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The Price Keeps Rising As Everyone Rushes To Grab A Piece Of The Pie, Until … Poof! It’s All Gone

It’s Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. “Lee Roberts, 74, the retired CEO of Fort Worth-based RadioShack, has put his five-bedroom, 10-bathroom home at 4400 Overton Crest St. up for auction. Roberts and his wife invested $12 million in the property. ‘Somebody’s gonna make millions of dollars at this auction, and it won’t be us,’ Roberts said. ‘We don’t expect a return on investment, but that’s fine.'”

“Austin’s housing market is ‘trending in the right direction,’ the president of the Austin Board of Realtors said Thursday. ‘Buyers have more options and negotiating power with each passing month, and sellers have more time to make their next move,’ ABoR President Ashley Jackson said. ‘Remember, a healthy housing market isn’t defined by breaking records every month, but by market activity that’s steady-paced and sustainable.’ Median home prices dropped by 12% year-over-year to a metro average of $436,419. There was considerable variation among counties in the metro though. Median prices in Hays County dropped to their lowest in 17 months, while prices in Williamson County dropped to 23-month lows. As of February, 7,167 homes are currently listed on the market, a 499% increase since last February.”

“The days of mega-mega-million home sales may be coming to an end, at least in Los Angeles. Several seven- or eight-figure properties in the city have seen their prices slashed. A massive Bel-Air estate was listed for $100 million in 2018. Last month, it was relisted for a much cheaper—although still expensive—$59 million, a 41 percent drop. A five-acre Beverly Hills home asked $135 million in 2018, but its price has been cut 12 percent. ‘No buyer at this juncture wants to feel they’re paying 2021 or 2020 prices,’ Beverly Hills Estates’ Rayni Williams told the WSJ.”

“Three Bay Area cities are actually among the top five U.S. metro areas that saw the biggest drop in year-over-year median home sale prices last week, according to Redfin. Out of 24 of the 50 most populous U.S. metro areas where median sales prices fell, San Jose was tops of the list with a -17.2% YoY decline. Coming in at number three was San Francisco with an -11% YoY decline. Oakland was fourth with -10.9 YoY decline. Rounding out the top five were Austin at number two, -13%, and Sacramento in fifth, -8.6%.”

“The Carson City housing market is seeing a small spring bounce by some measures, according to Sierra Nevada Realtors. For the combined six counties, the median price of an existing single-family home was $480,000 in February, down only 5.9 percent from the previous year. The median sales price for an existing single-family residence in Washoe County was $515,000 in February, an increase of 1 percent from the previous month and a 7.5 percent drop from last year. Churchill County saw a small dip in the median price. In February, the median sales price there for an existing home was $332,500, a 1.8 percent decrease from January and a 6.3 percent decrease from the previous year. The median sales price for an existing house in Douglas County also dipped to $566,250, representing a 9.4 drop from January and a smaller 5.6 percent decrease from the previous year.”

“The City of Melbourne Florida is cracking down on nuisance properties as neighbors plead for change. Homeowners living near 4445 Sherwood Boulevard take pride in their properties but said they are fed up living next to a home they say has only been a nightmare. ‘What the kids call the zombie house,’ said Matthew More, who just bought a home in the neighborhood in January. Since then, he’s been shocked at the constant issues stemming from one home. ‘We’ve taken a proactive approach in the city to file lawsuits on these properties to force the foreclosures and to get this property turned over,’ exclaimed City of Melbourne Mayor Paul Alfrey.”

“Even before regulators seized Signature Bank, shaking regional lending markets, rent-stabilized building owners were worried. Not about Signature, though. About their buildings’ finances. In fact, they were counting on Signature to help. Valentina Gojcaj, who manages a mostly rent-stabilized, 700-unit portfolio, recently tried to refinance a loan on an eight-unit building, only to find national lenders wouldn’t touch it. ‘The property is basically underwater,’ Gojcaj said, pointing to the rent law and Covid arrears squeezing the building’s revenue while inflation bloated its operating costs. ‘[The bigger banks], they didn’t want anything to do with the property,’ Gojcaj said. ‘We finally found a regional bank that, with personal guarantees, allowed us to pull a loan out.’ She is one of many owners of the city’s 900,000 rent-stabilized units struggling to pay their debts. Signature was a major lender on those properties.”

“‘What we are afraid of is a snowball effect,’ Gaia Real Estate’s Danny Fishman told The Real Deal Monday after a weekend spent yanking funds from regional institutions. ‘As soon as rumors start, there’s a run on the bank,’ he said. ‘And no bank can survive a run.'”

“The full picture of why Silicon Valley Bank failed so spectacularly and so fast has not yet come into focus. But uncommon lending practices at the cutting-edge lender contributed to its woes. Of the roughly $74 billion in total loans Silicon Valley Bank held on its books at year-end, almost half — $34 billion — went to borrowers who used the money to buy or carry securities of their own, regulatory data shows. ‘Typically, if you looked at a bank with a $74 billion loan book, other banks would be interested in buying that,’ said Bill Moreland, chief executive of BankRegData, a provider of bank regulatory statistics and analysis. ‘But when 46% of your loan book is to purchase and carry securities, a lot of banks would have to ask themselves ‘What is the value of those loans?’ ‘Is that an attractive asset?'”

“Speaking following layoffs at Google owner Alphabet (12,000) and Meta (11,000 in November and a further 10,000 this month), Insider reported Silicon Valley VC Keith Rabois saying, ‘There’s nothing for these people to do—it’s all fake work. Now that’s being exposed, what do these people actually do, they go to meetings.’ Former Meta employee Brit Levy has taken to TikTok to share her ‘weird’ experience in Mark Zuckerberg’s social media giant. ‘The participants of the program got placed on different teams throughout Meta,’ she explained. ‘The people on those teams were full-time employees who had been with Meta for years—and those people weren’t doing anything. I had all the time in the world to just message random people: engineers, program managers, project managers. I messaged them and had a 15- to 20-minute conversation about what they did all day and they would tell me they weren’t working on anything either.'”

“Someone lives in a swanky downtown Toronto penthouse, drives a status-symbol car, but in a case of truly living beyond one’s means, doesn’t pay their monthly rent. Housing policy expert and rent recovery specialist Varun Sriskanda explains that the landlord wants to evict the tenant for non-payment of rent, as the landlord claims the monthly fee of $5,000 has not been paid for over ten months. After roughly a year of non-payment, Sriskanda says the owner is suffering ‘serious financial loss,’ and that ‘the cost of carrying the condo is crushing him with debt.’ Even if you’re not one to sympathize with landlords in this inflated housing market, non-payment of rent is a tough one to justify, especially if the tenant in question drives a freakin’ Lamborghini.”

“Between 2020 and 2021, house prices in Portugal shot up by 157%. From 2015 to 2021, rents jumped by 112%, according the European Union’s statistics agency Eurostat. In Portugal, the problem has been magnified by tourism. Rosa Santos, a 59-year-old born and raised close to Lisbon’s 14th-century St. George’s Castle, says most homes in her neighborhood are occupied by short-term vacation rentals, largely for foreign tourists. The locals’ rich traditions are gone, and there’s not even a bakery or grocery store there now, Santos says. ‘It’s not a neighborhood anymore,’ she said. ‘This isn’t a city, it’s an amusement park.'”

“Hugo Ferreira Santos of the Portuguese Association of Real Estate Developers and Investors said foreign investment has ground to a halt as people wait to see how the golden visa changes shape up. Small-time investors in apartments for short-term vacation rentals also are aggrieved. ‘There are people that left their lives, set up their own businesses, generated jobs, have workers and suddenly one day they are knocked down without any prospect,’ said Eduardo Miranda, head of a Portuguese association representing their interests.”

“The property market in Australia has faced the largest annual decline on record. CoreLogic Australia on Thursday revealed house prices had dropped 7.9 per cent over the year to February, the largest 12-month decline ever recorded. Sydney copped the largest decline in value, down 13.4 per cent over the year, while Melbourne tumbled 9.6 per cent. Across the country Hobart tumbled 11.8 per cent, Brisbane dropped 6.8 per cent, Canberra fell 6.7 per cent, Adelaide dived 5.1 per cent, Darwin dipped 2.9 per cent, while Perth had the smallest margin, down just 2.4 per cent.”

