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Everyone Wants To Pay Tomorrow’s Price

A report from the Orange County Register. “California’s latest homebuying debacle is a pumped-up storyline we’ve seen before — even if each housing bubble has its own shape and size. The median price of an existing, single-family home in California in February 2023 was $735,000, 18% off May 2022’s $900,000 high. That’s the third-biggest drop on record over these 10 months. Oddly, the nation’s central bank that’s also a bank regulator was the pump for this bubble. This bubble’s pop came in early 2022 when the Fed’s pump ended. Oh, and a collection of banks collapsed — notably California’s Silicon Valley Bank — as their wrong-way bets on interest rates blew up.”

The New York Post on California. “Sellers have been throwing in brand new Bentleys and McLarens and drastically slashing prices in order to incentivize a quick close. That’s because a so-called ‘mansion tax’ goes into effect Saturday in Los Angeles. ‘People need to get as creative as possible to motivate the buyer to close before this [tax goes into effect],’ said Josh Altman, a luxury broker in Los Angeles. ‘A lot of times it’s … a cut-your-losses type of approach.'”

The Salt Lake Tribune. “The sandy hole where the historic Utah Theater once stood along Salt Lake City’s Main Street wasn’t supposed to be quiet Friday. Under contracts with the city’s Redevelopment Agency, global developer Hines was to start construction of a luxury 31-story residential tower. The Texas-based firm now says it has run into financial difficulties after a key equity partner ‘recently pulled out of the project due to the unprecedented market changes over the last several months,’ forcing the developer to miss its legal benchmark to start building. Hines is one the largest privately held real estate investors and managers in the world, making Friday’s hiccup another sign of a slowdown in the city’s recent commercial real estate boom amid the effects of market swings, a deflated office sector and rising interest rate rises.”

Bisnow New York. “The Chetrit Organization has sold its 850 Third Ave. office tower to its lender for less than the value of the mortgage it took out on the Midtown East property less than two years ago. The firm closed on a sale of the 21-story property to its lender for $266M this month. The deal works out at a price of roughly $431 per SF for the 617K SF building. The price tag on the most recent sale of the building is a steep discount from what Chetrit bought it for — which was already a haircut for its predecessor. The New York landlord run by Jacob Chetrit paid $422M for the building in 2019.”

“Both the Chetrit Group and the Chetrit Organization — the two firms formed after the Chetrit brothers split the family business in two — have had trouble with debt on some of their more recent purchases since interest rates started spiking. The Chetrit Group, run by Joseph Chetrit, was looking to offload 8,000 multifamily units across several U.S. states in January, with the portfolio’s occupancy hovering at 76% in spite of demand for apartments. The Chetrit Group also found itself in trouble a month later, when it defaulted on a pre-development loan in Hudson Yards and its lender set about looking for a buyer for the debt who might foreclose on the site.”

From Storeys in Canada. “Real estate in Richmond Hill is holding its value better than the rest. Brock, not so much. Last week, Toronto real estate expert John Pasalis released a comprehensive chart outlining the drop in sale prices of low-rise homes in various regions of the Greater Toronto Area, comparing February 2023 sales to those one year prior. Places like Brock, Caledon, and Pickering — cities that saw prices surge not long after the onset of the pandemic — all experienced the greatest price drops between February 2022 and February 2023, at -37%, -36%, and -33%, respectively. During the February 2022 peak, average low-rise home prices in Brock reached a shocking $1,124,119. By February 2023, they had dropped to $713,042. Similarly, in the once red-hot Caledon region, home prices fell from $1,864,257 in February 2022 to $1,120,252 in February 2023.”

“Never one to hold back, Toronto mortgage broker Ron Butler expresses his thoughts on Brock’s price drops. ‘The idea that a house 1 hour and 15 minute drive from downtown Toronto in Brock Region could be worth $1.1M is peak Batshit Crazy,’ he wrote. He’s not wrong. But those were different times.”

“Meanwhile, Richmond Hill, Toronto, and Vaughan saw the smallest drops in that time frame, at -14%, -15%, and -17%, respectively. Richmond Hill saw a minor price drop relative to some of its big suburbia counterparts. At the February peak, the average low-rise home price hit $1,914,379; by February 2023, prices were $1,644,146. In Toronto, prices in February 2022 had reached $1,889,178 before dropping to $1,606,591 in February 2023. Vaughan saw the third-smallest price drop, from $1,970,730 in February 2022 to $1,643,499 in February 2022.”

The Telegraph. “The arrival of the pandemic sparked a ‘race for space’ as homeowners looked to flee crowded cities for the sanctuary of suburbs and the countryside. But three years on from the first lockdown, owners in these areas are suffering the biggest price falls amid soaring mortgage rates. House prices across the UK have fallen by 3.1pc in the last year, the biggest annual decline since July 2009, according to mortgage lender Nationwide. These buyers are in for a rude awakening when they come to the end of their fixed-rate deals, experts warned.”

“Many economists believe the era of cheap debt during the past few years is over. Those who cannot afford to pay their increased mortgage costs will be forced to sell, and these distressed sales will further push down prices. Philip Harvey, of buying agents Property Vision, says buyers were prepared to overpay while the market was booming, expecting to ‘recoup their losses through natural house price rises.'”

