardest by the coronavirus pandemic, said Dr. Sean Joe, a professor at the Brown School of Social Work at Washington University.”

    Two weeks to flatten the curve?

    “The number of suicides has been climbing for decades and reached its highest point, 48,344, in 2018. Many expected the pandemic to cause a spike in suicides, but in 2020 the numbers dropped for the second year in a row, to 45,979.

    That dip seemed to come to an end in 2021, with a total of 48,183 suicides.”

    https://archive.is/F5Idu

    Imagine how much worse these suicides would have been had they been unvaccinated at time of death.

  13. Joe Biden’s America.

    “During her annual state of the city address Tuesday, San Francisco Mayor London Breed proclaimed that the city’s downtown, “as we know it,” is “not coming back.”

    Breed’s remarks come after a recent study revealed that downtown San Francisco has sustained the weakest recovery from the coronavirus pandemic among major United States cities, reaching only 31% of its fall 2019 activity.

    Breed has previously cited the lack of workers returning to the office as one of the leading causes of the city’s slow recovery. Forty-six percent of the city’s employees worked remotely in 2021, an enormous jump compared to just 7% in 2019, according to the United States Bureau American Community Survey.

    “We have our challenges, but this isn’t an end to downtown,” Breed said. “… It’s a call to action, to reimagine what our future holds, what we can be, to think about what kind of city we are and what kind of city we can be.”

    https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/sf-downtown-not-coming-back-17775329.php

    Bonus link for your HBB enjoyment:

    “Unsurprisingly to anyone who’s ever braved a San Francisco sidewalk, the city had the highest incidents of feces complaints in 2017 compared to New York and Chicago. Nearly 21,000 poop sightings were reported in San Francisco in 2017 — about 10 times New York City’s poop-sighting total and more than 20 times that of Chicago. On average, there are 455.89 complaints filed for each of San Francisco’s 47 square miles.

    To help visualize the vast landscape of street poop, RealtyHop created an interactive map — cheekily coded in shades of brown and yellow — that shows the San Francisco neighborhoods with the highest volumes of reported feces.

    Of course, this report takes into account only complaints called into 311, which means the actual number of street poop is probably much higher.”

    https://www.sfgate.com/local-donotuse/article/map-street-sidewalk-poop-feces-311-report-waste-13278828.php

    “They’re not sending their best”

  14. Joe Biden’s America.

    “We put out a post on social media on Thursday to find out if people feel safe at the 16th Street Mall. There were a variety of responses from our viewers and over 100 comments.

    “First the city needs to clean up the crime and panhandling. Then, maybe, the businesses and consumers return. It used to be enjoyable to walk/shop the mall, but anymore the harassment and threats are just not worth it,” one person said on Twitter.

    “I feel safe but that isn’t saying much I feel safe pretty much anywhere. The smell is pretty bad in some areas though,” one viewer said on Facebook.

    Another viewer explained how he believes the mall area has changed.

    “Yes I feel safe, but it looks deserted these days. I was just down there last week, it’s pretty sad,” he said.

    “I started bringing mace with me if I absolutely needed to be down there,” another person said on Twitter.

    Some of the commenters said the area smells bad. Others said they haven’t been to downtown Denver in years.”

    https://kdvr.com/news/local/it-looks-deserted-these-days-fox31-viewers-weigh-in-on-16th-street-mall-safety/

    Vote like California, become California.

  15. A reader sent these in:

    John Wake

    “Short-Term Rental Growth is Rapidly Adding to Arizona’s Housing Shortage: Short-Term Rental Growth from March 2022 to January 2023 was a Whopping 51%”.
    I haven’t checked her numbers but I know she’s very thorough.

    https://twitter.com/JohnWake/status/1624124881783914496

    What laundering money back to the elite looks like.

    https://twitter.com/great_martis/status/1623815464068718593

    Australia has reached the base of the fixed rate mortgage cliff. The next six months will test the household sector, especially with the RBA’s hawkish turn. Morgan Stanley chart

    https://twitter.com/Scutty/status/1623475996887515136

    While plenty of borrowers are well ahead on their repayments, nearly 30% have zero buffer, including a sizeable proportion of new borrowers. Given their borrowing capacity at rock bottom rates, that’s where my concern lies #auspol #ausbiz

    https://twitter.com/Scutty/status/1623478758593409025

    Off the lows!

    https://twitter.com/RudyHavenstein/status/1574805415531003910

    Home ownership is for the long term. The house I live in now dropped 40% in value after the bubble burst in 1989. It took almost 20 years for the price to rebound. What matters is having a place to live in that you can afford.

    https://twitter.com/bob4barrie/status/1623793403098984448

    Put in an offer for a home, $500k below list price. The Agent said that was disrespectful. The Agent has called back 1 month later saying they will take it. I said fine, now my price has dropped another $250k. Its a buyers market for Australian property in the right areas

    https://twitter.com/CharlieMunger00/status/1623528916412682240

    Vaughan wants “affordable housing” yet also said “triggering even a 10% decline in housing prices (even in markets where prices are up 25-40% year-over-year) isn’t fair and won’t fly” during one of the biggest RE booms in history.