“China’s home prices gained momentum nationally in February, rising for a second consecutive month driven by pent-up demand even in smaller cities, but prices have yet to recoup all their losses and there remains a sizable stock of unsold homes. Official data on Wednesday showed the area of unsold homes stood at 655 million square meters as of the end of February.”

“I felt a familiar pang of anxiety as I read the news: Here we go again. Financial crises often occur due to a bursting bubble. In 2008, it was the housing bubble. Recently, the crypto bubble burst, causing losses of billions of dollars. And now, the high-tech bubble may be on the verge of exploding. A bubble is simply another way of saying, ‘everyone has it, so I want it too.’ The price keeps rising as everyone rushes to grab a piece of the pie. Until … poof! It’s all gone.”

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This Post Has 137 Comments

  1. ‘Somebody’s gonna make millions of dollars at this auction, and it won’t be us’

    That’s the spirit Lee, take yer losses like a man!

    2. The house is an older, cluttered style. But the worst part is that this “estate” is less than 20 feet from the nicer houses next door. I can do better for $12 million.

    1. “Median home prices dropped by 12% year-over-year to a metro average of $436,419.”

      Only another $150k or so to go!

    2. The Carson City housing market is seeing a small spring bounce by some measures, according to Sierra Nevada Realtors. For the combined six counties, the median price of an existing single-family home was $480,000 in February, down only 5.9 percent from the previous year.

      Add Carson City to the list of sh!tholes. Have you ever been there? These prices are eye-watering. Ludicrous is a better word.

      1. You’d have to be a senior principal engineer to pull down that much scratch, and even at a place like Fakebook they are few and far between.

  5. Onward Christian Soldiers.

    Zelensky digs in against calls to quit Bakhmut (3/17/2023):

    “Doubts are growing about the wisdom of holding the shattered frontline city of Bakhmut against relentless Russian assaults, but Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is digging in and insists his top commanders are united in keeping up an attritional defense that has dragged on for months.

    Fighting around Bakhmut in the eastern region of Donbas dramatically escalated late last year, with Zelensky slamming the Russians for hurling men — many of them convicts recruited by the Wagner mercenary group — forward to almost certain death in “meat waves.” Now the bloodiest battle of the war, Bakhmut offers a vision of conflict close to World War I, with flooded trenches and landscapes blasted by artillery fire.”

    Meat waves?

    “The long-running logic of the Ukrainian armed forces has been that Russia has suffered disproportionately high casualties, allowing Kyiv’s forces to grind down the invaders, ahead of a Ukrainian counter-offensive expected shortly, in the spring.

    Criticism has been growing among some in the Ukrainian ranks — and among Western allies — about continuing with the almost nine-month-long battle. The disquiet was muted at first and expressed behind the scenes, but is now spilling into the open.”

    https://www.politico.eu/article/zelenskyy-digs-in-against-calls-to-quit-bakhmut-us-western-allies-eu-russia-frontlines-valeriy-zaluzhnyy-kyiv-soledar-kupol/

    Spilling into the open?

    Nobody outside the Beltway supports Ukraine. Nobody.

    1. BBC — Ukraine will remember who backed us – foreign minister (3/17/2023):

      “Countries that “mistreated Ukraine” will be held to account after the war ends, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has warned.

      In a BBC interview he said the choice every nation made following Russia’s full-scale invasion will be “taken into account in building future relations”.

      Sounds like extortion.

      “Although Ukraine has received military and economic support from Western powers since Russia’s invasion, many countries in Africa, Asia and South America have stayed on the sidelines.

      Some are historically sympathetic to Russia, some are concerned about the economic costs of the war, and others believe the West is prolonging the fighting unnecessarily.

      But Mr Kuleba made clear that countries which failed to support Ukraine now – those, he said, which had “misbehaved in the course of this war and mistreated Ukraine”, would pay a price in the future.

      And, he says, Ukraine has one crucial factor on its side: “Historically, Ukraine was unfairly under-appreciated, and I regret it took a bloodshed and a devastating war for the world to realise how cool we are.

      “And we will always be cool. But it just took you too much time to realise that.”

      https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-64976079

      Is this guy tripping on mushrooms?

      The Global South doesn’t need you.

      The rest of the world doesn’t need you.

    2. I’ve seen several stories now of JDAMs being deployed from modified Sukhoi Su-27. If true the “meat grinder” is going to be well fed going forward.

  6. ‘We don’t expect a return on investment, but that’s fine.’”

    How bout that tap dancing and gyrating.🤣

    Lee got donked…. Lee got donked but good.

    Orlando, FL Housing Prices Crater 14% YOY As The Toxic Rot Of Subprime Mortgage Defaults Looms Over Florida Housing Market

    https://www.movoto.com/fl/32837/market-trends/

      1. I’d rather be donked on a 50 cent fuse than a rapidly depreciating asset like a house.

        The poor donks…. The poor poor donks.

  8. “Austin’s housing market is ‘trending in the right direction,’ the president of the Austin Board of Realtors said Thursday.

    Indeed it is. Be afraid, FBs & realtors. Be very afraid.

  9. As of February, 7,167 homes are currently listed on the market, a 499% increase since last February.”

    Is that a lot?

  10. A massive Bel-Air estate was listed for $100 million in 2018. Last month, it was relisted for a much cheaper—although still expensive—$59 million, a 41 percent drop.

    Oh dear. This is nearing the 50% drop in shack prices that I was assured was un-possible.

    1. Except the 50% drop won’t be from fantasy wishing prices, it will be from previous sold prices. And it won’t be 50%, it will be 75%.

  11. Out of 24 of the 50 most populous U.S. metro areas where median sales prices fell, San Jose was tops of the list with a -17.2% YoY decline. Coming in at number three was San Francisco with an -11% YoY decline. Oakland was fourth with -10.9 YoY decline.

    The thought of all those high-net-worth libtards seeing their Yellen Bux net worth evaporate fills me with pure schadenfreude.

  12. Valentina Gojcaj, who manages a mostly rent-stabilized, 700-unit portfolio, recently tried to refinance a loan on an eight-unit building, only to find national lenders wouldn’t touch it. ‘The property is basically underwater,’ Gojcaj said, pointing to the rent law and Covid arrears squeezing the building’s revenue while inflation bloated its operating costs.

    Who knew there would be unintended consequences from Democrat-Bolshevik “affordable housing” schemes?

    1. “Even if cash-strapped owners can persuade national banks to refinance their buildings, it would entail higher fees and rates than they are accustomed to paying. That’s an unwelcome prospect for landlords already in dire straits. Some will face foreclosure when their mortgages come due, if not sooner.”

      Higher expenses and lower income won’t pencil out.

  13. “‘What we are afraid of is a snowball effect,’ Gaia Real Estate’s Danny Fishman told The Real Deal Monday after a weekend spent yanking funds from regional institutions. ‘As soon as rumors start, there’s a run on the bank,’ he said. ‘And no bank can survive a run.’”

    Gosh, it’s almost like our house-of-cards financier systems is far less safe or stable than the gold collar criminals at the Fed or captured regulators, auditors, and policymakers assured us it was. Got gold? Got silver? Got preps?

  14. “The full picture of why Silicon Valley Bank failed so spectacularly and so fast has not yet come into focus.

    Yeah it has. Everything “woke” turns to sh*t.

    1. Plus loans to finance high risk speculative gambles probably didn’t help their situation much…

      1. And backing up $250K+ uninsured deposits with high value bonds that cratered when Uncle Jerome raised interest rates. The bankers should have been given pink slips and the uninsured should have been given a lesson. Instead we got Janet going in front of the Senate and saying straight out that the big boy banks will get the goodies while smaller banks get the shaft.

        2. Take a look at every financial disaster, and see the stupid bank CEO’s behind it. It must be a Job requirement to be a blithering idiot, with poor judgement, but great political skill.

          1. private deposit insurance

            My understanding is that depositors at SVB chose not to buy it.

    2. “Of the roughly $74 billion in total loans Silicon Valley Bank held on its books at year-end, almost half — $34 billion — went to borrowers who used the money to buy or carry securities of their own, regulatory data shows.”

      It was fun until those securities started losing their value.