“‘As soon as you’re looking at prices flattening at best or falling, people are going to factor that in and think, ‘how much less is the house that I’m buying today going to be worth in four years’ time if the price drops 4pc or 5pc a year?’ he says. ‘They want to be very cautious about how much they spend. Everyone wants to pay tomorrow’s price.'”

“Guildford, Salisbury and Watford are among the areas where agreed sales prices have fallen the most from their peak last summer, according to TwentyCi. Agreed sales prices dropped 12pc in Salisbury and Guildford between June and February. The average house was sold for £374,932 in Salisbury in February, and £550,921 in Guildford. In Watford, prices were down 11pc during the same period, reaching £536,700.”

“Bill Spreckley, of Stacks buying agents, says buyers in Guildford have lowered their bids, but some sellers are still expecting the same prices their neighbours were receiving a year ago. Homeowners who bought expensive properties further away from city centres may now be in for a shock when they come to sell. ‘People have stopped paying too much for properties in a bit of a panic,’ he says. ‘They won’t be doing that anymore.'”

The Sydney Morning Herald in Australia. “Collapsed home builder Porter Davis drastically slashed prices of new homes – some by $50,000 – until the day it went into liquidation, luring in buyers who are unlikely to get their money back. The company, which left 1700 homes unfinished when it abruptly halted work last Friday, dropped the price of its signature Grange-style houses by $50,000 at the start of February in a bid to drum up sales ahead of a financial crisis that has brought insolvency specialists through the doors two months later.”

“John Goddard from Subbies United said Porter Davis’ sales tactics ‘smack of desperation’ and the company’s directors should be questioned about taking deposits while the business was financially struggling and not paying subcontractors.”

“Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews said on Sunday that the government would not act as financial backstop for buyers.’There may be a role for the VMIA [Victorian Managed Insurance Authority] in providing advice, but we’re not the financier of last resort,’ the premier said. ‘We know, and acknowledge, that this is a really tough time for those people who’ve got a house that hasn’t been finished or indeed some that haven’t even started.'”

“The state-backed VMIA is set to be swamped by claims from 1500 hard-hit Victorians caught up in the Porter Davis collapse and potentially faces a bill of up to $80 million. Another 200 home owners in Queensland will need to chase claims in that state. John Murray, who conducted a review of security-of-payment laws for the Turnbull government in 2017, said 85 per cent of construction work in Australia was carried out by subcontractors – small businesses that rely on cash to survive.”

“Under the current system, builders retain progress payments and use the money, which in effect should be paid to subcontractors for work done, as security for bank loans. If the builder becomes insolvent, the bank, usually the largest secured creditor, gets any remaining funds, Murray said. ‘Subcontractors are left whistling in the wind.'”

“Porter Davis’ collapse adds to a growing list of major builders suffering from rising costs of products and labour, as well as less funding appetite from banks and investors in a slowing market. Another civil construction firm, Lloyd Group, was also placed in voluntary administration last Friday, upending 59 projects in Victoria and NSW, and putting 200 staff in limbo.”

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This Post Has 94 Comments

  1. ‘The price tag on the most recent sale of the building is a steep discount from what Chetrit bought it for — which was already a haircut for its predecessor’

    Caught a falling knife.

  2. ‘The idea that a house 1 hour and 15 minute drive from downtown Toronto in Brock Region could be worth $1.1M is peak Batshit Crazy’

    And it’s sound lending Ron.

  3. ‘The median price of an existing, single-family home in California in February 2023 was $735,000, 18% off May 2022’s $900,000 high. That’s the third-biggest drop on record over these 10 months. Oddly, the nation’s central bank that’s also a bank regulator was the pump for this bubble. This bubble’s pop came in early 2022 when the Fed’s pump ended’

    November 29, 2022

    In June, Fed Chair Jerome Powell told reporters that the overheated U.S. housing market—which saw U.S. home prices rise over 40% in just over two years—needed a “reset.” And higher mortgage rates, he said, would slowly bring “balance” back to the market.

    “We saw [home] prices moving up very very strongly for the last couple of years. So that changes now…I’d say if you are a homebuyer, somebody or a young person looking to buy a home, you need a bit of a reset. We need to get back to a place where supply and demand are back together,” Powell said.

    https://www.yahoo.com/video/fed-housing-market-reset-officially-001953434.html

      1. “Ben Bernanke worked with Congress to add housing bubble reflation to the Fed’s growing mandate. How is that working out for them?”

        – I think it’s working out great for the Fed and the 1%, but for the rest of us, not so much…
        – Recall that Housing Bubble 1.0 was also caused by the reckless Fed.
        – Here, the Fed sets us up for another boom and bust cycle; this time it’s The Everything Bubble.
        – Evergreen Wa Po Op Ed here.

        https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/03/AR2010110307372.html

        washingtonpost.com > Opinions
        What the Fed did and why: supporting the recovery and sustaining price stability
        By Ben S. Bernanke
        Thursday, November 4, 2010

        “With short-term interest rates already about as low as they can go, the FOMC agreed to deliver that support by purchasing additional longer-term securities, as it did in 2008 and 2009. The FOMC intends to buy an additional $600 billion of longer-term Treasury securities by mid-2011 and will continue to reinvest repayments of principal on its holdings of securities, as it has been doing since August.”