    https://twitter.com/RE_MarketWatch/status/1623761798703812608

    $PHM this homebuilder and many others have traded like growth stocks giving impressive gains in a matter of 3-4 months. This is while rates continue to rise, and cancellations spike to nearly 70%. Indicators coming off extreme overbought levels. Possible blow off top

    https://twitter.com/Reformed_Trader/status/1623424939352104963

    So well said. Home prices in the US have risen to unprecedented levels of unaffordability. Why is policy still focused on supporting prices? Why isn’t *affordability* the priority vs protecting bubble gains? Another example of gov’t intervention just making things worse…

    https://twitter.com/menlobear/status/1623782419731222528

    The Federal Reserve is responsible for far more of the evils in this world than you can possibly imagine. A thread: 🧵👇

    https://twitter.com/peruvian_bull/status/1623746419118198785

    *UMich inflation expectations came in 🔥, rising from the last read and ahead of expectations. But, there is no more inflation… right? Right?

    https://twitter.com/GordonJohnson19/status/1624103872904953856

    ANZ just released a report that included a scenario in which the RBNZ takes rates to 7%. Their base case is that rates get to 5.25%. 7% is almost double the consensus call for the peak in the RBA cash rate. Interesting times ahead.

    https://twitter.com/AvidCommentator/status/1623952912320978944

    I was thinking the other day, we haven’t heard much from Lael Burns Braintard of late now that the #bigflip is settling into the data and her recent misplaced dovishness literally looks like a stain on the Fed’s already well trashed reputation.

    https://twitter.com/INArteCarloDoss/status/1624159511672913920

    2. “Why isn’t *affordability* the priority vs protecting bubble gains?”

      Because Americans are stupid and if they perceive that they’re rich based on house equity, they will spend like drunken sailors. If they stop spending, our consumer-based economy goes into the toilet.

    3. What laundering money back to the elite looks like.

      Everybody knows what’s going on. They don’t even hide it anymore. But nobody can stop them.

  17. Post Millennial — Andy Ngo’s Twitter account RESTORED after ban for reporting violent Antifa threats (2/8/2023):

    “After being locked out of his Twitter account for reporting on threats from Antifa against a TPUSA event at the University of Oregon, among other threats of violence, Andy Ngo’s account was restored on Wednesday evening.

    Ngo had been locked out under what appeared to be a new policy from Twitter head of Trust and Safety Ella Irwin, that declared that reporting on threats of violence on Twitter is the same as amplifying those threats.

    A screenshot of Twitter’s message regarding the violation states that Ngo violated Twitter’s rules, with no further reason given. In order for his account to be unlocked, Twitter stated that the offending tweet must be deleted.

    Ngo is now back on the platform.”

    https://thepostmillennial.com/breaking-andy-ngos-twitter-account-restored-after-ban-for-reporting-violent-antifa-threats

    What’s going on here, Elon Musk?

    Replying to @elonmusk:

    “Thank you for recognizing the relationship between political violence and social media. Under the prior regime, advocacy for and the organizing of political violence was tolerated if the politics aligned with the culture of the company. People died as a result of the 2020 riots.”

    This is what actual journalism looks like:

    https://twitter.com/mrandyngo

    1. Whether you can’t stand Musk or are a fan it’s hard to deny his has stuck a big fat finger in the Leftists eyes.

  18. Property taxes?

    Yes, property taxes, because when you buy a house your property taxes are paying to promote this in the public schools:

    https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok

    Yoel Roth asks Twitter on 11/20/2010:

    “Can high school students ever meaningfully consent to sex with their teachers?”

    https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/1623365388808364032/photo/1

    Yoel Roth? Did I hear somebody mention Yoel Roth?

    https://twitter.com/laralogan/status/1623683810209529857/photo/1

    1. Revolver News (12/12/2022):

      “Until he quit a month ago, Yoel Roth was Twitter’s head of trust and safety — or, shorn of euphemism, its chief censor. As Elon Musk has trickled out his “Twitter Files,” Roth has featured as the single biggest figure in them.

      Until just a few weeks ago, Roth was quietly one of the most powerful figures in the whole country — and in fact the world — despite holding no elected office and not even being particularly rich. And thanks to a recent interview, it’s obvious what a brittle, fragile person Roth was in his position.

      Many voices have needled Roth about the fact that before he took command of the Twitter Gestapo, Roth collected — we won’t say earned — a PhD in communications for a dissertation on the gay hookup app Grindr.

      But needling Roth is perhaps too easy. Soon, we thought, “Hey, why not actually read it?”

      Big mistake. This dissertation managed to be both unreadable and disgusting at the same-time—combining the cognitive hygiene of a gas station bathroom stall with the circumlocution of a dollar-store Judith Butler.

      Luckily, we were able to access and read it, because on Sunday, UPenn suddenly yanked down the paper. Its website stated that Twitter’s former chief censor’s gay sex app dissertation had been “withdrawn.” The paper is also still available on the Wayback Machine, but given how politically pliable that has proven in recent months, it may soon disappear there also. Consider just downloading it directly here.

      There are many interesting takeaways from Roth’s paper compared to his positions running Twitter. For instance, it is fascinating that, on Grindr, Roth celebrates the creative use of emojis or other coded language to get around Grindr and other apps’ rules against sexually-related content.

