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Cut Off From The Easy Money That Fueled The Boom, Many Began Floundering Under Accumulated Debts

A report from the Seattle Times in Washington. “Late last year, sales of luxury homes in the Seattle area dropped more than 50% from a year earlier, according to a Redfin report that defined luxury homes as those in the top 5% of a local market’s values, or $2.5 million in the Seattle area. Zillow estimates that values for the top 5% of homes in the Seattle area, averaging $2.5 million, were down 12% in June compared with a year earlier. That was a larger drop than among the most affordable homes, averaging $490,600, where values were down 2.5% and among midtier homes, averaging $704,600, where values were down 6.5%.”

“One of the Seattle area’s most expensive homes is back on the market — this time with a $15 million price cut. The five-bedroom mansion on more than 4 acres in the Eastside town of Hunts Point was listed in spring 2022 for $85 million, then removed from the market after it didn’t sell. The listing is back this summer for $70 million, a sign that even the most lavish homes in the Seattle area are not immune from the cooling housing market. ‘Even though this home is singular … a trophy property and very unique, it’s still part of the housing market,’ said Windermere listing agent Anna Riley. ‘If the market in general has come down, that can also affect the upper-end properties.'”

The Idaho Press. “The rolling 12-month median sales price for Gem County home sales was $433,258 in June 2023, a 7.2% decrease from the year before but mirror image of last month. Due to the smaller number of transactions that occur in the area, we use a rolling 12-month median sales price to get a better idea of the overall trends. June followed a three-month trend in sales price cuts, contrasted with the consistent increases we’d seen between May 2016 and March 2023.”

From KSAT. “The real estate market is continuing to see a decline in sales as mortgage rates remain high after a somewhat volatile few years in the housing industry. According to the San Antonio Board of Realtors (SABOR), home sales are down 9.7% across Texas and down 9% in San Antonio compared to this time last year. Median home prices for the San Antonio area are also down. Data from SABOR shows the median price of a home dropped 6% from June 2022 to June 2023. ‘Another noteworthy trend observed is the significant increase in the number of days on the market, which rose by 121% to reach 64 days,’ said SABOR’s 2023 Chair of the Board Sara Briseño Gerrish. ‘This suggests a more deliberate decision-making process among buyers, potentially due to increased scrutiny or the need for a more thorough evaluation of available options.'”

WFLA in Florida. “A group of Tampa Bay area homeowners told 8 On Your Side they’re having to pay more for property insurance – nearly 10 times more. Carol Cameron, who recently purchased her home, feels blindsided. ‘We had no idea any of this was happening until a week ago,’ said Cameron. ‘Most of us are not going to have insurance.’ ‘If a big storm comes and hits everybody?’ asked Investigator Mahsa Saeidi. ‘Yes, we’re going to be done,’ said Cameron.”

The Real Deal. “M&T Bank emerged from the murk to report a stabilized deposit base and earnings growth. But office distress rose in the second quarter as a pain point on the bank’s balance sheet. Buffalo-based M&T reported that net-charge offs — a measure of debt unlikely to be paid off — spiked 156 percent year over year to hit $127 million in the second quarter. Three office buildings in downtown New York City and Washington, D.C., plus one large healthcare company in New York state drove that uptick, Chief Financial Officer Daryl Bible said on a Wednesday morning earnings call. The bank’s dollar volume of foreclosed assets rose nearly 50 percent to $43 million in the quarter, up from $29 million a year ago.”

“Analyst Brent Erensel of Portales Partners asked Bible how the firm had handled the uptick in troubled office debt. ‘Some of these big names are just mailing in the keys, are you experiencing that as well?’ Erensel asked. Bible said clients were ‘really holding in there’ and though owners might have one troubled asset, most were willing to work to throw in more capital to rightsize struggling properties.”

From CBC News. “The rising cost of borrowing is leaving some homeowners and small businesses on P.E.I. with a feeling of uncertainty. In efforts to slow inflation, the Bank of Canada has increased its lending rate nearly five per cent in the last year and a half. Charlottetown mortgage broker Kim Reddin said that has many of her clients worried. ‘I’m getting emails in my inbox all the time. They’re very concerned,’ she said. ‘Their mortgage is coming up for renewal in the next year. They’re worried about maybe not being able to afford their house. I don’t want people to panic like that.’ Anyone renewing now, after a five-year term, can expect to pay about 30 per cent more each month, Reddin said.”