        “This approach eased financial conditions in the past and, so far, looks to be effective again. Stock prices rose and long-term interest rates fell when investors began to anticipate the most recent action. Easier financial conditions will promote economic growth. For example, lower mortgage rates will make housing more [MUCH less] affordable and allow more homeowners to refinance. Lower corporate bond rates will encourage investment [zombie companies and stock buy-backs]. And higher stock prices will boost consumer wealth [wealth inequality] and help increase confidence, which can also spur spending. Increased spending will lead to higher incomes and profits that, in a virtuous circle, will further support economic expansion.”

        “Although asset purchases are relatively unfamiliar as a tool of monetary policy, some concerns about this approach are overstated. Critics have, for example, worried that it will lead to excessive increases in the money supply and ultimately to significant increases in inflation.”

        – The Fed = Soviet Gosplan = Wile E. Coyote, Super Genius.
        – Any centrally-planned, command and control entitiy and ensuing economy is doomed to fail spectacularly. Here we go again…

  4. Are you hoping to reside in an urban luxury apartment on the cheap?

    You may soon be in luck!

    1. Housing
      U.S. cities are filling up with luxury apartments despite ‘housing recession’
      Published Sun, Apr 2 2023 6:05 AM EDT
      Carlos Waters
      Why cities are filling up with luxury apartments

      Key Points

      – Apartment building hit a 50-year high in 2022, according to analysts at Yardi Matrix.

      – New housing is often marketed as “luxury” to justify prices set for high-wage earners, particularly in U.S. cities with strong job markets.

      – Revisions to real estate regulations and federal home-building subsidies are top policy priorities among lawmakers in Washington looking to address the housing supply issue.
      …
      https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/02/luxury-apartments-dominate-us-cities-amid-housing-recession.html

      1. – Apartment building hit a 50-year high in 2022, according to analysts at Yardi Matrix.

        https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=QPZ7
        New Privately-Owned Housing Units Under Construction: Total Units (UNDCONTSA)
        Observation: Feb 2023: 1,691 Updated: Mar 16, 2023
        Units: Thousands of Units, Seasonally Adjusted
        Frequency: Monthly

        –> 1.691M Total units under construction in the U.S.:
        MFH 5+ units
        SFH 1 units
        + 16k 2-4 units

        https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/UNDCON5MUSA
        New Privately-Owned Housing Units Under Construction: Units in Buildings with 5 Units or More (UNDCON5MUSA)
        Observation:
        Feb 2023: 941 Updated: Mar 16, 2023
        Units: Thousands of Units, Seasonally Adjusted
        Frequency: Monthly
        –> 0.941M 5+ MFH units under construction

        https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/UNDCON1USA
        New Privately-Owned Housing Units Under Construction: Single-Family Units (UNDCON1USA)
        Observation:
        Feb 2023: 734 Updated: Mar 16, 2023
        Units: Thousands of Units, Seasonally Adjusted
        Frequency: Monthly
        –> 0.734M 1 SFH under construction

        – I personally have no desire to live in an urban center. This is independent of the Socialism-induced 3rd world sh*thole environment in many/most of these now. Personal preference, but many choose urban living and working. Big cities have been around for a while now.
        – As in every cycle – and this one’s a doozy – developers have and are continuing to overbuild.
        – Combine this with CRE crater due to pandemic-induced WFH and 3rd world sh*thole status out-migration, it’s going to be a lot different (read less populated) in the cities.
        – There will someday be an urban renaissance perhaps, but not until there’s a massive shift away from Socialist/Communist (any difference, really?) goobernment and free market financial incentives to move and/or work there. Otherwise, enjoy the downtown zombie apocalypse and economic and social decline.
        – Needles and feces and crime! Oh my!
        – Get the gooberment out of housing and pretty much everything else (i.e. limited gooberment), restore free market principles, and the U.S. would be a better place (maybe someday). Big gooberment and related Socialism is killing the U.S., but that seems to be the plan lately.

    1. Seller is delusional. Car loans on used vehicles are hitting around 14%, and that’s with good credit – a rarity in #BidensEconomy.

      1. My son’s 2001 Toyota Tacoma 4×2 pickup with 193k miles cost us $5,800 about 5 yrs ago. I still can’t believe it. 🙂

        1. Just took a looksie on cars dot com

          The cheapest 2001 Tacoma I saw, with 250K miles is asking $7500.

    3. Lucky Lopez – Muricans can’t afford their car payments. Wait until all the idiots who massively overpaid during the scamdemic let the repo man haul away their rapidly depreciating vehicles rather than keep making ridiculous payments. Gosh, hope this doesn’t leave lenders holding the bag.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFvGWH020yE

      1. I once read that if your car was repo’d and sold, that you would still be on the hook for any loan balance not covered by the proceeds from the sale, and that your wages could be garnished. I suppose that this varies state by state.

  6. “The median price of an existing, single-family home in California in February 2023 was $735,000, 18% off May 2022’s $900,000 high. That’s the third-biggest drop on record over these 10 months.”

    February = 2
    May = 5
    (2 – 5) mod 12 = 9 months, not 10.
    Modular arithmetic matters.

    Annualized rate of price decline is
    1-(735/900)^(12/9) = 23.7%

      1. This snowball just started rolling downhill. It takes a while for an avalanche to gain critical mass.

      2. The greedheads of Colorado Springs are still clinging to their delusional wish prices. No problemo – I’ve got all the time in the world. You don’t.

    2. Modular arithmetic matters.

      Ironically, counting on your fingers yields the same result.