    3. “The full picture of why Silicon Valley Bank failed so spectacularly and so fast has not yet come into focus.

      What did quickly come into focus is that this was the preferred bank of the so-called “elites,” and they squealed like pigs when their deposits weren’t insured, and the government came running and coddled them and bailed them out in a matter of hours.

          1. Aren’t the stockholders wiped out?
            Yes everyone owning part of the S&P 500 Index owned it. (been moved out now).
            So all the peons owned it and ate the losses. Including me.

  15. “it’s all fake work. Now that’s being exposed, what do these people actually do, they go to meetings”

    And your master’s degree in Obama Studies from Oberlin is worthless.

    “They’re not sending their best”

    1. And your master’s degree in Obama Studies from Oberlin is worthless.
      For those of you not up on Ohio Colleges, Oberlin is the “wokest of the Woke”. Lawsuit from 2022 where Oberlin paid a huge fine.

      Oberlin Says It Will Pay $36.59 Million to a Local Bakery
      Gibson’s Bakery said the liberal arts college had falsely accused it of racism after a Black student was caught shoplifting.

      1. “Oberlin Says It Will Pay $36.59 Million to a Local Bakery”

        Good thing the shoplifting happened back in 2016. These days the bakery’s owner would charged with kidnapping for detaining the thief.

  16. A reader sent these in:

    Top executives of First Republic Bank sold millions of dollars of company stock in the two months before the bank’s shares plummeted during the panic over the health of regional lenders.

    https://twitter.com/INArteCarloDoss/status/1636426214888882191

    The numbers are in. The Fed’s balance sheet increased by nearly $300 billion last week.

    https://twitter.com/LynAldenContact/status/1636470293068644358

    Before ANY of more misinformation spreads on what I sometimes call “this damn platform, which capitalizes on sensationalism and misinformation,” this is why the Fed’s balance sheet grew last week by $298B.

    The Discount Window at the Fed is OPEN. Discount Window borrowing increased $140.5 billion in one week taking total to $152.8 billion. (Prior weekly record was $111 billion in 2008 during the financial crisis per @business
    )

    And additional $11.9 billion was borrowed from the Fed’s new Bank Term Funding Program

    $142B in Fed Loans “Includes loans that were extended to depository institutions established by the FDIC. The Federal Reserve’s loans to these depository institutions are secured by the collateral and the FDIC provides repayment guarantees.”

    $7 billion in Treasuries fell and $2B in MBS rolled off the Fed’s as part of the Fed’s ongoing QT program.

    https://twitter.com/DiMartinoBooth/status/1636494923544313863

    The Federal Reserve’s emergency loan program may inject as much as $2 trillion of funds into the US banking system and ease the liquidity crunch, according to JPMorgan Chase

    https://twitter.com/unusual_whales/status/1636310588874694658

    The Swiss National Bank has reported an annual loss of $141.54 billion, which is the largest in the central bank’s 115-year history.

    https://twitter.com/unusual_whales/status/1636366960622542849

    As I predicted #QE is back. Last week the #Fed’s balance sheet swelled by $300 billion, wiping out 4 months of QT in one week. By the end of the month the balance sheet could reach a new high. Rate hikes don’t matter. #Inflation is headed much higher, thanks to #bank #bailouts.

    https://twitter.com/PeterSchiff/status/1636486856895344640

    The “Fed Put” is back with assets on their balance sheet increasing $297 billion over the last week, the largest spike higher since March 2020. Thus nearly half of the Quantitative Tightening since last April was undone in a single week.

    https://twitter.com/charliebilello/status/1636479879364460546

    These temporary loans to banks via the ‘Discount Window’ are not QE. There is no buying of financial assets with theses loans. These are take out by banks in dire straits. It’s an indication of a lack of liquidity. Please see @DiMartinoBooth and @JeffSnider_AIP posts

    https://twitter.com/Ison120704/status/1636529947601666050

    There will be those who will tell you this is a good thing, a good sign. The Fed doing its job. Take a look at those comparisons. When Primary Credit use goes way up, bad things happen. Have already happened.

    https://twitter.com/JeffSnider_AIP/status/1636505461238247426

    Correct me if I’m wrong, but the injection of liquidity is for bank to bank lending to cover existing deposits. This isn’t necessarily inflationary, rather, allows the Fed to pursue elevated interest rates for longer without breaking the banking system and forcing a pivot.

    https://twitter.com/akm515/status/1636506831257206784

    This is what exploded last week, discount window borrowing (+152.9b)
    = more than 08 & Covid! DWB functions as a safety valve + credit extension, in this case after #SVB collapsed

    https://twitter.com/ddubrovskyFX/status/1636502577197252609

    LIQUIDITY? Is everyone on Twitter 12? Every heard of the Great Financial Crisis, the last time the Discount Window spiked which was indicative of LIQUIDITY DRYING UP. Securitization is under siege. Lending standards are being clamped down. (Where do people GET these ideas?)

    https://twitter.com/DiMartinoBooth/status/1636499610905583617

    This type of stuff happened during the banking panic of 1907…

    https://twitter.com/JasonEBurack/status/1636451520118923276

    Common secret: Every bank is a sh$tco, that’s why we have Central Banks

    https://twitter.com/agnostoxxx/status/1636338435324559367

    The next Atlanta Fed president? “Becker sold $3.6 million worth of shares on Feb. 27, just days before the bank disclosed a large loss that triggered its stock slide and collapse.”

    https://twitter.com/JohnWake/status/1636544126891225088

    NOTHING dumb about researching this subject. Start by Googling “Discount Window Stigma” for a history of why banks only use it if they’re absolutely desperate. It’s akin to putting a 🎯 on their back. These are existential moments for banks.

    https://twitter.com/DiMartinoBooth/status/1636513824932069376

    Just a reminder
    QE that you all know=fed buying treasuries and MBS
    QE that you all think just happened= short term loans
    Unless people forgot what loans are, they cost money and need to be paid back

    https://twitter.com/sqqqholder1/status/1636479904052137991

    You can see the narrative already. Depositors and taxpayers shouldn’t “have to live with fear and fragility.” What’s the solution? CBDC of course.

    https://twitter.com/GeorgeGammon/status/1636454246479527937

    “All of the real, inflation-adjusted U.S. home price appreciation from 1990 to 2021 was due to falling interest rates, at least according to this simple analysis. U.S. mortgage rates may never go lower than they were last year [2021] so the multi-decade Great Appreciation of house prices is now over.” From last July.

    https://twitter.com/JohnWake/status/1636373422505889792

    I’m sorry but Roku absolutely should have been punished for leaving a half a billion dollars in a goddamn bank savings account

    https://twitter.com/SMTuffy/status/1636443389934686208

    There’s a tanning level in finance that you should never go over , because once you do , you cause a bank run.

    https://twitter.com/qcapital2020/status/1636377431182557190

    A Chinese property giant halted investor redemptions last year and media had a frenzy implying China was collapsing. Blackstone halted redemptions & defaulted on billions in US mortgages, and it’s totally different because we like, live here and totally don’t like that. Few.

    https://twitter.com/StephenPunwasi/status/1636432996893900803

    I remember when New Century Mortgage warehouse lines froze, they kept paying us for like 6-7 months to do nothing. Best summer of my life. “Hey we’re doing a team event, can you come in next Wednesday for an hour.” “No.” LOL

    https://twitter.com/GRomePow/status/1636428907376422912

    Blackstone just sold its stake in a building to Brookfield at a valuation ~30% ($500m) lower than it traded for in 2017. Brookfield just defaulted on $750m mortgages in LA a few weeks before. It’s really a rags-to-riches story if you think about it.

    https://twitter.com/StephenPunwasi/status/1636414209075585024

    It’s different this time.™️
    2008: We’re declaring war.
    2023: It’s a “special operation.”
    2008: the financial institution defaulted on its mortgage.
    2023: the financial institution’s mortgage has entered “special servicing.”

    https://twitter.com/StephenPunwasi/status/1636410446218510341

    Portland looking like 💩

    https://twitter.com/ClownWorld_/status/1636213283438071810

    Rivian lost $4.7 billion in 2021 but investors looked past this, valuing the company @ $153 billion. Today, investors seem to care very much about profits w/ Rivian valued at $13 billion after posting a $6.9 billion loss in 2022.

    https://twitter.com/charliebilello/status/1636567219403407363

    1. “Top executives of First Republic Bank sold millions of dollars of company stock in the two months before the bank’s shares plummeted during the panic over the health of regional lenders.”