      That, in turn, leads to the other big question about Roth that has emerged. His… awkward situation about very young people in sex. As quoted above, Roth’s dissertation briefly expresses interest in openly letting younger people onto Grindr, partly on the grounds that plenty of them are already breaking the rules to use it anyway. That by itself doesn’t reveal much, but then there’s the way that Roth’s Trust and Safety had nobody preventing child exploitation while it hunted for excuses to ban Republicans.”

      https://www.revolver.news/2022/12/the-gay-science-revolver-read-yoel-roths-300-page-grindr-dissertation-upenn-just-tried-to-yank-off-the-internet/

      Do you know what happens to chomos in prison, Yoel Roth?

      1. Yoel may never see prison. He may just find that walking his toy poodle one night, thinking he’s alone, is his last act.

  20. Preface your reading of this re-posted article by asking do you remember when we had a mostly functioning economy in 2019? Do you remember what food and gas cost in 2019?

    The Atlantic — Let’s Declare a Pandemic Amnesty (10/31/2022):

    https://archive.is/alYOk

    How does NO sound? NO, and go f* yourself.

    I consider the last three years, and particularly the last two, to be the darkest period of history in the United States in my lifetime, perhaps rivaled only by the globalist lies in the run up to the 2003 Iraq war.

    There will NEVER be an amnesty.

    And sadly, there’s not gonna be any voting your way out of this.

    Civil wars, revolutions, and other political / economic violence will be the only path to delivering justice to these globalists.

    The Arab Spring showed that this is still possible, but time is running out.

    If as many Americans would unite in mass overthrow of these globalists as will be parked on their couch watching the Souper Bowl tomorrow, change could happen.

    CCP Flu was just the warm-up act to what they have planned for you…

  21. Listening to another episode of the Colonel regarding Russia vs Ukraine conflict this morning, e.g., “…the neocon globalists in the Beltway…”

    He’s not referring to the hoodie swarms of shoplifters. 🙂

  22. Housing, because you should ask yourself what your property taxes are actually paying to promote in the public schools.

    “Far-right” = any rejection of Marxist globalism.

    Salon — Anti-LGTBQ+ attacks increased after far-right groups starting working together — with boost from Fox (2/11/2023):

    “After anti-vax and anti-CRT protests fizzle, far-right groups increasingly target the LGBTQ+ community”

    Nothing has fizzled. But the #Noticing has increased.

    “The core narratives driving these attacks against the LGBTQ+ community include disinformation about gender-affirming care for LGBTQ+ youth, false allegations of “grooming” children and the indoctrination of a “so-called LGBTQ+ agenda” in schools, said Sarah Moore, an Anti-LGBTQ+ Extremism Analyst at the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in partnership with Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD).

    Social media accounts with high followings have played a major role in spreading dangerous and false narratives that further marginalize the LGBTQ+ community.

    Libs of TikTok, for example, use its influence to push out baseless tropes and conspiracy theories online, which gain even more traction after being picked up by far-right media personalities.

    “They’re intentionally spreading news to audiences that they know are likely to act upon those narratives,” Moore said. “Libs of TikTok is spreading these false allegations of grooming, that same rhetoric [is] being picked up on the ground by folks that are [for example threatening] to let’s say bomb Boston Children’s Hospital or folks that are protesting at drag shows. They’re using the same language and capitalizing upon the same claims that are being made by a number of these influencers.”

    ADL found that a number of drag events targeted by threats and protests in person were first targeted by right-wing media outlets like Fox News and the Daily Wire, and social media accounts like LibsOfTikTok.

    Narratives promoted by LibsOfTikTok have been picked up by right-wing media figures and politicians, including Tucker Carlson, Glenn Greenwald, Ron DeSantis and Marjorie Taylor Greene.

    https://archive.ph/tt9RQ

    What is the Anti Defamation League? And whose interests do they allegedly support and promote?

    Weimar America ends when we end it.

    Jonathan Greenblatt could not be reached for comment…

    1. “Greenblatt served as an operating partner at Satori Capital, a private equity firm focused on conscious capitalism, and was an active angel investor.” —wiki

      Heck of a guy!

  24. Now that the dust has settled on the FTX implosion, is it generally agreed that cryptocurrencies have gained widespread acceptance as a unit of account, medium of exchange, and store of value?

    1. Are you looking forward to enjoying a new crop of cryptocurrency commercials during tomorrow’s Super Bowl?

      1. Human Interest
        A Well-Deployed Sense of Humor
        Future Tense
        If You Bought Crypto Because of Larry David and Matt Damon, I’m Sorry
        Tallying the losses after last year’s Super Bowl crypto-advertising bonanza.
        By Nitish Pahwa
        Feb 11, 20239:26 AM
        Larry David dressed up as a old century man in a crypto ad.
        FTX

        Happy Super Bowl weekend! Remember last year’s game? More importantly, remember all the cryptocurrency ads? I bet you do, and I bet you’re wondering whether you’ll be deluged with them again. Worry not: A Fox Sports executive has said crypto will have “zero representation” during Sunday’s show, with the exceptions of a blockchain-based gaming firm’s ad and an ongoing, but already retro-feeling, partnership between the Super Bowl and Reddit involving NFT avatars—which, to judge from social media interactions, is going about as well as you might expect:

        Last year’s game coincided with the peak for the crypto industry, fueled by lockdown-inspired interest in alternative currencies as well as mass hype around nonfungible tokens. Riding that wave into 2022, a bunch of crypto exchanges spent big for that year’s Super Bowl, and the results were pretty weird: an animated QR code offering $15 in Bitcoin from Coinbase, some cross-generational guidance from Crypto.com, and, of course, the now-infamous FTX spots. Those three exchanges, along with the Israeli investment firm eToro, spent a collective total of $54 million on such commercials. (Incidentally, Fox Sports’ parent company, Fox Corporation, was also revealed to be an FTX corporate creditor during the latter’s bankruptcy proceedings.)