    3. Chatgpt disagrees.

      Question – The median price of an existing, single-family home in California in February 2023 was $735,000, 18% off May 2022’s $900,000 high. What’s the annualized rate of decline?

      Chatgpt – To calculate the annualized rate of decline, we need to know the percentage decline over a year, assuming the decline is constant over that period.

      The percentage decline from May 2022 to February 2023 is:

      (900,000 – 735,000) / 900,000 = 0.1833 or 18.33%

      To annualize this rate of decline, we need to know the number of months between May 2022 and February 2023.

      There are 10 months between May 2022 and February 2023. So the annualized rate of decline is:

      (1 – (1 – 0.1833)^(12/10)) * 100% = 30.16%

      Therefore, the annualized rate of decline for the median price of an existing, single-family home in California from May 2022 to February 2023 is approximately 30.16%.

      1. It depends of when you start counting: at the beginning or the end of May.

        “18% off May 2022’s $900,000 high” sounds to me like we are starting at the end of May.

          1. It’s just a fancy chat bot. That said, it will be able to perform a lot of menial jobs that previous chat bots could not.

      2. May vs June is one month, not two.

        There is no day of the month to it. The numbers are aggregate for the whole month.

      3. “There are 10 months between May 2022 and February 2023.”

        Finger counting is harder than most people suspect. You’d be amazed how many people make the mistake of counting both the first and last months in trying to figure out the number of months that have elapsed. And AI systems are no smarter than their human programmers.

        1. counting both the first and last months

          Then Y/Y would look like 13 months. What shall we name the new month?

  7. The median price of an existing, single-family home in California in February 2023 was $735,000, 18% off May 2022’s $900,000 high. That’s the third-biggest drop on record over these 10 months.

    Can’t wait for the March numbers to come out. Crater!

  9. “The Chetrit Organization has sold its 850 Third Ave. office tower to its lender for less than the value of the mortgage it took out on the Midtown East property less than two years ago.

    Would love to see a Dead Pool of the CRE that is seeing its underlying collateral increasingly impaired as trillions in fictitious Yellen Bux valuations fly off to debauched currency heaven. Got popcorn?

      1. To consolidate into a few megabanks. The goal is to get rid of credit unions and all small and regional banks. Once everyone is banking at BofA, Wells Fargo, Chase, etc, then the next step is to combine all those megabanks into one super megabank, and then it becomes easy peasy to eliminate paper money and replace it with CBDC.

        1. So keep your eyes open. If smaller banks start to drop like jab recipients, then you will know the game is afoot.

          1. Anything to consolidate more size and power in the systemically-important, too-big-to-fail, bailout-ready megabanks…

        2. replace it with CBDC

          In my personal opinion, if you do all your transactions by credit card and ACH, we’re already there.

          1. Agreed, many people won’t even miss not having physical cash.

            I have read stories about how in the UK your bank teller can challenge your making a large cash withdrawal (say two thousand pounds), and ask you to why you need so much cash and even deny the withdrawal.

          2. That happened to me in my local bank a few years ago. IIRC, it was $6,000. No roadblocks and sirens, just a polite question.

  11. Places like Brock, Caledon, and Pickering — cities that saw prices surge not long after the onset of the pandemic — all experienced the greatest price drops between February 2022 and February 2023, at -37%, -36%, and -33%, respectively.

    Is that a lot?

  12. But three years on from the first lockdown, owners in these areas are suffering the biggest price falls amid soaring mortgage rates.

    Stupid should hurt, FBs who got caught up in the scamdemic hysteria.

  13. “Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews said on Sunday that the government would not act as financial backstop for buyers.’There may be a role for the VMIA [Victorian Managed Insurance Authority] in providing advice, but we’re not the financier of last resort,’ the premier said.

    Gosh, I’d sure hate to see Aussie FBs turning on their globalist Quisling WEF regime.

  14. Apparently this is part of a “special series” titled: Untangling Disinformation, which you should translate as “let the Language Police tell you what to think.”

    NPR — From 4chan to international politics, a bug-eating conspiracy theory goes mainstream (4/2/2023):

    “Including insects in human food has been an emerging, but still marginal, idea among climate scientists and food security experts. In countries where insects have not been a part of the diet, it’s an idea that has long been met with hesitancy and occasional ridicule.”

    Ah, yes, the “experts.”

    “In recent years, however, this aversion has fused with an amorphous and shapeshifting conspiracy theory in which a shadowy global elite conspires to control the world’s population. For those who espouse the theory, eating bugs isn’t just a matter of disgust, or questioning the impacts of climate change. It’s framed as a matter of individual freedom and government control.”

    It’s not a theory.

    “Earlier online discussions about eating insects were mostly reactions to news stories with responses ranging from curiosity to disgust. Take the phrase “I will not eat the bugs” as an example. Some of the earliest instances of the phrase surfaced on the 4chan message board on Aug. 30, 2019. Anonymous users repeated the phrase in response to a photo of climate activist Greta Thunberg, sometimes paired with the phrase “I will not live in a pod,” said Sara Aniano, a disinformation researcher at the Anti-Defamation League, who identified the 4chan posts for NPR.”

    A “disinformation researcher” you say? I’ve yet to ever hear what the education or credentials required are for such title. Or what the ADL did with the check for $500,000 that Kyrie Irving gave them.

    “Researchers at Social Media Research Foundation searched for tweets and website links going back to 2018. NPR also reviewed discussions in 2019 and before on Google, Facebook and smaller social platforms like Rumble, Kiwifarms and Bitchute via Junkipedia and Pyrra Technologies.