Place North West in the UK. “The owner of Leighton Halls, a 298-bed complex in the heart of UCLan’s campus, said an oversupply of student accommodation in the city is making it difficult to compete. In response, Leighton Halls Management Company has asked Preston City Council for permission to let rooms to key workers, as well as students, going forward. It is becoming ‘increasingly difficult to ensure the occupancy of Leighton Halls is sufficient to guarantee the ongoing viability of the development,’ the statement adds.”

The Helsinki Times. “Countries like Sweden, Denmark, Germany, and Hungary are projected to see a significant decrease in completed dwellings. In Germany, the shortage of orders in residential construction continues to worsen, with a record high proportion of companies reporting insufficient orders. Additionally, cancellations of existing orders have reached new heights. These challenges are indicative of the overall cooling down of the residential construction sector in Europe.”

“In Finland, particularly in the Helsinki metropolitan area, the housing market is facing difficulties. According to Helsingin Sanomat, the sale of new apartments has significantly decreased over the past six months, leading to a growing inventory of unsold units. This phenomenon is reflected in the emergence of ‘ghost buildings’ – newly constructed buildings with a large number of unoccupied units. For instance, a recent apartment building constructed by YIT in Töölöntullinkatu remained nearly empty in early June.”

“The situation is not limited to a few isolated cases but appears to be a broader trend. Several upcoming construction projects in Helsinki, including one in Länsi-Pakila, show a substantial percentage of unsold units. These developments raise concerns about the market’s ability to absorb new housing supply.”

West Australia Today. “Not a pebble looked out of place as Jean Nassif’s immaculately maintained mansion on the Chiswick waterfront in Sydney’s inner west was bathed in winter sunshine on Wednesday afternoon. It was like salt in the wound for dozens of furious creditors gathered at Drummoyne Oval. They were within view of the palatial home as they met administrators who are sifting through the carnage of Nassif’s collapsing construction empire. Up to $1 billion in assets and liabilities are at stake across the 75 companies in the Toplace group that have now been placed into the hands of the administrators.”

“Gordon Henderson’s mobile crane hire business is owed about $100,000 by Toplace. Henderson, who has been in the industry for 40 years, was pessimistic about his prospects of recouping the money. ‘Imagine the enormous number of companies involved; there’ll be a lot of dark lanes to go down, I think, before they get it all worked out but hopefully at the end there’s enough left over … there’s a lot of little blokes in there,’ he said.”

From AFP on China. “Gao Zhuang says he has refused to pay his mortgage for months, a desperate protest against the Chinese property developer he blames for endless delays on the unfinished apartment he bought years ago for his son. He is one of many victims of a long-running housing crisis still wreaking misery on the lives of homebuyers, many of whom have little legal recourse on what has become an ultra-sensitive subject for the government. The 49-year-old labourer from central Henan bought an apartment in the provincial capital Zhengzhou for 1.2 million yuan ($170,000) in 2019, and said he was told it would be completed in two years.”

“He staked much of his savings on the flat, hoping it would improve his son’s marriage prospects and allow his family to start leaving their poorer rural hometown behind. But the developer announced delay after delay, and construction work ground to a virtual halt late last year. ‘The main impact has been on my son,’ said Gao, who requested his name be changed to avoid repercussions. ‘How can he get married without his own place?'”

“Gao’s case is not uncommon. A wave of mortgage boycotts spread nationwide last summer, as cash-strapped developers struggled to raise enough to complete homes they had already sold in advance — a common practice in China. Cut off from the easy money that had fuelled the boom of the last few decades, many companies began floundering under accumulated debts. A slowing economy was hammered further by pandemic-era health curbs, adding to low consumer confidence and a slump in housing demand.”