        Looking back at that digital gold rush a year later, with the cryptoverse shaken by a series of scandals and bankruptcies and much, much lower coin valuations, one can’t help but wonder just what was the ultimate result of those celebrity-endorsed virtual-currency ads. After all, if you took inspiration from Tom Brady or Larry David and invested in the space—whether in the form of Ethereum token purchases, crypto-company stocks, or a high-yield cash stash in an exchange—you have likely fallen underwater on your investment or lost it entirely, and there may be little relief available, despite a small rally in Bitcoin’s price. The new year hasn’t given this sector much relief, and crypto funds aren’t going to rebound in time for another Super Bowl commercial splurge. Not that they’re wanted: The Associated Press reported Sunday that multiple crypto-ad deals had been on the table for this year’s Super Bowl, until FTX went under and demolished everything.

        As we look ahead to this year’s matchup, let’s pause and remember the crypto ads that came before, the celebrities they featured, and just how much money you lost if one of crypto’s greater fools was you. Special thanks to CoinDesk for its nifty price charts.

        LeBron James
        Feb. 13, 2022. Crypto.com

        Summary: On Jan. 28, LeBron James announced a multiyear partnership with Crypto.com, with the exchange saying it would support the NBA star’s charitable foundation by providing “educational and workforce development opportunities focused on Web3.” By Feb. 13, Crypto.com was ready for its Super Bowl ad debut, featuring LeBron talking to his 18-year-old self in 2003 about all the technological wonders the future will bring: AirPods! Music streaming on your phone! Electric cars! Crypto, specifically, does not come up until the very end, when you see the Crypto.com logo. All as “The Next Episode” plays in the background.

        Slogan: “We going to the league! We going to the league!”

        Market impact: It’s likely that James’ commercial inspired some users to sign up as users at Crypto.com. Indeed, the NBA was a particular focus for crypto last year, as it spent more than $130 million in sponsorships for the league, per CNN. But according to the crypto-analyst firm CoinGecko, Crypto.com’s trading volume saw only a small bump following the ad.

        How boned are you? Let’s say you signed up for Crypto.com right after James’ ad and procured yourself one (1) Bitcoin. That coin, then worth $42,067.76, is now worth $21,749.96—a 48 percent plunge in value.

        What about other tokens?
        • Ethereum: 1 token of ETH was worth $2,782.80 on game day. Now, it’s worth $1,522.23—a 45 percent fall.
        • Dogecoin: 1 DOGE was worth about, well, 15 cents on game day. Now it’s only 8 cents, if trading in pennies like that is your thing.
        • Solana: 1 SOL was worth $92.86 on game day. Now? A measly $20.48, entailing a 78 percent fall.

        Larry David
        Feb. 13, 2022. FTX

        Summary: The Seinfeld co-creator admitted he didn’t quite understand crypto before filming a Super Bowl commercial for the exchange FTX. Neither did the commercial’s director, Jeff Schaffer, a longtime Larry David collaborator. (Schaffer told the New York Times that he “was not paid in virtual currency” for his work.) Anyway, the ad shows Larry David, in various costumes, being skeptical of important inventions throughout history: the wheel, the lightbulb, American democracy, and more. Today, David is skeptical of crypto. Hmm!

        Slogan: “I’m never wrong about this stuff.”

        Market impact: According to Protocol, FTX’s app jumped up the App Store’s download rankings right after the Super Bowl, and eventually surpassed Coinbase in Bitcoin trading volume three months later. Obviously, that rally didn’t last long. (Oh, and Larry David is getting sued for that ad, along with FTX’s other celebrity ambassadors.)

        How boned are you? Again, your fresh Bitcoin holdings would have dipped by 48 percent in the year since, with other currencies falling by the same amounts previously noted. Should’ve listened to Larry.

        Both those commercials debuted on Super Bowl night itself, but the advertisement offerings weren’t limited to brand-new crypto endorsees. Chances are you also caught the reappearance of now-widely-mocked spots by Matt Damon, Tom Brady, and his now-ex-wife Gisele Bündchen:

        Matt Damon
        Oct. 28, 2021. Crypto.com

        Summary: The digital currency exchange Crypto.com poured $100 million into its first global campaign in October, airing TV and digital commercials featuring Matt Damon as part of a “long-term collaboration.” The veteran actor became an investor in the company around then; in turn, Crypto.com gave $1 million to Damon’s clean-water nonprofit and encouraged customers to make charitable donations in cryptocurrencies.

        Slogan: The centerpiece is meant to be “Fortune Favors the Brave,” but I find the first line of the ad to be much more instructive: “History is filled with ‘almosts,’ with those who almost adventured, who almost achieved, but ultimately, for them it proved to be too much.” I can think of some modern-day parallels there.