    The phrase “I will not eat the bugs” would later resurface as part of a COVID-era conspiracy theory about government coercion, but it’s difficult to pin down when it began. As COVID-19 swept across the world in early 2020 and governments imposed mandates on masks and upheld restrictions on social gatherings and travel, the conspiracy theory that global elites were seizing an opportunity — or even inventing an excuse — to exert more control over an unknowing population flourished, including by forcing them to eat insects.

    “There’s an undefined ‘they’ in charge,” says Ciaran O’Connor, a senior analyst at the nonprofit Institute for Strategic Dialogue, reviewing the post for NPR. “‘We would have almost no luxuries and would work for whatever minor consumption we would be allowed’ … I definitely see New World Order overtones.”

    A “senior analyst” that sounds pretty serious. Note that this article never mentions once that the “they” in question were never, in fact, elected to govern anything.

    “It mostly stayed on the fringe of public consciousness until early 2020, when many people questioned the stay-at-home measures put in place to stop the spread of COVID-19. It got an extra boost during the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, in July 2020, when chairman Klaus Schwab announced an initiative called “the Great Reset.”

    Vague and sprawling, the Great Reset urged a rethinking of national and global systems of government in the wake of COVID-19. The gathering of global elites in Davos has long held the imagination of conspiracy theorists and the initiative quickly became construed as evidence that global elites were using the outbreak to further enslave the masses.”

    https://www.npr.org/2023/03/31/1166649732/conspiracy-theory-eating-bugs-4chan

    And a reminder, at last year’s G20 conference in Bali, the attendees dined on wagyu beef.

    2. From 4chan to international politics, a bug-eating conspiracy theory goes mainstream

      That must be why in a recent episode of the Great British Bake Off, one of the judges praised one of the bakers for using bug meal in one of his cakes. She even said that eating bugs “is the future”. I am certain that plug was not spontaneous and the baker was instructed to use bug meal and she was also instructed to praise him. She didn’t want to lose her gig on the show, after all.

      So now that there is some serious pushback they are trying, once again, to gaslight us, claiming that no one is going to take your cheeseburger away, so stop being so damn paranoid!

      Of course, they won’t outright ban meat. We don’t really expect that the people who matter will eat bugs. Instead, incremental policies, which will make meat production increasingly more and more expensive and make production decline, will be rolled out. When a pound of ground beef costs $30, then we will be reminded about the how affordable and plentiful bug protein is vs. scarce beef and poultry.

    1. More than 500,000 flee California since 2020
      By Dana Kennedy
      April 1, 2023 9:28am Updated
      Rampant crime and violence in tent-filled cities like San Francisco have caused residents to flee.
      Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
      More on California:
      – Disney restaurant staple to close its doors for final time
      – One killed, three wounded after shooting outside LA Trader Joe’s
      – Feds seize 4,400 pounds of ‘pill product’ from huge drug lab in California
      – Alleged fentanyl dealing grandma’s neighbors shocked: ‘It’s like Breaking Bad’

      They’re no longer California Dreamin’.

      More than 500,000 people fled the Golden State since 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic began, US Census migration data shows.

      The exodus of roughly 508,000 residents between April 2020 and July 2022 was spurred by high housing prices, too-frequent natural disasters like wildfires and mudslides, and high crime rates in the cities, the Daily Mail reported Saturday.

      The largest population declines were in San Francisco county, at 7.1 percent and Lassen county, at 7.5 percent.
      Lassen County, in northwest California, was hit my the massive Dixie wildfire in 2021.

      The ongoing housing affordability crisis is a key factor in the exodus, H.D. Palmer, deputy director of external affairs at the California Department of Finance, told the Sacramento Bee.

      High crime in cities like San Francisco have spurred residents to leave.
      High crime in cities like San Francisco have spurred residents to leave.
      Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

      In Sacramento, a household salary of around $145,000 is required to afford the median-priced house in the region, yet the average income is no more than $71,000.

      In San Francisco, which many tech industry executives abandoned due to the pandemic, many office spaces stand empty and the city streets sometimes-violent drug addicts have taken over in multiple neighborhoods.

      “San Francisco went from being one of the hottest office markets in the country to one of the weakest,” Patrick Carlisle, Compass’ chief market analyst, told the San Francisco Gate, adding: ‘High tech workers were the ones who were most likely to say, ‘Well if I can work from any place, I’ll move some place where housing costs 90 percent less.”

      The increases in homelessness and crime have affected the “quality of life ambiance” the downtown once offered, Carlisle said.

      Making matters worse, he said, mass layoffs across the tech industry — which now top 130,000 positions — have forced middle-class workers to move.
      …
      https://nypost.com/2023/04/01/more-than-500000-flee-california-since-2020/

      1. Is California’s Resident Exodus to Blame for a $22B Deficit?
        A Fox Business host claimed that the migration of 500,000 people out of the state between 2020 and 2022 was costing California billions of dollars. But, while people are leaving, they’re not to blame for the budget deficit.
        March 7, 2023 •
        Lindsey Holden, The Sacramento Bee

        (TNS) — California has experienced significant population loss in recent years — but is a decline in residents to blame for the state’s budget deficit?

        Fox Business host Stuart Varney of “Varney & Co.” recently made the connection between an increase in the number of people leaving California and the estimated $22.5 billion deficit leaders must address.