      Access to the crystal ball is an executive perk.

    2. Today, investors seem to care very much about profits w/ Rivian valued at $13 billion after posting a $6.9 billion loss in 2022.

      And suddenly, just like that, profitability matters again.

      1. And suddenly, just like that, profitability matters again.
        Eventually sanity returns. I was beginning to wonder if it would ever return. (I am still not convinced it is here to stay.)

    3. Top executives of First Republic Bank sold millions of dollars of company stock in the two months before the bank’s shares plummeted during the panic over the health of regional lenders.

      It’s like a carbon copy of SVB. Gee, what a coincidence.

    4. Portland looking like 💩

      I would not subject the soles of my shoes to those sidewalks, especially if I had to get back into my car. Urine, sh!t, blood, needles….and Oregon keeps doubling and tripling down on woke. Wow.

    5. I remember when New Century Mortgage warehouse lines froze, they kept paying us for like 6-7 months to do nothing. Best summer of my life.
      I had a summer just like it when Washington Mutual bought us but couldn’t decide what to do with us. As we waited around for the “Big Severance payout.” We were fully paid, including bonuses to: come in late, watch some TV (including the 9/11 attack), go to the YMCA and work out, take a long lunch and leave early. Good summer

  18. “Chinese President Xi Jinping will visit Russia from Monday to Wednesday, in an apparent show of support for Russian President Vladimir Putin amid sharpening East-West tensions over the conflict in Ukraine.

    Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine is expected to dominate discussions. China has sought to project itself as neutral in the conflict even while in 2022 Beijing declared it had a “no-limits” friendship with Russia and has refused to condemn Moscow’s invasion.

    The meeting between the leaders was announced by both countries on Friday.

    China has said the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries should be respected, while condemning Western sanctions and accusing NATO and the United States of provoking Russia into military action.”

    https://www.huffpost.com/entry/xi-to-visit-moscow-russia-ukraine_n_64142718e4b0cfde25c431a3

    Russia is winning.

    The West, and particularly the United States in its current condition of being occupied by Marxist globalists, are not going to “win” anything.

  19. I don’t know about declining performance, I saw a guy running out of a Target with two arms full of reparations and it looked like he was running about a 4.4 Forty.

    Target Shutters Downtown Philly Location Citing “Declining Performance”

    By Zero Hedge Friday
    March 17, 2023

    Not unlike many other corporations with retail locations in cities nationwide, Target is calling it quits on Philadelphia. They follow in the footsteps of Wawa, who we noted last year had enough of Philadelphia’s crime and also picked up and left shop at several locations in Center City.

    Target, located just blocks from one Wawa that recently closed, is taking the same action, according to the Philadelphia Business Journal. Its store at 12th and Chestnut streets in Center City will be closing after 7 years of operation.

    https://www.newswars.com/target-shutters-downtown-philly-location-citing-declining-performance/

    2. “They follow in the footsteps of Wawa, who we noted last year had enough of Philadelphia’s crime”

      What a shame…. I spent many thousands on snacks at Wawa’s while working in Philly over the years.

  21. Is the Silicon Valley Bank bailout working pretty well so far?

    ‘The “Fed Put” is back with assets on their balance sheet increasing $297 billion over the last week, the largest spike higher since March 2020. Thus nearly half of the Quantitative Tightening since last April was undone in a single week.’

    1. The Financial Times
      SVB Financial Group
      SVB parent files for bankruptcy protection after bank collapse
      Company to use court-supervised process to salvage value from surviving units
      The SVB logo
      SVB Financial Group says it has $2.2bn of liquidity as well as $3.3bn in bond debt and $3.7bn of preferred equity outstanding
      Sujeet Indap and Ortenca Aliaj in New York and Robert Smith in London 35 minutes ago

      The parent company of Silicon Valley Bank, the lender taken over by US regulators last week, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in a federal court in New York.

      The move by SVB Financial Group is an attempt to salvage value from two units — a broker-dealer and a technology investing business — that are separate from the main deposit-taking bank that failed last week, sending shockwaves around global financial markets.

      SVB Financial said it had about $2.2bn in cash and liquid securities, $3.3bn of bond debt and $3.7bn of preferred stock.

      William Kosturos, chief restructuring officer for SVB Financial, said the court-supervised bankruptcy process would allow the group “to preserve value as it evaluates strategic alternatives for its prized businesses and assets”.

      He said SVB Capital and SVB Securities, the tech investing and broker-dealer businesses, “continue to operate and serve clients, led by their longstanding and independent leadership teams”. In 2022, SVB Securities recorded $518mn of revenue, according to company filings.

      Senior bonds in the parent group were trading at 60 cents on the dollar on Friday, suggesting investors believed they would recover value from the stricken group. The bonds had earlier traded at about 30 cents on the dollar after US regulators seized the distressed bank a week ago.

      Several specialist funds have snapped up the debt, according to people familiar with the situation. One investment firm that holds SVB Financial debt told the Financial Times that a “scavenger hunt” was under way to locate value within the parent company that could support a large recovery for bondholders.
      …

      1. William Kosturos, chief restructuring officer for SVB Financial, said the court-supervised bankruptcy process would allow the group “to preserve value as it evaluates strategic alternatives for its prized businesses and assets”.

        Wouldn’t want them exposed to the vagaries of the free market.

    2. I know this time is different, but once bailouts got underway during the 2007-2009 financial crisis, US stocks dropped by 50% or so in the following six months. I guess it depends somewhat on how much more non-QE “balance sheet expansion” the Fed chooses to employ, but the pandemic episode suggests that recourse may be inflationary.

      1. PS Note the real estate CR8R currently forming has yet to land on bank balance sheets in a publicly disclosed manner. That chapter of this slow motion train wreck lies ahead in the coming months.

        1. Is $2.3 trillion alot?

          How about $2,300 billion?

          For reference, it seems like the Evergrande debt bomb was a mere $300 billion…chump change by comparison.

          1. ECONOMY Published March 17, 2023 4:26pm EDT
            US home prices post first annual decline since 2012
            Silicon Valley Bank fallout could cause ‘shift’ in US housing market, Redfin says
            By Megan Henney FOXBusiness

            The U.S. housing market posted the first year-over-year decline in home prices since 2012 as a result of higher mortgage rates.

            That’s according to a new report from real estate brokerage firm Redfin, which showed that the median U.S. home sale price fell 1.2% in February from the previous year.

            “Buyers are struggling because higher interest rates have increased the cost of homeownership, and sellers are struggling because they’re still adjusting to the fact that their home won’t sell for what their neighbor’s did a year ago,” said Andrew Vallejo, a Redfin real estate agent based in Austin, Texas. “The drop in prices is bringing more house hunters off the sidelines, but they’re in no rush because rates are high and they have the upper hand.”
            …
            https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/us-home-prices-post-first-annual-decline-2012
            ——————————————————-
            US HOUSING MARKET SEES $2.3T DROP IN VALUE, BIGGEST SINCE 2008
            …
            https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/us-housing-market-sees-drop-value-biggest-2008

      2. Banks take advantage of Fed crisis lending programs
        Published Thu, Mar 16 2023 4:32 PM EDT
        Updated Thu, Mar 16 2023 6:12 PM EDT
        Jeff Cox
        Signage outside a Signature Bank branch in New York, US, on Monday, March 13, 2023.
        Stephanie Keith | Bloomberg | Getty Images

        Financial institutions took billions in short-term loans this week from the Federal Reserve as the industry copes with a serious crisis of confidence and liquidity, the central bank reported Thursday.

        Utilizing tools the Fed rolled out Sunday, banks looking for cash infusions borrowed $11.9 billion from the Bank Term Funding Program. Under that facility, banks can take one-year loans under favorable terms in exchange for high-quality collateral.

        Most banks took the more traditional route, using the Fed’s discount window under terms slightly less favorable, with borrowing totaling nearly $153 billion. The discount window provides loans of up to just 90 days, while the BTFP term is for one year. However, the Fed eased conditions at the discount window to make it more attractive for borrowers in need of operating funds.