        Market impact: By May 2022, as Stephen Witt reported, Crypto.com’s user base had grown to 50 million users—five times the number of users it had when the Damon ad first dropped. The commercial was perhaps too effective, to the point that, when the crypto market crashed in May and spurred Crypto.com into making significant layoffs, online commentators blamed Damon for encouraging people to invest in a bad market. Probably not what Damon or Crypto.com wanted from this partnership. These days, the exchange is shedding even more of its workers and changing its Canadian business model thanks to regulatory scrutiny.

        As for the money: Let’s assume the $1 million Crypto.com paid to Damon’s nonprofit in October was all in Bitcoin. If that donation hadn’t been converted to fiat, it would now be worth $358,953.12. Not good for the water.

        How boned are you? Bitcoin’s price has dropped by 64 percent since that fortuitous fall. Hope you sold it off before that.

        What about other tokens?
        • Ethereum: 1 ETH, worth $4,288.81 the day Damon’s ad accosted the public, has slid by 65 percent.
        • Dogecoin: 1 DOGE was worth about a literal quarter back then. Now, you couldn’t even trade it in for a dime.
        • Solana: SOL was experiencing an upswing around this time, climbing up to $194.80 by the time Damon came around. Now, it has cratered by about 89 percent(!).

        Tom Brady and Gisele Bündchen
        June 29, 2021. FTX

        Summary: Wow, remember when these two were still together? During those halcyon days, Tom Brady and Gisele Bündchen took equity stakes in the crypto firm FTX and agreed to serve as ambassadors for the exchange. The then-couple went on to make multiple ads for the service, roping in other celebrities like Steph Curry. Neither disclosed their stakes in the firm at the time, although they received some amount of cryptocurrency for their trouble. Thanks to the FTX bankruptcy proceedings, we now know a lil bit more: Brady had 1.14 million common shares in the firm, valued at about $45 million total, while Bündchen carried 686,781, for $25 million. All together, about 1.8 million shares for $70 million. Wise investing(?).

        Slogan: “I’m in!” (Yeah you are, buddy—in deep doo-doo, that is!)

        Market impact: About a month after Brady’s announcement, FTX reached a valuation of $18 billion, and its revenues reportedly increased by 840 percent through 2021. Plus, the value of FTX’s in-house token gradually climbed following the celebrity announcement, reaching its all-time peak of $78 around the time the September commercial was released. FTX also reached one of its highest peaks in trading volume the day the commercial dropped. Seems like that one paid off—for FTX, at the time, that is. Now, as Brady and Bündchen face the same class-action lawsuit that’s come for Larry David, it’s likely their shares will totally evaporate. Assuming their holdings were in Bitcoin—Brady’s preferred currency—that bonus is now worth 38 percent less than when Brady first received it.

        Bonus: In October, a fan was paid one (1) Bitcoin to return Brady’s 600th touchdown football to him. That single coin, worth $62,266.30 then, is worth 65 percent less now.

        How boned are you? Going into July 2021, 1 BTC was worth even less than it was when Brady paid off that fan of his—$33,541.99. So you can take comfort in the fact your fall wasn’t as hard, at only 35 percent. Small mercies.

        What about other tokens?
        • Ethereum: 1 ETH could be redeemed for about $2,000 at a time when Brady and Bündchen were happily together and shilling for FTX. But that coin is worth 24 percent less now.
        • Dogecoin: Still worth about an actual copper quarter at that point. Still worth much less than that by now.
        • Solana: SOL, something of an upstart currency in 2021, was only worth about $34 at that point. Still, the travails of the subsequent years shaved that value by 40 percent.

        Perhaps surprisingly, the above four ads made up the entire spate of Super Bowl crypto promotions. That doesn’t mean there weren’t instructive examples of celebrity-endorsed crypto shilling before that point, including:

        The D’Amelio Family
        May 5, 2021. Gemini

        Summary: For TikTok celebrity Charli D’Amelio’s 17th birthday, her family partnered with Gemini—the crypto exchange founded by the Winkelvoss twins—to gift Charli an undisclosed amount of Bitcoin.

        Slogan: “We are learning more about cryptocurrency as a family, thank you @gemini for Charli’s birthday gift. #GeminiPartner.”

        Impact: Difficult to ascertain. That month saw a major crypto crash that wiped out about $1 trillion from the overall market, thanks in large part to China’s announcement of a ban on Bitcoin mining. So both Bitcoin and Gemini’s in-house token lost out. Still, Gemini overall seemed to have a good year from that moment onward, stating on May 11 that it was holding more than $30 billion worth of cryptocurrency. Just months later, Forbes wrote that “Gemini is growing fast and aggressively hiring.” So maybe this celebrity partnership helped get Gemini some good PR and business, at least until the Securities and Exchange Commission recently came a-knockin’.

        How boned are you? Since Charli’s dad had previously tweeted that she wanted “a Bitcoin” for her present, let’s say for this exercise that she (and you) received 1 BTC at that moment. On May 6, 2021, the value of one Bitcoin was $56,430.21. That coin has shed 61 percent of its value.

        What about other tokens?
        • Ethereum: ETH was surging upward when Charli logged on, trading at about $3,450. It’s down now by about 56 percent.
        • Dogecoin: May 2021 was a flush time for DOGE at about 55 cents. Two whole quarters and a nickel!
        • Solana: Still low, at about $45. That’s been cut by 55 percent.