        The California Senate Republican Caucus then amplified Varney’s message on Twitter, saying: “The CA exodus is costing the formerly ‘Golden State’ billions of dollars — $22 BILLION to be exact.”
        …
        https://www.governing.com/finance/is-californias-resident-exodus-to-blame-for-a-22b-deficit

        1. In fairness to the current governor, Arnold Scharzenegger also found himself staring down into a deep financial CR8R, during the 2007-2009 financial crisis.

          1. And Arnold said, “Hasta la vista, DEFICIT!” People got entertained and deficit went poof.

          2. Kinda like how the banking crisis that erupted a couple of weeks ago siddenly went POOF, replaced by a surprise rally in tech stocks that noone could have seen coming.

            Look ma, no bailouts!

        2. The exodus is only part of the equation. California’s budget is highly dependent on capital gains. When markets tank there are few capital gains to tax. Hence why the huge tax revenue swings, going from feast to famine.

          And it’s not just people leaving, businesses are bailing as well, taking their tax bases with them. Hewlett Packard and Oracle both moved to Texas. And lots of smaller firms have been moving to Nevada and Arizona.

  17. Today being Palm Sunday, it’s a good day to discuss the institutionalized anti-Christian hatred of the current unelected regime and of the organizations most responsible for its promotion, specifically the Anti Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center, who are anti-Christian domestic terrorist organizations.

    Russia Today — Nashville school shooting: A violent new phase of America’s victimhood culture is only going to get uglier (4/2/2023):

    “This is a common theme among leftist groups that represent themselves as defenders of various categories of people whom they see as needing protection – from non-white racial segments to gays to women to transgenders. America has become like the victimhood Olympics, where millions of people in need of attention and sympathy compete to show which protectorate is most afflicted. Perhaps that’s why ‘intersectionality’ has become one of the buzzwords, because claiming just one source of victimhood isn’t enough for many people.

    Our sick society rewards those who flock to the protection of their victim groups, providing them dopamine hits on social media, favoritism in hiring and college admissions, and special callouts from government officials touting how brave and mistreated they are. President Joe Biden went so far on Friday, in the wake of the Nashville massacre, as to say that transgender people “shape our nation’s soul.”

    Those who don’t confess to needing such shelter from the haters – such as a black woman who works as a conservative commentator (Candace Owens) and a gay Asian journalist (Andy Ngo) who exposes far-left political violence – are essentially excommunicated as members of their minority groups and condemned as far-right bigots.

    The problem is, in the victimhood Olympics, there’s always pressure to set the bar higher. It’s like an arms race of grievances. Whereas it might have been good enough before to claim the haters were cheating your group out of career opportunities or stopping you from getting married, today’s victims are told that their enemies want them dead and won’t stop until they’re wiped from the face of the earth.”

    https://www.rt.com/news/574027-transgender-violence-nashville-shooting/

    “want them dead and won’t stop until they’re wiped from the face of the earth”

    Sounds like sufficient justification for secession from Weimar America.

    1. Russia Today — Zelensky’s government is an ‘evil force’ – Orthodox priest (4/2/2023):

      “The “evildoers” who persecute Christians will derive no benefit from such action either on Earth or in the afterlife, Kesis Mezgebu, a prominent Ethiopian Orthodox priest, has told RT.

      Mezgebu, who serves at the Holy Trinity Theological University in Addis Ababa, was commenting on the attempts by the government of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky to evict the monks of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) from the country’s Kiev-Pechersk Lavra monastery.

      On Saturday, Metropolitan Pavel, the abbot of the Lavra, was placed under house arrest on accusations of “inciting religious hatred” and “justifying” Russia’s military operation in Ukraine. The abbot has vigorously denied those allegations.

      What’s happening in Ukraine is a “catastrophic event,” perpetrated by an “evil force,” Mezgebu said in an interview on Sunday. “This is atrocity…hatred… completely evil spirit,” he added, describing the actions of the Kiev authorities.

      Mezgebu also suggested that the West is aware of the religious persecution in Ukraine, but – despite having the ability to intervene – it remains silent on the issue because it shares a “similar agenda” with Kiev.

      https://www.rt.com/russia/574024-ukraine-orthodox-church-zelensky/

      A similar agenda?

      U.S. taxpayers are paying for all of it.

    6. Today being Palm Sunday

      Actually, being the start of Holy Week, it’s a good day to reflect on how Jesus died to save you from your sins.

  18. Revolver — Gulag America: Biden DOJ convicts Doug Mackey for anti-Hillary memes… faces up to 10 years in prison (3/31/2023):

    “As we’ve reported earlier, this is the most important First Amendment case in the country. The Biden DOJ is attempting to codify the disinformation scam into the criminal code. Mackey’s meme conviction, for which he could face up to 10 years in prison, represents the complete breakdown of the rule of law and constitutional norms in this country—we are in uncharted territory.”

    https://www.revolver.news/2023/03/gulag-america-biden-doj-convicts-doug-mackey-for-anti-hillary-memes-faces-up-to-10-years-in-prison/

    Revolver — Most Important First Amendment Case You’ve Never Heard Of: Biden Regime Tries to Toss a Young Man in Jail for 10 Years for Anti-Hillary Memes (2/6/2023):

    “Douglass Mackey is alleged to be one of the many anonymous Twitter users who made the 2016 election so different, so memorable, and so important.