“Disgruntled homeowners say the compound’s estimated 100 undelivered homes and shoddy finishes are evidence the company is struggling. AFP journalists visiting in June observed crumbling exterior masonry, holes in interior walls, loose wiring and unsecured fire doors. For others, initial fury has given way to helplessness. ‘There’s no point getting angry, because there’s nothing I can do,’ said 24-year-old homebuyer Wang, using a pseudonym. The online store operator purchased a home in the wealthy eastern city of Ningbo for 690,000 yuan in 2021, but work stopped later that year. When AFP visited the site, empty towerblock facades surrounded mounds of overturned earth and piping, with rusty vehicles parked chaotically among the rubble. Around a dozen workers mooched among stone slabs and upturned trees waiting to be planted, roots drying out in the summer sun.”

“Wang said he had ‘no confidence’ in the latest promise the property would be finished by August’s end. ‘After this, I’ll never buy a house that isn’t finished already,’ he said. ‘And I won’t believe all the rhetoric the government and others come out with.’ Both Gao and Wang said they had been contacted by local officials to dissuade them from petitioning the government or speaking to the media. Multiple other buyers said they had received calls from the police, who they feared were also monitoring their private social media groups. ‘There’s nothing I can say about this,’ one initially receptive group administrator told AFP before abruptly breaking off contact. ‘The state is controlling this too strictly right now.'”

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This Post Has 80 Comments

  1. ‘I’m getting emails in my inbox all the time. They’re very concerned,’ she said. ‘Their mortgage is coming up for renewal in the next year. They’re worried about maybe not being able to afford their house. I don’t want people to panic like that’

    I’d bet 5 K-dn pesos every one of these whiners are still eating Kim.

    1. Tech
      People Are Organizing to Fight the Private Equity Firms Who Own Their Homes
      How tenant unions are taking back power from their megalandlords.
      by Roshan Abraham
      May 16, 2023, 6:00am

      Private equity has been rapidly growing its share of the housing market, taking advantage of a housing crisis and in some cases exacerbating it. But as large corporate landlords grow in power, tenants are increasingly rallying together and finding creative ways to hit them in their pockets. This includes taking their complaints to regulators and to the public retirement funds that pour their money into private equity funds.

      For a long time, large corporate landlords—including private equity, real estate investment trusts and hedge funds—mostly ignored the low-end housing market, which they viewed as risky. But that began to shift during the 2008 housing crash and again during the pandemic when they began to put more resources into multifamily and single family homes.

      According to census data analyzed by the National Multifamily Housing Council, a lobby representing landlords who own multifamily properties, 38 percent of multifamily units were owned by individual investors in 2021, and 42 percent are owned by corporate entities. Another 3 percent were owned by Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs).

      The pandemic’s disruption in the housing market led to a frenzy of investment by mega-landlords in properties that briefly saw their value dip. Investors have been rushing up to buy affordable housing, particularly units where rent restrictions are set to expire. By the end of the decade, half a million units funded by Low Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC) are set to become market rate. The private equity giant Blackstone alone spent $5.1 billion on 80,000 units of LIHTC housing in 2021 as part of a pandemic buying spree.
      …
      https://www.vice.com/en/article/jg5pek/people-are-organizing-to-fight-the-private-equity-firms-who-own-their-homes

      1. Nothing smacks of greed like a bunch of wealthy Wall Street private equity investors trying to squeeze a few drops of blood out of the low income housing turnip.

    2. Welcome to Blackstone U.S.A.
      How private equity is gobbling up the American city and turning residents into collateral
      by Valerie Stahl
      July 04, 2023

      The Hotel del Coronado’s Victorian red turrets peak above the sand dunes off the coast of San Diego. Developed by two industrialists in 1888 at the height of the Gilded Age, the “Hotel Del” serves as an iconic California backdrop, including in the classic 1959 film Some Like It Hot. A recent $400 million renovation added over 15,000 square feet of event space to the already expansive oceanfront campus.

      Just 10 miles north, in another oceanside neighborhood called Pacific Beach, sits Bay Pointe Apartments, a 1960s era garden style apartment complex with over 500 units spread across multiple sand-colored buildings.

      What do the two complexes have in common? They’re both owned by the New York-based private equity firm Blackstone, as are hundreds of thousands of other properties across the country.

      Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust (BREIT) acquired a majority stake in the Hotel Del in 2011 for $600 million. Ten years later, in one of the largest known real estate transactions in San Diego’s history, Blackstone purchased 66 residential complexes across the county for over $1 billion, including Bay Pointe Apartments. Many of the units in these buildings were previously classified as “naturally occurring affordable housing,” meaning that they had significantly below-market rents catering to working families in a city that, like many in America, is facing a stark affordability crisis. Nearly overnight, 5,800 households in America’s “finest city” became tenants of the private equity behemoth.

      With this trend only increasing in San Diego—and in cities across the U.S.—it is worth asking: What happens when your home, doctor’s office, or favorite local restaurant gets bought up by private equity?
      …
      https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/welcome-blackstone-usa

    3. 04.24.2023
      United States
      Capital Education
      The University of California Is Bailing Out Private Equity Giant Blackstone
      By Matthew Cunningham-Cook

      Amid a housing crisis that is leaving thousands of its students and employees homeless, the University of California is bailing out private equity behemoth Blackstone, siphoning billions of dollars to privatized student housing and corporate landlords.

      As the world’s largest private equity firm faces potential losses from a cloudy real estate market, its executives blocked jittery investors from withdrawing their money from one of its real estate funds, while insisting that rent increases and evictions will bolster returns.

      Now, the Blackstone Group’s real estate investment trust has received a multibillion-dollar bailout from a source whose employees and students are already suffering through the housing crisis: California’s public university system.

      Just months after Blackstone’s real estate investment trust purchased America’s largest owner of private student housing, the same trust received a $4.5 billion infusion from the University of California’s Board of Regents, two of whom have close ties to the company. The investment rewards the financial firm only a few years after the company and its executives spent $5.6 million to kill California ballot initiatives that would have expanded rent control in the state.

      Blackstone, a firm that’s valued at $111 billion and manages $991 billion in assets, also faces broader headwinds in its real estate sector. The profits that the firm distributes to shareholders plunged 36 percent last year, driven by real estate losses.

      Effectively, University of California (UC) is funneling cash into privatized student housing and corporate landlords — doubling down on a controversial investment strategy that comes with a massive layer of fees and Wall Street profits — instead of doing its part to address a growing housing crisis, one that affects its students and employees.

      In 2021, 5 percent of UC students, or more than fourteen thousand, experienced homelessness, while the university’s unions report that many of their mostly blue-collar members simply cannot make ends meet due to California’s spiraling cost of rental housing.

      The latest episode revolves around the Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust, or BREIT. In August 2022, BREIT purchased 69 percent of American Campus Communities (ACC), the country’s largest student housing company, in a $12.8 billion deal. ACC’s business model is built around rent revenues; in January 2022 the company’s CEO boasted that it was “experiencing the most substantial fundamental tailwinds we’ve seen in many years” thanks in part to soaring rents.

      ACC has apartments at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of California, Irvine.
      …
      https://jacobin.com/2023/04/university-of-california-private-equity-blackstone-corporate-real-estate-investment

      1. The corruption here where the UC Regents are colluding with Blackstone to bailout their failing REIT is simply mind blowing. Look at the Big Picture, the DOJ is persecuting Donald Trump by making up crimes that he supposedly committed–even digging up Civil War era laws to charge him. Yet here you have the UC Regents literally having s E x with Blackstone and the MSM and Dumocrats are as silent as church mice.

        This might be the end…..

      2. “Just months after Blackstone’s real estate investment trust purchased America’s largest owner of private student housing, the same trust received a $4.5 billion infusion from the University of California’s Board of Regents, two of whom have close ties to the company.”

        The collusion is incredible.

    4. Ideas
      Business
      The Myth That Drives Private Equity
      By Brett Christophers
      June 23, 2023 7:30 AM EDT
      Christophers is professor at Uppsala University in Sweden, and author of Our Lives in Their Portfolios: Why Asset Managers Own the World

      The economy runs on narratives.

      Those supportive of the status quo offer narratives – stories, essentially – about the benefits of existing arrangements. If those narratives are widely believed, the status quo typically endures. Changing the economy requires successfully changing the narrative.