        There also was a large uptick in offered bridge loans, also done over short terms, totaling $142.8 billion, made primarily to now-shuttered institutions so they could meet obligations regarding depositors and other expenses.

        The data comes just days after regulators shut Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, two institutions favored by the high-tech community.

        With fears high that customers who exceeded the $250,000 Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. guarantee could lose their money, regulators stepped in to back all deposits.

        The programs ramped up the totals on the Fed balance sheet, escalating the total by some $297 billion.
        …
        https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/16/banks-take-advantage-of-fed-crisis-lending-programs-.html

        1. Wouldn’t it be sweet to have short-term loans available the moment you find yourself facing household financial challenges?

          Sadly, I don’t expect the gobernment to offer those any time soon to individuals, as doing so would create a moral hazard incentive for poor financial risk management. Pretty soon the gobernment would find itself facing a plethora of bailout demands from households with collapsed balance sheets.

          Now if you happen to be a large bank with similar problems, it’s a different story, especially if you can convince regulatory authorities that you are systemically important.

    3. Opinion
      The Hideous Double Standards of the Silicon Valley Bank Bailout: Bailouts for Me, Not for Thee | Opinion
      Vivek Ramaswamy , Author of Woke Inc.; presidential candidate
      On 3/16/23 at 1:58 PM EDT

      When Biden’s Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen, announced that all tech companies who deposited funds at SVB, even those who recklessly parked obscene amounts of money there without diversifying, would be made whole, the federal government sent a clear message to the American people: There are alternative rules if you are part of the favored class.

      It’s not as complicated as they want you to believe. Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) is a bank for a bunch of tech companies in Silicon Valley. The bank invested deposits in mortgage-backed securities that go down in value when interest rates go up. When the Federal Reserve raised interest rates, SVB ran into trouble.

      It turns out that many of the tech companies who parked money at SVB did so without thinking too much about it—and made some horrendous decisions. For example, the tech company Roku deposited a staggering $487 million at SVB.

      The normal rules of the road are clear: The first $250,000 is insured by FDIC. After that, the customer is liable for loss. But Silicon Valley wanted a different set of rules for itself.

      So on Sunday, Silicon Valley threw every argument in the book against the wall to see what stuck: Venture capitalists and startup executives who stood to lose their deposits at SVB screamed “bank run” from the rooftops. They said it was about supporting the “most innovative entrepreneurs” who helped “America compete against China.” They even turned “workers” into pawns to argue for bailouts for the venture capitalist class.

      It was all bogus.
      …
      https://www.newsweek.com/hideous-double-standards-silicon-valley-bank-bailout-bailouts-me-not-thee-opinion-1788339

    4. The Wall Street Journal
      Treasurys
      Market Stress Snarls Trading in U.S. Treasurys
      Making deals now is as hard as in early days of Covid-19, traders say
      SVB Collapse Under Investigation by SEC and DOJ: What to Know
      The Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice have opened separate investigations into the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. WSJ’s Dave Michaels breaks down what’s included in the probes. Photo Illustration: Ryan Trefes
      By Gunjan Banerji, Anna Hirtenstein and Eric Wallerstein
      Updated March 15, 2023 5:20 pm ET
      222

      The markets for the world’s safest and most liquid assets, the government bonds issued by the U.S. and other rich countries, came under immense stress on Wednesday following a week of worries about the health of global banks.

      Liquidity, the capacity to trade quickly at quoted prices, has fallen sharply in two of the keystone markets, those for U.S. Treasurys and German bunds, traders said. Difficulties including wider price spreads and slower executions are now spreading to many other markets, they said, including those for derivatives that firms and traders use to lock in prices and hedge risks weeks and months ahead of time, such as options, futures and swaps.
      …

    5. Treasury bill yields plunge as SVB collapse affects interest rate view
      Short-term instruments, such as T-bills, are extremely sensitive to interest rate expectations
      Bhaskar Dutta | Mumbai | Last Updated at March 15 2023 23:33 IST

      After skyrocketing in the first 11 weeks of 2023, yields on the government’s Treasury Bills (T-bills) recorded a sharp decline on Wednesday as instability in global markets following the collapse of US-based Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) led to anticipation of central banks going slow on further tightening.

      At Wednesday’s primary sale, the cutoff yields on 91-day, 182-day, and 364-day T-bills were set 11-17 basis points lower than the previous week’s auction.

      With the collapse of the SVB triggering turbulence in the US and European banking sectors, the view among traders is that central banks such as the Federal Reserve would either slow down or hold off on fresh rate hikes. A slower pace of US rate hikes reduces pressure on the RBI to tighten monetary policy and maintain rate differentials, traders said.

      Short-term instruments, such as T-bills, are extremely sensitive to interest rate expectations. “It is an extremely uncertain time for markets; the collapse of SVB has been followed by Signature Bank in the US. Credit Suisse is on a very shaky footing in Europe. All this suggests that central banks will have to go slow,” Naveen Singh, head of trading at ICICI Securities Primary Dealership, said.
      …
      https://wap.business-standard.com/article/finance/treasury-bill-yields-plunge-as-svb-collapse-affects-interest-rate-view-123031501031_1.html

    6. Marketwatch.com
      ‘We need to stop this now.’ First Republic support is spreading financial contagion, says Ackman.
      Published: March 17, 2023 at 6:28 a.m. ET
      By Jamie Chisholm
      Critical information for the U.S. trading day

      And so we draw to the end of another frantic week in markets.

      The CBOE VIX index (VIX), the gauge of equity volatility, twice spiked up to 30 before tumbling back down.

      The ICE BoAML MOVE index, a VIX for the Treasury market, jumped to its highest since the great financial crisis of 2008, at one point up more than 80% from just the start of February.

      Those moves illustrate the whipsaw action in stocks and bond yields as traders tried to work out the seriousness of the unfolding banking crisis and how much it would compromise central banks’ ability to sustain their inflation fighting strategies.

      Worries that financial sector tremors would badly impact the global economy — and some over-long positioning — also caused a slump in oil prices.

      Still, the stock market rallied on Thursday, and Friday’s tone, on the surface at least, is calm as investors appear salved by the authorities arranging support for Credit Suisse (CS), and First Republic (FRC) in the U.S..

      But hold on.

      Source: Citi.

      The Federal Reserve is having to expand its balance sheet again after it reported late Thursday that banks this week used its new Bank Term Funding Program to borrow $11.9 billion. Also, $153 billion was borrowed via the Fed’s discount window and $142.8 billion in bridge loans.

      The market doesn’t know who, or how desperate, these borrowers may be.

      And others are worried that recent actions to help the banking sector are not just papering over the cracks but possibly making things worse.

      Hedge fund manager Bill Ackman is not happy that the systemically important banks (SIBs) have been chivvied into recycling the deposits they received from First Republic Bank (FRB) back into the struggling lender.

      “The result is that FRB default risk is now being spread to our largest banks. Spreading the risk of financial contagion to achieve a false sense of confidence in FRB is bad policy. The SIBs would never have made this low return investment in deposits unless they were pressured to do so and without assurances that FRB deposits would be backstopped if it failed,” Ackman wrote in a tweet late Thursday.

      “The press release announcing the $30B of deposits raised more questions than it answers. Lack of transparency causes market participants to assume the worst. I have said before that hours matter. We have allowed days to go by. Half measures don’t work when there is a crisis of confidence.,” he added.

      Ackman, who runs Pershing Square Capital Management, and is not averse to an apocalyptical outburst, said the banking sector needed a temporary deposit guarantee immediately until an expanded government insurance scheme is widely available.

      “We need to stop this now. We are beyond the point where the private sector can solve the problem and are in the hands of our government and regulators. Tick-tock.”
      …

    7. TheStreet
      Elon Musk Reacts to Cathie Wood’s Bold Tweet
      Cathie Wood has some thoughts about the fallout from the Silicon Valley Bank collapse.
      TONY OWUSU
      MAR 15, 2023 1:28 PM EDT
      The saying goes, “When you’re a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.” Speaking of, Ark Invest founder Cathie Wood has a solution to the U.S. banking system’s latest meltdown.

      More crypto.