    Like other anonymous internet memesmiths (anons), Mackey had no external reason that anyone should care what he said. He held no office. He had no byline at an elite publication. He had no vast pool of wealth that conferred legitimacy, deserved or undeserved, on what he had to say.

    Mackey’s notability, like that of Bronze Age Pervert or Libs of TikTok, came exclusively from what he had to say, and that people found it funny and compelling. Over the summer and fall of 2016, Mackey allegedly went by the nom-de-tweet Ricky Vaughn (after Charlie Sheen’s character in Major League) and collected tens of thousands of followers who found him funny and compelling. Mackey was not single-handedly responsible for getting Donald Trump elected. But the work he allegedly did along with dozens of others is what made Trump’s victory possible. An MIT analysis estimated that Ricky Vaughn was a bigger influence on the 2016 election than NBC News.

    But for the regime, the specter of anonymous individuals making the system tremble was too much. And so, for more than two years, the regime has been battling to send Mackey to prison.

    In January 2021, shortly after the January 6 incident inaugurated a national anti-MAGA crackdown, the Department of Justice charged Mackey with “conspiring … to deprive individuals of their constitutional right to vote.”

    Mackey’s offense? Illegal memes.

    https://www.revolver.news/2023/02/most-important-first-amendment-case-you-never-heard-of-biden-ricky-vaughn-douglass-mackey-hillary-clinton-memes/

    3. Meanwhile, globalist oligarch Mark Zuckerberg paid $400 million to rig the 2020 elections.

      1. Raffensperger, a paid off RINO who pretended to support the president’s reelection.
        ——————————————————————————————–
        Trump demands Georgia secretary of state ‘find’ enough votes to hand him win

        Trump repeatedly made the request during an hour-long phone call Saturday.

        By Quinn Scanlan
        January 3, 2021, 8:52 PM

        Raffensperger, a Republican who supported the president’s reelection but has maintained Georgia’s election was legitimate and accurate, rebuffed the president’s allegations, saying the data the president is citing to claim tens of thousands of illegal votes, “is wrong.”

        https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-demands-georgia-secretary-state-find-votes-hand/story?id=75027350

        Zuckerberg-funded group violated Georgia law with $2M for elections board: watchdog

        Two Georgia officials told Fox News Digital that investigation has been opened

        By Andrew Mark Miller | Fox News
        February 24, 2023

        Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said in a statement to Fox News Digital that he has asked the legislature to close the loophole and suggested S.B. 202 would do just that.

        “It was the will of the General Assembly that if outside organizations wanted to help supply funding for counties, it would actually be channeled through the state election board so that it could then disburse the funds on an equitable basis,” Raffensperger said. “It would be a legislative remedy. We are in session now, so it is something they can address pretty quickly.”

        https://www.foxnews.com/politics/zuckerberg-funded-group-violated-georgia-law-with-2m-for-elections-board-watchdog

        1. “Thankfully, Lt. Governor Burt Jones and our lawmakers have taken swift action to fortify existing laws that ban outside funding for local boards of election through SB 202, which will ensure that our elections are never bought and paid for by special or partisan interests,” the statement said.

          There goes Zuck’s free pizza coupons.

  19. Federal income taxes? Only two weeks left to file, all of your shekels belong to Zelensky. You will never be seen as anything more than cattle tax slaves to these Marxist globalists.

    Forever War: Ukraine Official Dismisses Call for Peace as ‘Pure Cynicism’ (4/2/2023):

    “Ukraine’s ambassador to Germany, Oleksii Makeiev, has lashed out at suggestions that his country should engage in negotiations with Russia after a number of politicians and trade union officials called for talks to be sought.

    Makieiev’s denunciation of the call for negotiations is par for the course for Ukrainian officials, who have made a habit of dismissing any suggestion the ongoing conflict in the country could be solved with a negotiated settlement.

    So far, the Zelensky government has not appeared too keen to establish a peace deal with Russia, with many within the administration seemingly happy to see the conflict drag on further.

    For some in the country, even a full repulsion of the ongoing Russian attack would not be enough to bring about peace, with there being repeated suggestions that the conflict could only end after Ukraine has retaken Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014.

    Some have gone even a step further than that, with Ukrainian National Security and Defence Council Secretary, Oleksiy Danilov, saying there would only be “justice” after Ukrainian troops had somehow taken Moscow.

    “Our tanks will be on Red Square and that will be justice,” he reportedly said.

    https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2023/04/02/forever-war-ukraine-official-dismisses-call-for-peace-as-pure-cynicism/

    Onward Christian Soldiers, as always…

    2. Some have gone even a step further than that, with Ukrainian National Security and Defence Council Secretary, Oleksiy Danilov, saying there would only be “justice” after Ukrainian troops had somehow taken Moscow.

      Journalist Pepe Escobar wrote this about a recent trip to Moscow:

      In Moscow you feel no crisis. No effects of sanctions. No unemployment. No homeless people in the streets. Minimal inflation. Import substitution in all areas, especially agriculture, has been a resounding success.