        Spike Lee
        July 14, 2021. Coin Cloud

        Summary: Spike Lee’s second-most-controversial project in 2021 was an ad he directed and starred in for Coin Cloud, a currency service that provides ATMs through which users can purchase Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin, Tether, and other digital coins. The message: The old money system is discriminatory against Americans who are not white men, but the “digital rebellion” in cryptocurrency will lead to liberation for all. (About that … )

        Crypto newcomers can obtain up to $500 worth of Bitcoin from Coin Cloud’s ATMs just by providing their phone number, so let’s assume that’s the amount Lee got from doing the commercial. The value of a Bitcoin today is about 32 percent lower than when Lee did this ad, reducing the value of his ATM paycheck to $340.

        Slogan: “Do Your Own Research. (The risks of trading or holding can be substantial and the value can go up or down quickly and dramatically.)”

        Market impact: As New York magazine reported, Coin Cloud had no ATMs in New York City when Spike Lee filmed his ad there; the machines seen in the video are props. Per Coin Cloud’s own website, it … still has no ATMs in Lee’s home state. Oh, and the company filed for bankruptcy this week.

        How boned are you? Bitcoin—which is accurately depicted in the commercial as having been valued around $33,000 at the time—kept plunging in value throughout July until it began a steady recovery near the end of the month. Overall, it’s still down by 32 percent.

        What about other tokens?
        • Ethereum: Worth about $2,400 then, down by 37 percent now.
        • Dogecoin: Sadly, by June 1 DOGE couldn’t even be traded for two dimes, forget a quarter.
        • Solana: $31.36 if you found a Coin Cloud ATM right after the ad aired. Hey, at least Solana’s only lower by about $10 from that point.

        And what about what came after the Super Bowl? After all, just three months later, the entire crypto market experienced one of its most crippling downturns to date, throwing the industry into chaos. The valuations of Bitcoin and several popular “altcoins” plummeted, thanks in large part to ripple effects from interest rate hikes, and Coinbase just narrowly avoided bankruptcy. It didn’t get better after that: Coinbase, Crypto.com, and eToro all made steep staff cuts that summer, a trend that accelerated after FTX fully imploded in November. Crypto ad budgets were naturally curtailed as well, with industrywide spending bottoming out by July (and hitting other tech and media companies’ pocketbooks in the process). Still, up through the eve of that still-lingering crash, a few more celebrities made some, uh, pitches:

        Naomi Osaka
        March 21, 2022. FTX

        Summary: Hey, you can’t say crypto fans always lack self-awareness: This commercial features an advertising brain trust figuring out various possible themes for an ad featuring Naomi Osaka. Comics, the moon, and dragons all come up, yet the room settles for Osaka simply announcing her FTX partnership on TV. The ad came as part of FTX’s push to bring more women and young investors into crypto; the tennis star in turn received an undisclosed equity stake and cryptocurrency compensation (in a “long-term” contract), an FTX donation to her Play Foundation, and special FTX-branded gear for her games.

        Slogan: “If @StephenCurry30 @TomBrady and @giseleofficial are in then you know I am too!”

        How boned are you? Supposing Osaka (or you) had been compensated in Bitcoin, that stash would be worth about 47 percent less now, with 1 BTC costing $41,034.06 the day of her announcement.

        What about other tokens?
        • Ethereum: 1 ETH went for nearly $3,000 then, which means its value has been slashed by half.
        • Dogecoin: 12 cents of value! So you didn’t lose much.
        • Solana: 1 SOL was $88.74, meaning it’s lost more than 75 percent of its price.

        Steph Curry
        March 29, 2022. FTX

        Summary: This commercial is meant to assure hesitant FTX adopters of the accessibility of its service. You see, Steph Curry keeps denying to Shaq—who’s narrating off screen—that he has any expertise on crypto. However, FTX’s app makes it all so easy for him! What could go wrong? (Besides the hideous Bored Ape ice sculpture you see Curry carving in front of a house.) This followed a deal the Golden State superstar had signed with FTX back in September, earning himself—you guessed it—an undisclosed equity stake.

        Slogan: “I’m not an expert, and I don’t need to be.”

        Market impact: When famed Bitcoin maxi Michael Saylor offered crypto advice to Curry in September 2021, he claimed to have bought $3 million in BTC—which would now be worth only $1.41 million. This fact may not faze Curry too much, considering he’s long been familiar with sharp crypto plunges. But the class-action lawsuit, which includes Curry along with Brady and David and Osaka, could be a source of worry.

        How boned are you? Now, if you had bought $3 million in Bitcoin when Curry told you to in March, it’d only be worth $1.52 million now. Sorry about the lost milli.

        What about other tokens?
        • Ethereum: 1 ETH was $3,402.95 then, and is now worth about 55 percent less.
        • Dogecoin: 14 cents, just 6 cents more than what 1 DOGE has now.
        • Solana: 1 SOL was $111.69, but it’s only worth about 18 percent of that value now.
        …
        https://slate.com/technology/2023/02/super-bowl-ads-crypto-ftx-larry-david-coinbase-matt-damon.html

      2. Last year’s Super Bowl ads aged like milk
        Don’t expect to see any crypto ads this year.
        By Sara Morrison
        Feb 9, 2023, 8:00am EST
        A billboard advertising Super Bowl LVII in the Arizona desert. Christian Petersen/Getty Images
        Sara Morrison is a senior Vox reporter who covers data privacy, antitrust, and Big Tech’s power over us all.