      “While the U.S. banking system was seizing up in response to bank runs threatening regional banks, Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other crypto networks didn’t skip a beat,” Wood tweeted.
      …

      1. The Financial Times
        Banks
        Global banks shed $500bn in market rout as Goldman Sachs loses on rate swing
        Regulators discuss crisis with focus on Credit Suisse as March declines have mounted
        A display shows most indicators down on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange
        Financial stocks dived this week as the fallout from the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank spread through global markets
        Stephen Morris, Robert Smith, Owen Walker and Laurence Fletcher in London and Joshua Franklin and Ortenca Aliaj in New York 51 minutes ago

        Investors have wiped nearly half a trillion dollars from the value of bank shares around the world in the worst rout for the financial sector since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.

        Financial stocks dived this week as the fallout from the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank spread through global markets. Banks in the US, Europe and Japan have collectively lost $459bn in market value so far this month — the 16 per cent fall is the sharpest slump since March 2020.

        The heaviest losses came in the US, where the KBW Bank index has lost 18 per cent in March. Europe’s Stoxx 600 banks index has fallen 15 per cent, while Japan’s Topix banking sector index is down 9 per cent.
        …

    9. Business
      Too Big to Fail, or Too Reckless to Survive?
      Santa Barbara Bankers Say They Toe the Fiduciary Line
      A Loomis Armored U.S. vehicle idles at the curb across the way from First Republic Bank in Santa Barbara. | Credit: Courtesy
      By Jean Yamamura
      Fri Mar 17, 2023 | 10:35am

      With more than 4,000 banks in the United States, you might wonder whether the problems of three mid-size banks don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. The potential for contagion clearly does: San Francisco–based First Republic Bank — which has a branch at the corner of State and Anapamu in Santa Barbara — got a total of $30 billion in deposits on Thursday from the Big Four banks and others like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, and that was after $70 billion in loans was promised on Sunday from the Federal Reserve and JPMorgan Chase. That $100 billion worth of beans was not only to shore up that bank but public confidence in banks in general.

      The events in the current banking debacle mount daily, but in brief, a run on Silicon Valley Bank last week brought to very public attention a fatal weakness among several tech-oriented banks. Silicon and Silvergate Bank of La Jolla voluntarily closed that Friday. Signature Bank, headquartered on New York City’s Fifth Avenue, closed on Sunday. All three held crypto or served crypto companies, and when those funds tanked last year, the banks did a slow walk off a short plank.

      “Crypto?” said Peter Rupert, a UC Santa Barbara economist and director of the Economic Forecast Project. “I can see having it if a bank is super well-diversified — it’s super risky, super volatile. What you’re holding could go up 20 percent one week and down 40 percent the next.”
      …
      https://www.independent.com/2023/03/17/too-big-to-fail-or-too-reckless-to-survive/

      1. “All three held crypto or served crypto companies, and when those funds tanked last year, the banks did a slow walk off a short plank.”

        So now we have an answer to whether the gobernment would bail out crypto. No wonder Cathie Wood is stoked!

        1. Prashant Jha
          Mar 16, 2023
          Crypto acted as safe haven amid SVB and Signature bank run: Cathie Wood
          Cathie Wood said the ongoing banking crisis is a total Fed policy failure and could have been averted with crypto’s decentralized solutions.
          Crypto acted as safe haven amid SVB and Signature bank run: Cathie Wood
          News
          Collect this article as an NFT

          Amid all the chaos surrounding multiple bank runs in the United States, Cathie Wood, CEO of asset management firm ARK Invest, said cryptocurrencies have acted as a safe haven amid the ongoing banking crisis in the United States. She blamed the recent downfall of the likes of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), Signature and others on the policy failures of the Federal Reserve.
          …
          https://cointelegraph.com/news/crypto-acted-as-safe-haven-amid-svb-and-signature-bank-run-cathie-wood

  22. What does The West “winning” even mean?

    Hormone therapy for trans kids supported at ‘highest-levels’ of Biden admin (3/17/2023):

    “Assistant Secretary of Health Rachel Levine has been called “reprehensible” for proudly announcing that “gender-affirming” treatment of transgender kids is supported “at the highest levels” of President Biden’s administration.

    Levine, the highest-ranking transgender official in US history, made the claim at a talk in Connecticut last month when asked about criticism of health centers treating children with the likes of puberty blockers and hormones.”

    His name is Richard.

    “She maintained the attacks are “ideologically and politically motivated,” calling them “unconscionable.”

    “I can say that the children, their families and you all as their providers have support at the highest levels of the federal government,” Levine told the Pediatric Grand Rounds session in Hartford.

    “President Biden supports you … Vice President Harris supports you. Across the administration, the departments support you,” she said, saying that she talks “about this topic everywhere I go.”

    https://nypost.com/2023/03/17/hormone-therapy-for-trans-kids-fully-supported-by-biden-administration/

    The term for this in the Old Testament of the Bible is “abomination” and when Weimar America ends, this thing and all the other pedophile groomers will be hanging from lampposts.

  23. Overcoming Obstacles – NEW U.S. Army brand commercial | U.S. Army

    Mar 8, 2023

    About U.S. Army:

    The Army Mission – our purpose – remains constant: To deploy, fight and win our nation’s wars by providing ready, prompt and sustained land dominance by Army forces across the full spectrum of conflict as part of the joint force.

    https://youtu.be/4ItEHJc330Q

    5,490 Comments

    Carpetcop617
    4 days ago

    The fact that anyone would voluntarily sign up to serve under the current administration and military leadership is astounding.

    Ryack 63
    5 days ago

    I’m never dying for people who hate me. NEVER.

    EpicureanCanopy22
    5 days ago

    Be cannon fodder for Z0G and it’s international corporations.

    Conan the Based
    2 days ago

    This Comment Section heartens me.

    Keep it up, you madlads! They can fight their own wars.

    1. “The Army Mission – our purpose – remains constant: To deploy, fight and win our nation’s wars by providing ready, prompt and sustained land dominance by Army forces across the full spectrum of conflict as part of the joint force.”

      The modern U.S. military is Air and Naval superiority. Sure, we have an army and marine corps, but they’re not large enough for a sustained land war. In addition, the Ukraine conflict has introduced to the foot soldier the lethality of “fire and forget” smart strike capability not seen before to easily destroy aircraft and armor, a true game changer.

        1. Was reading that one of those ex Soviet bloc nations just donated all their old and mostly non functional Soviet made fighter jets to Ukraine.

  24. Dow drops 400 points as First Republic’s slide rattles Wall Street: Live updates
    Alex Harring
    Hakyung Kim

    The Dow Jones Industrial Average
    fell Friday as investors remained skittish on First Republic and other banks amid the industry’s crisis.

    The 30-stock index lost 411 points, or 1.3%. The S&P 500 slid 1.1%, while the Nasdaq Composite
    was down 0.7%.

    First Republic slid 20% despite gaining nearly 10% in the previous session. The stock got a boost Thursday when a group of banks said it would aid First Republic with $30 billion in deposits as a sign of confidence in the banking system. That dip weighed on the SPDR Regional Banking ETF (KRE), which was down 5%.

    U.S.-listed shares of Credit Suisse
    were also down 6% as traders parsed through the bank’s announcement that it would borrow up to $50 billion francs (nearly $54 billion) from the Swiss National Bank. Shares were unchanged when the market closed on Thursday.

    The S&P 500 has advanced 1.4% so far this week, while the Nasdaq Composite gained 4.4%. The Dow, however, is down 0.4% this week.

    Art Cashin, director of floor operations at UBS, said on CNBC the market has jumped between extremes over the course of the week as investors switched between feeling oversold and overbought. He said it’s important investors stay vigilant of unnecessary agitations to the market.

    “Today’s a good day to be careful,” Cashin said on “Squawk on the Street.” “Friday before a weekend, financial rumors around, so you … have to be careful to avoid rumor mongers.”
    …
    https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/16/stock-market-today-live-updates.html

  26. Why Redfin Stock Soared 25%
    This Week
    By Chris Neiger – Mar 17, 2023 at 11:25AM

    Key Points

    – Turmoil in the banking industry helped lower mortgage rates earlier this week.
    – Some investors are hoping the Federal Reserve will back off from aggressive rate hikes.
    – There’s still a lot of uncertainty for Redfin shareholders right now.