  20. Independent Women’s Forum
    @IWF
    ·
    When @Riley_Gaines_ asked University of Pittsburgh professor Gabby Yearwood if an archeologist could differentiate between two sets of bones as male and female, Professor Yearwood. who calls himself the “expert in the room,” answers “no” to which the entire audience laughed.

    https://twitter.com/IWF/status/1641468030721961984?s=20

    1. The Financial Times
      Opinion Inside Business
      How default swaps become instruments of mass deception
      Recent Deutsche drama shows that CDS are a bad barometer of whether a bank is in trouble
      Headquarters of Deutsche Bank
      The price of Deutsche Bank CDS spiked during the afternoon of March 23 and the following morning
      Jonathan Guthrie yesterday

      Credit default swaps are a form of insurance against bond defaults. In this story, they feature as instruments of deception rather than “weapons of mass destruction”, the label once applied to all derivatives by Warren Buffett. You can speculate about whether investors were deceived by their own instincts or other factors. This does not change the story, or its takeaways.

      The price of Deutsche Bank CDS spiked during the afternoon of Thursday, March 23, and the following morning. Boaz Weinstein, founder of hedge fund Saba and a CDS expert who once worked for Deutsche, highlighted this in a tweet. “[I am] hearing it’s partly due to counterparty hedging,” he wrote, “but the move is really violent.”

      Other pundits piled on. They smelled blood. Deutsche has some common features with struggling Credit Suisse, which Swiss officials had jammed together with UBS days before. “Banking doom is back in Europe,” one tweeted. “Markets price 31 per cent default probability for DB subordinated bonds.”
      …

    2. Brace for the US economy to crash-land as the banking turmoil creates a credit crunch, Allianz says
      George Glover
      Apr 1, 2023, 2:00 AM
      SVB
      The ongoing banking crisis could trigger a credit crunch and an economic crash, Allianz has warned. Nikolas Liepins/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

      – The US economy is going to crash-land into a recession in the second half of 2023, according to Allianz.
      – The German insurance-to-asset management giant predicted US output will shrink 1% between mid-2023 and year-end.
      – “Rapidly tightening credit conditions, exacerbated by the banking crisis” will fuel the downturn, Allianz said.

      Brace for the US economy to flounder in the second half of this year because the turmoil in the regional banking sector is going to trigger a credit crunch, Allianz has warned.

      The German insurance-to-asset management giant said in a report this week that the US is “headed towards a crash landing,” referring to an outcome where the Federal Reserve’s monetary tightening and banks’ increased wariness toward lending squeeze credit flows and set the stage for a recession.

      “We expect the economic momentum to deteriorate during the second half of the year on the back of rapidly tightening credit conditions, exacerbated by the banking crisis,” a team led by Allianz’ chief economist Ludovic Subran said in the note.
      …
      https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/economic-crash-banking-crisis-credit-crunch-recession-svb-collapse-allianz-2023-3

    3. Small businesses are filing for bankruptcy at a higher rate than at the peak of the pandemic – and a looming credit crunch could make things worse
      Phil Rosen
      Apr 3, 2023, 3:05 AM

      Welcome back, readers. I’m Phil Rosen, writing to you from New York.

      Now that it’s April, we can say a spate of banks collapsed last month, but the repercussions of the crisis continue to unfold as if it all happened yesterday.

      The chatter now centers around a looming credit crunch — but the troubling part is that red flags were flying well before we heard a peep from Silicon Valley Bank.
      …
      https://www.businessinsider.com/us-credit-crunch-bankruptcy-bank-crisis-svb-fed-inflation-markets-2023-3

    4. DOW FUTURES

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      Private bankruptcy filings are blowing past their COVID-era peaks as credit stress builds for small businesses
      Carla Mozée
      Apr 1, 2023, 5:15 AM
      A man walks in front of a United States Bankruptcy Court sign in New York City.
      Steven Puetzer/Photographer’s Choice RF via Getty Images

      – Private bankruptcy filings this year have surpassed a peak set in the early stage of the pandemic, UBS said.
      – Bankruptcies were on the rise before the banking turmoil caused by the collapse of SVB and Signature Bank.
      – Rising bankruptcies among smaller businesses are “underappreciated signs of distress in US corporate credit.”
      …
      https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/svb-banking-crisis-credit-crunch-private-bankruptcy-filings-small-business-2023-3

    5. Federal Reserve
      Published March 27, 2023 6:00am EDT
      Banking crisis threatens to ignite credit crunch for US households: What to know
      Recession risks rise amid fears of ‘credit crunch’
      By Megan Henney FOXBusiness
      Strategic Intelligence editor Jim Rickards discusses the Fed’s decision to raise rates by 25 basis points, arguing that policymakers are “determined” to get inflation under control. video
      Fed is going to keep raising rates, Jim Rickards warns

      The worst banking crisis since the Great Recession could severely tighten credit for U.S. households and businesses, taking a toll on economic growth.

      The turmoil that has engulfed the financial system following the stunning collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank has raised the prospect among economists that lending standards will become drastically more restrictive in coming months.

      “Tighter conditions can happen and occur outside the official tightening of the Fed funds rate. There are so many other variables,” Jeffrey Roach, chief economist at LPL Financial, told FOX Business. “A banking crisis, in essence, can tighten conditions… I think it’s fair to say that the current banking crisis could also be an equivalent to say, a 50-basis-point rate hike.”

      During a credit crunch, banks significantly raise their lending standards, making it difficult to acquire a loan. Borrowers may have to agree to more stringent terms like high interest rates as banks try to reduce the financial risk on their end. Fewer loans, in turn, would lead to less big-ticket spending by consumers and businesses.
      …
      https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/banking-crisis-threatens-ignite-credit-crunch-us-households-what-know

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