        Super Bowl LVI was only a year ago, but when you look at some of the ads we saw then, it feels like a much different time: one where the future of the internet was all about cryptocurrency, NFTs, and the metaverse. Companies that hadn’t even existed 10 or even three years prior spent big money promoting themselves as major Web3 players, and older, established companies tried to stake their claim in the same world. That world wouldn’t last long.

        In the past year, Web3 fumbled, Big Tech stocks turned over, and AI is currently charging down the field as the hottest thing in a Silicon Valley that otherwise doesn’t have much to cheer for. The big splashy Super Bowl ads of 2022 are almost laughable in retrospect. Unless you’re one of the celebrities now facing a lawsuit for promoting crypto exchanges. Or one of the millions of people who lost money on crypto investments, thanks at least in part to the large-scale fraud that permeated the industry. Or any of the thousands of tech workers who were laid off in the past few months.

        There will be no crypto ads in this year’s broadcast. A Fox Sports executive vice president of ad sales told the Associated Press that four crypto companies had actually booked or were close to booking ads this year even amid crypto’s falling prices, but they all bowed out following FTX’s collapse.

        That’s a complete reversal from what we saw during Super Bowl LVI. There were so many ads from so many crypto exchanges that some people called last year’s big game The Crypto Bowl. Coinbase spent $14 million for a minute-long ad spot that was just a QR code bouncing around the screen. Crypto.com put up an ad featuring Matt Damon, who told us that “fortune favors the brave,” eToro promoted “the power of social investing,” and a little company called FTX paid Larry David to urge us not to miss out on crypto. There was also Binance, which had an anti-Super Bowl ad campaign.
        …
        https://www.vox.com/recode/2023/2/9/23591622/super-bowl-commercials-lvii-crypto-ads

    2. Yahoo Finance
      Fed’s Waller calls crypto ‘nothing more than a speculative asset’
      Jennifer Schonberger
      Fri, February 10, 2023 at 9:35 AM PST·3 min read

      Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller said Friday he views crypto as a speculative asset that’s worth whatever the next person is willing to pay for it and says he, personally, wouldn’t hold it.

      “To me, a crypto-asset is nothing more than a speculative asset, like a baseball card,” Waller said in a speech at a crypto conference at the Global Interdependence Center in La Jolla, California.

      “If people want to hold such an asset, then go for it,” Waller said. “I wouldn’t do it, but I don’t collect baseball cards, either. However, if you buy crypto-assets and the price goes to zero at some point, please don’t be surprised and don’t expect taxpayers to socialize your losses.”

      Waller said it’s critical to make sure that the risks associated with crypto are mitigated, but that regulators shouldn’t “unduly limit” the development and potential future uses of any positive features of crypto.

      Waller said any bank engaging with crypto customers would have to be very clear about the customers’ business models, risk-management systems, and corporate governance structures to ensure that the bank is not left holding the bag if there is a crypto meltdown.
      …
      https://news.yahoo.com/feds-waller-calls-crypto-nothing-more-than-a-speculative-asset-173516465.html

      1. Martin Young
        Feb 03, 2023
        Silvergate faces DOJ investigation over FTX and Alameda dealings: Report
        The crypto bank hasn’t been accused of wrongdoing, but prosecutors want to see how deep the dealings between the crypto bank and FTX went.
        Collect this article as an NFT

        Crypto bank Silvergate is reportedly being probed by the United States Department of Justice fraud unit over its involvement with the bankrupt FTX exchange and its affiliates.

        The probe is investigating Silvergate’s hosting of accounts linked to former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried’s businesses, according to a Feb. 3 report by Bloomberg, which cited “people familiar with the matter.”

        The California-based crypto bank is not accused of any crime, but investigators are attempting to discover how deep the dealings with FTX and Alameda went.

        Silvergate was heavily impacted by the collapse of FTX in November, reporting a $1 billion loss last quarter. The bank axed 40% of its staff and disclosed taking out billions of dollars in loans to prevent a liquidity crisis and bank run following the fall of the SBF empire.

        The federal investigators are trying to ascertain whether Silvergate and any other companies working with FTX were aware of the situation.

        According to Silvergate, Alameda opened an account with the bank in 2018, before the launch of FTX. It claims to have conducted due diligence and ongoing monitoring at the time, according to the report.

        This week a bank representative said that the firm “has a comprehensive compliance and risk management program.”

        Crypto trader Josh Rager commented on how this latest criminal investigation may impact crypto exchanges with ties to Silvergate.
        …
        https://cointelegraph.com/news/silvergate-faces-doj-investigation-over-ftx-and-alameda-dealings-report

  26. ‘The banks have been happy to loan me money if I would take a property off their hands’

    I always heard this was a big no no. Lenders wouldn’t finance their own REO’s. Maybe it’s preforeclosure or some small sh$thole bank.

    1. I think that there is no intention whatsoever to make good on these reparation promises. The real intent, I believe, will be to enrage blacks when courts strike the reparations down as unconstitutional, and for them to riot and wreak havoc.