    Banking woes fueled investor optimism that the Federal Reserve will back off of rate hikes.

    What happened

    Shares of Redfin (RDFN -5.32%) spiked this week on no company-specific news. Instead, the real estate company’s shares climbed higher as mortgage rates fell in response to trouble in the banking industry.

    As a result, Redfin stock was up by 25.1% this week, according to data provided by S&P Global Market Intelligence.
    …
    https://www.fool.com/investing/2023/03/17/why-redfin-stock-soared-25-this-week/

  29. Even if you’re not one to sympathize with landlords in this inflated housing market, non-payment of rent is a tough one to justify, especially if the tenant in question drives a freakin’ Lamborghini.”

    How else is he supposed to afford that Lambo monthly note?

    1. Not paying rent is theft.

      I don’t have to like my landlord to know I should do the right thing even if I don’t like him.

  30. I just got this from Crain’s New York:

    First Republic sees ‘gob-smacking’ deposit outflows; shares plummet after rescue package

    1. Why are depositors freaking out? Did they miss the memo that the Fed has unlimited bailout funds available to make depositors whole, even in excess of the $250,000 FDIC insurance limit?

    2. First Republic sees ‘gob-smacking’ deposit outflows

      Got an email from the Credit Union president asurring us that all is well. I’m thinking I should go and withdraw some extra cash from savings.

  31. Hubs and I have started talking about leaving central Florida. People everywhere.
    A 1,700 square foot house in the nice area of the city south of us (a city of mostly mobile home parks and one super nice home community) just went pending for $370,000. It was bought several years ago for $185.

    People are smoking something here.

    In other news, I’m part of a conservative moms’ group I won’t name. Found out today that the executive on the board of a south Florida county branch is a gay dude who adopted kids.
    How did I find out? I mentioned in our moms’ group that marriage is between one man and one woman. In this way I unknowingly started a dumpster fire.
    Why did I even mention such a thing? Because there is a video of some dude mentioning that Ron DeSantis sent a baby gift to some dude who adopted babies with his husband- they used a surrogate.

    Florida is a freaking $hithole.

    1. “A 1,700 square foot house in the nice area of the city south of us (a city of mostly mobile home parks and one super nice home community) just went pending for $370,000. It was bought several years ago for $185.“

      “Money for nothin’ and your chicks for free.” —Dire Straits

    2. Because there is a video of some dude mentioning that Ron DeSantis sent a baby gift to some dude who adopted babies with his husband- they used a surrogate.

      The GOP has folded on the issue of same sex marriage and is teetering on the trans issue. Pedo normalization is next.

    3. Florida is a freaking $hithole.

      The last time I was in central Florida it seemed like everyone was either central American or from the Dominican Republic/Cuba/Puerto Rico. Especially at the airport, it seemed like all the staff were Hispanics: TSA, airline workers, shops, etc.

    4. Florida is a freaking $hithole”

      I don’t know, I just drove from North Palm Beach to Jupiter Fl. on the beach road and it looked pretty heterosexual and more like this than a $hithole …

      https://youtu.be/ML6njoVEtbA?t=18

      of course it is Spring Brake time. 🙂

      1. Jupiter to Palm Beach are some of the richest areas in Florida. They’re also very liberal.

    5. Hubs and I have started talking about leaving central Florida. People everywhere.

      I think you will find that any metro area with jobs is like that: people everywhere.

      I have heard that rural Wyoming can be nice, if you can find a job you like.

      1. My husband can work anywhere. North Florida is less dense and way more conservative than Central and South Florida. We may head up there .

    1. Damn!

      With that glass jaw, Homie is gonna have to put on some head gear at least if he wants to play stop the traffic with my Johnson. 🙂

        1. Yep, heard the back of his noggin hit the deck!

          Back in my military days, I was driving past an EM club just in time to see an MP hit some pugnacious drunk on the skull with a billy-club, and I heard it with my window rolled up; he was out cold before he hit the ground! I learned a quick lesson at someone else’s expense.

  33. Peanuts! Pop-Corn! Red-Hots! Getcha Red-Hots! Beer here! Ice Cold Beer! Boosters! Who needs their Covid Booster!? Get em’ while they’re hot! Covid Boosters here!

    ‘The Wire’ actor Lance Reddick dead at 60, reports say

    Updated: 3:49 PM EDT
    Mar 17, 2023

    Actor Lance Reddick, known for his roles in “The Wire” and “John Wick,” has died, according to multiple reports. He was 60 years old.

    Reddick’s representatives confirmed his death with Rolling Stone, reporting he died from natural causes.

    https://www.wtae.com/article/the-wire-actor-lance-reddick-dead-at-60-reports-say/43351995

  34. The seeds of destruction of the US Constitutional Republic was set up by President Woodrow Wilson , about 110 years ago.

    Wilson passed the 16th amendment (Federal Income Tax)) The required States didn’t ratify as required, but it was rammed through by selling it as only being a rich persons tax.
    If you want a Big Fed Gov, you need to have means to fund it. . But that Tax turned into a looting system by Rich. Think
    Bailouts to Banks, welfare state, government backed real estate and school loans, funds to Medical Cartel, massive military budget for endless wars, and now bio-weapon research turned on US Citizens.

    – Woodrow Wilson passed the Federal Reserve Act, and we all know what a loot job rip off that is..

    –Woodrow Wilson got us into World War 1, which got us into WW2, which set us up to be Global military watchdogs with endless wars and massive military budget. The intent of Founders was protection of US Borders and US interest only.

    .- Woodrow Wilson set up League of Nations, which morphed into United Nations/. . . The UN is a corrupt global organization that wants to override Sovereign States and Constitutions by treaty with member Countries for One World Order dictates..

    -Woodrow Wilson passed the Sedition Act that made Free speech criminal regarding
    on opinion / dispute to unpopular World war with public at the time.
    . The Act was later struck as unconstitutional — Wilson was a shill for Rockerfeller, forcing expierment vaccines on troops with massive death toll covered up under the fog of war.

    –Wilson was a Elite and known racist and shill for Big Business. He passed segregation laws that were later struck.

    ,- Wilson called himself a “Progressive”, which means he wanted to progress right out of Constitutional Republic and Government by the people.
    — Wilson had most education of all Presidents, but he had a stroke in office that was covered up ,while his wife ran the show. But basically Woodrow Wilson set about to undermine and destroy all that the Founders of this Republic set up that would in effect be the seeds of destruction of USA, with a One World Order take over.
    Wilson did other things, but I just listed some of the big ones that set the wrong course of history and attack on humanity.

  35. Clown World gonna clown — Denver Edition

    Westword — Trans Person Kicked Out of Club: For Using Legal Restroom, or Behaving Badly? (3/17/2023):

    “Just after midnight on February 26, Xadie James — who identifies as a feminine nonbinary trans person and uses she/they pronouns — went into the women’s bathroom at Milk Bar and wound up getting kicked out of the club at 1037 Broadway.

    On February 28, James created a post on Instagram about the incident; by this week, it had gathered over 2,000 likes. Many commenters expressed support, while others claimed they had seen or experienced similar incidents at Milk Bar.

    Milk Bar responded by posting a “statement” on Instagram on March 11: “Since our inception Milk Bar has been committed to providing a safe space for patrons and staff of all communities and identities, including all gender identities, sexual orientations, races, (21+) ages, and beyond.”

    According to Bailey, Milk Bar will host a training at the end of the month that addresses the incident and focuses on employee relations with the trans community and the LGBTQ community in general.

    But first, Denver Communists are planning a “Trans Day of Resistance” at Civic Center Park today, March 17. The protest will address an increasing amount of anti-trans rhetoric and legislation throughout the country, according to the group, which will then lead a protest down to Milk Bar at 8:30 p.m.”

    https://www.westword.com/news/trans-restrooms-milk-bar-denver-protest-gender-16401863

    “They’re not sending their best”

    1. MarketWatch
      Home
      Economy & Politics
      Economic Report
      U.S. economy is headed for trouble, leading economic index signals
      Last Updated: March 17, 2023 at 10:25 a.m. ET
      First Published: March 17, 2023 at 10:12 a.m. ET
      By Jeffry Bartash
      Leading economic index falls 0.3% in February

      The numbers: The U.S. leading economic index fell 0.3% in February — the 11th decline in a row — continuing to signal an upcoming recession.

      Economists polled by the Wall Street Journal had forecast a 0.4% drop.

      The leading economic index, also known as the LEI, is a gauge of 10 indicators designed to show whether the economy is getting better or worse. The report is published by the nonprofit Conference Board.
      …

    2. Banking Crisis Hangs Over Economy, Rekindling Recession Fear
      Borrowing could become tougher, a particular blow to small businesses — and a threat to the recovery’s staying power.
      The Federal Reserve building in Washington, lit at night.
      The Federal Reserve policymakers, pursuing interest rate increases to tame inflation, must now contend with upheaval in the financial system as well.
      Credit…Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times
      By Ben Casselman
      March 17, 2023Updated 5:19 p.m. ET

      The U.S. economic recovery has repeatedly defied predictions of an impending recession, withstanding supply-chain backlogs, labor shortages, global conflicts and the fastest increase in interest rates in decades.

      That resilience now faces a new test: a banking crisis that, at times over the past week, seemed poised to turn into a full-blown financial meltdown as oil prices plunged and investors poured money into U.S. government debt and other assets perceived as safe.

      Markets remained volatile on Friday — stocks had their worst day of the week — as leaders in Washington and on Wall Street sought to keep the crisis contained.

      Even if those efforts succeed — and veterans of previous crises cautioned that was a big “if” — economists said the episode would inevitably take a toll on hiring and investments as banks pulled back on lending, and businesses struggled to borrow money as a result. Some forecasters said the turmoil had already made a recession more likely.
      …
      https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/17/business/economy/economy-banks-recession.html

  37. Every once in a while, I stumble upon some refreshing, positive news:

    El Salvador: 2,000 more to prison, vows will ‘never return’

    El Salvador’s government sent 2,000 more suspects to a huge new prison built especially for gang members Wednesday, and the the justice minister vowed that “they will never return” to the streets.

    Over the last 354 days, about 65,000 people have been arrested in the antigang campaign.

    Congress must still approve the extension of the antigang measures, but legislators are expected to do, as they have done a dozen times before.

    Bukele requested the special powers to pursue the gangs last March 27, following a surge in gang violence in which 62 people were killed in a single day across the country. Streets gangs like MS-13 and Barrio 18 have long killed and extorted money from residents in El Salvador.

    Officials say that since the crackdown began, there have been 200 days with no homicides at all.

    1. “El Salvador’s government sent 2,000 more suspects to a huge new prison built especially for gang members Wednesday, and the the justice minister vowed that “they will never return” to the streets.”

      Might as well put ’em down.

  38. Mexican president: lack of hugs caused US fentanyl crisis

    It’s time to declare war, and send the US military into Mexico. Their narco President is just begging us to.

    1. Mexican president: lack of hugs caused US fentanyl crisis

      He’s right, of course. Doing drugs is usually an attempt to self-medicate to ease the pain of abandonment and other family issues.

      1. The “hugs” thing comes from one of AMLO’s campaign slogans: Abrazos, no balazos, “hugs, not gun shots”. His platform was to appease the cartels, hoping that they would chill and stop causing trouble in Mexico. He failed in a most catastrophic way.

        One thing he has in common with Brandon is that he likes to gaslight and say everything is fine (todo esta requete bien), when it is painfully obvious that things are not fine.

    2. If you don’t like AMLO, just wait until you see who is going to replace him. Note: In Mexico all elected offices are single term. AMLO has 2 of his 6 years left. The front runner to replace him is Claudia Sheinbaum. Sheinbaum is a globalist. AMLO is afraid of the cartels, Sheinbaum will be happy to collaborate with them.

  39. I’m fixin to launch a new offensive on the housing crime syndicate on Shitter…

    What will all the fake rich know nothings, bray brays and cluck clucks do?

  40. Does it seem odd that US stocks have barely dropped, given the full blown freakout of the bond market?

    1. The Financial Times
      Opinion The Long View
      The tumult in Treasuries: are hedge funds partly to blame?
      Historic rally in world’s most liquid market may have reflected a ‘short squeeze’
      Katie Martin 5 hours ago

      On Monday this week, the most important market in the world went, to use the technical term, completely bananas.

      Government bonds have a habit of rallying when the going gets tough, which it indisputably did when Silicon Valley Bank imploded. So a jump in US Treasury debt prices off the back of this makes sense. The turmoil prompted nervous investors to look for a safer hidey hole.

      The failure of SVB, and a clutch of other regional US banks, suggests the US Federal Reserve will be more lenient in its interest rate rises from here for fear of tripping up the banking sector. It might also mean the central bank won’t need to be as aggressive as it has been, if commercial banks tighten up lending standards. Both factors would boost the appeal of bonds. Plus, a lot of deposits getting yanked out of banks found their way in to US money market funds, where they were turn ploughed into Treasuries.

      But there are bond rallies and there are bond rallies. This time, the market reaction in Treasuries was nothing short of apocalyptic. Two-year Treasury notes, the most sensitive instrument in the debt market to the outlook for interest rates, rocketed higher in price. Yields dropped by an eye-popping 0.56 percentage points, having already dropped by 0.31 percentage points the previous Friday.

      To put Monday’s move in context, it represents a bigger shock than in March 2020 — not a vintage period for global markets. It was bigger than on any day in the financial crisis in 2008 (ditto). You have to go back to Black Monday of 1987 to find anything more severe. Trading volumes were off the charts. Monday was the biggest day for trading in Treasuries ever, with around $1.5tn changing hands, well above the average of $600bn or so.
      …

    2. The Financial Times
      Opinion Banks
      Are banks on the edge of another 2008-style precipice?
      Bearish nerves seem to be winning right now — despite good reasons to hope not
      Patrick Jenkins
      Traders at the New York Stock Exchange
      US bank shares are down 17% over the past fortnight
      Patrick Jenkins yesterday

      Northern Rock, Bear Stearns, Countrywide Financial and Alliance & Leicester. Back in late 2007 and early 2008, when they all failed or were rescued, none of the above was systemically important. And few observers would have predicted the nightmarish crisis that was to strike within the year, felling behemoths from Wall Street’s venerable Lehman Brothers to Royal Bank of Scotland, then the biggest bank in the world.

      Fifteen years later, after a week in which four banks — Silicon Valley Bank, Signature and First Republic in the US, and Credit Suisse in Europe — teetered and were propped up in one way or another, it is no wonder that investors are questioning whether we are facing 2007-style problems that could soon spiral into another full-blown 2008-style disaster.

      There are good reasons to hope not. The primary causes of the 2008 crisis — a glut of poor-quality subprime mortgages that had been spread round the world via derivatives on to the balance sheets of poorly capitalised banks — do not apply in 2023. Credit quality remains decent. And bank capital is two to three times stronger than it was a decade and a half ago.

      Such reassurances have felt empty though in the face of the market panic afflicting bank shares. European banks are down by an average of 19 per cent in a fortnight; US banks by 17 per cent. On Wednesday Credit Suisse shares slumped by 30 per cent intraday, recovering only after central bank intervention.

      Markets were not exactly calm by the end of the week but they had stabilised somewhat. This came after CS made use of a $54bn “bazooka” liquidity intervention by the Swiss National Bank, while the risk of US bank runs was offset by deposit guarantees, new Federal Reserve liquidity facilities and a Wall Street whipround.

      Of course such interventions were not supposed to be necessary after the drama of 2008. The vast package of post-crisis regulatory reforms was designed to ensure there could be no repeat of the domino collapses of banks on both sides of the Atlantic. New minimum levels of equity capital were devised, regulatory stress tests were introduced and liquidity ratios were toughened, dictating that more ready funds should be available to meet customer withdrawal requests.

      This week’s problems in the US were explicitly caused by a failure there to apply these rules to anything other than the eight biggest banks. SVB was brought to its knees by a combination of poor interest rate risk management and lax regulatory oversight, leaving it vulnerable to a run on deposit withdrawals.

      A similar phenomenon afflicted Signature, a crypto-focused bank, hours later. First Republic, another regional bank, became a particular target after panicked investors realised it would not benefit from the special Federal Reserve funding vehicle launched in the wake of SVB’s failure, because it lacked the requisite collateral to tap the scheme.
      …

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