        1. I would ask how, but then I remember that we are living in Heinlein’s crazy years.

          And if they do it for California, they will have to do it everywhere. About $10T. And after that money has been squandered I expect they would ask for more.

          I am reminded of a scene from the cinematic version o f V For Vendetta, where the pundit/propagandist Prothero shows on British TV just how far the US had fallen.

      2. Divide and enrage the people over embellished and fabricated racial issues. Add in the child killing fields. Add in celebrations of disgusting perversions and criminalization of traditional morals. International games of Simon Says. Mandated poisons. The list goes on.

        Things ahead will get interesting.

        1. International games of Simon Says

          If GloboHomo does not win in Ukraine there could be a very abrupt change in the world order.

      1. Is it possible to identify as black in order to gain entry to the beneficiary group?
        According to my brother’s 23 and me results my black grandmother was born between 1700-1710, probably as a slave. I will be wanting my $5.0MM.

        1. Wouldn’t that be more like a great, great … great grandmother?

          I wonder if a DNA test will be required to get the free money. Assuming this boondoggle ever actually happens.

          1. ever actually happens

            Don’t assume that the objective matches the label. The most likely objective is angry division along tribal lines.

    3. https://twitter.com/ksorbs/

      I am Kevin Sorbo, who played Hercules in the legendary journeys.

      Kevin Sorbo
      @ksorbs
      I am 2nd generation American. My grandparents moved here from Norway to live simple lives as farmers. Why should I pay reparations?
      11:37 AM · Feb 11, 2023
      ·
      1.8M
      Views

  29. MarketWatch
    Home
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    Opinion
    Opinion: Home prices have a long way to fall before housing is affordable again
    Last Updated: Feb. 11, 2023 at 8:49 a.m. ET
    First Published: Feb. 11, 2023 at 7:40 a.m. ET
    By Jeremiah Ludwig
    Buyers need to fully leverage their negotiating power, and cities need to encourage new construction

    Falling prices may be luring buyers back into the U.S. housing market, but don’t let that fool you — homes are still far from affordable.

    Prices in many U.S. housing markets have been declining over the past year and buyers are starting to make purchases again. But is now the right time to buy?

    A careful look at the cost of mortgages over the past couple years suggests that prices aren’t nearly as low as they could be, and that over the life of a mortgage, buyers are actually paying far more for their homes than they would have in 2021 when housing prices peaked.

    As an example, consider John, who found his dream home: a two-bedroom, two bath townhouse, close to his job, with enough space for his family, and good access to everything they need. John was hesitant to buy — prices were high and still rising — but on Nov. 10th, 2021, he closed the deal. He bought the home for $400,000 on a 30-year fixed rate mortgage with a 20% down payment and a 2.98% interest rate. It was perfect: only $1,346 a month to service the mortgage.

    But what if John had waited a year? National average interest rates on that type of mortgage were 7.08% in November 2022. If he had closed on the same home for the same price a year later, with 20% down, and a 30-year fixed rate mortgage, his mortgage payment would have been $2,146 per month — almost 60% higher. John might not have been able to afford his dream home if he had waited for prices to fall, and would have had to settle for something smaller and less convenient.

    Now consider the example of John’s friend Carla, who waited to buy. Price spikes forced her to put homeownership on hold. But lately, Carla is seeing price cuts and hearing stories about how the market is starting to recover. Now seems like the time to buy.

    Carla finds a home valued at $400,000. She has good credit and enough money saved for a 20% down payment, but the monthly payment is the big concern. Assuming she could get an interest rate close to the national average of 6% — twice as high as what John’s mortgage was in 2021 — she would have to negotiate the price down by $95,000 if she wanted to have the same monthly mortgage payment as her friend.

    That’s a cut of almost 25% of the total price of the home. No major U.S. city has seen prices fall far enough to make a home in early 2023 as affordable for homebuyers as it was in late 2021. Even in areas where prices are still being cut, buyers need to be careful not to buy too quickly.

    Prices can and should be brought down further. Buyers need to leverage their negotiating power to pull them down as far as possible.

    Of course, negotiating prices can only do so much. The Federal Reserve has been attempting to drive down prices by pushing up interest rates, but the effort so far hasn’t been effective. Lower prices lure buyers; things won’t be more affordable in the long term without broader fixes to the market.

    For many of the regional U.S. housing markets, the ultimate problem is limited supply. Housing advocate Up For Growth estimates that the current housing supply deficit in the U.S. is more than 3.5 million units, with other estimates suggesting it could be as high as 20 million.

    Buyers can leverage their negotiating power to bring down prices, and the Fed eventually will start to cut interest rates. In the meantime, the U.S. needs more housing. Municipalities need to do all they can to pave the way for developers: loosen density restrictions; shorten permitting times and untangle the red tape — especially for affordable housing.

    Until that happens, affordable housing will remain out of reach for most Americans. Among buyers who can even afford to consider returning to the market now, buying a home, particularly in strained coastal housing markets, is an expensive project. Prices can go down further, and buyers should put pressure on both government and the market to see that they do.

    Jeremiah Ludwig is an independent housing policy researcher, based in Washington D.C.
    …

    1. “Jeremiah Ludwig is an independent housing policy researcher”

      The world needs more of this kind of housing market expert and fewer REIC-funded housing shills.

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