      Consider a narrative at the heart of one of the most striking economic developments of recent decades: the rise of “alternative” investment, an umbrella term for investments other than the traditional mainstream asset classes of cash and publicly-listed stocks and bonds. These alternative assets include private equity, hedge funds, venture capital, real estate, and infrastructure.
      …
      Consider what Blackstone and the like invest in when they invest in “alternatives.” Notably, one of the fastest-growing areas of this business is housing investment, specifically in the rental market. But if funds that invest in housing perform well, it is largely because they have been able to raise rents. And who lives in such rental housing? Generally, ordinary workers. Thus, where there is gain, there is also pain; the latter begets the former.

      In 2018, Ro Khanna, a Democrat Representative in California who was evidently conversant with Blackstone’s rhetoric, spoke pointedly to the Faustian bargain that workers–usually unwittingly–often make with firms like Blackstone when their savings are invested by them. “In my district”, Khanna said, “teachers, firefighters, and nurses often can’t afford a place to live.” Blackstone happened at that time to be a major investor in Californian rental housing (where rents were rising fast), and a dogged opponent of efforts to strengthen the state’s rent controls.

      In other words, the third critical point is that if a private equity firm does deliver strong investment returns to investors, ordinary workers themselves have often paid the price – if not in the form of higher housing rents, then for instance through higher usage charges on energy, transportation and water and sewage infrastructures, which like real estate have become an increasingly popular class of investment for asset managers’ alternatives funds in recent decades.
      …
      https://time.com/6289431/private-equity-costs/

    5. Financial Times
      Blackstone Group LP
      Blackstone’s march to $1tn marred by trouble at flagship property fund
      Executives forced to reassure investors as buyout group approaches significant milestone
      Stephen Schwarzman, chief executive of Blackstone Group, during a television interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January
      Antoine Gara in New York July 18 2023

      Blackstone is on the cusp of surpassing $1tn in assets under management, a milestone that analysts predict will arrive as soon as Thursday when the private equity group reports second-quarter earnings.

      It should be a moment of unabashed celebration for the 38-year-old buyout firm, but it is one that risks being undermined by mounting pressures associated with amassing hundreds of billions of dollars in assets during an era of rock-bottom interest rates.

      Those pressures burst into the open late last year in an episode that caught co-founder Stephen Schwarzman and his heir apparent Jonathan Gray off guard after investors started to remove money from the New York investment group’s flagship $70bn property fund.

      What seemed at first like a minor issue affecting Asian investors feeling the pain of tighter monetary policy soon turned into a much bigger problem. The fund, Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust, or Breit, was forced to limit investor withdrawals to avoid a painful fire sale of assets to meet the flurry redemption requests.

      It was a rare instance of vulnerability for a firm that had seemed all but invincible after increasing its assets more than tenfold since the 2008 financial crisis, a breakneck expansion that turned it into a dominant fixture on Wall Street.

      “It has been a really challenging situation for Blackstone,” said KBW analyst Michael Brown. “We are operating in uncharted territory in terms of the tremendous growth that Breit delivered since inception and running into a wall.”
      …

    6. Does hiding real estate losses by limiting REIT redemptions somehow magically make the losses go away?

      1. Financial Times
        Property funds
        European Central Bank calls for clampdown on commercial property funds
        Officials warn downturn in €1tn sector could trigger liquidity crisis if investors rush to withdraw money
        The European Central Bank headquarters
        The European Central Bank said the commercial property market was exhibiting ‘clear signs of vulnerability’
        Martin Arnold in Frankfurt
        April 3 2023

        The European Central Bank has called for a clampdown on commercial property funds to tackle the risk that a downturn in the €1tn sector could trigger a liquidity crisis if investors rushed to withdraw their money.

        The ECB’s proposals reflect concern among regulators and investors that the recent turmoil in the banking industry could exacerbate strains in the commercial property market and push the sector closer to crisis.

        Funds that invest in illiquid property assets and allow investors to pull out their money at short notice are exposed to a “liquidity mismatch” that could force them into “fire sales”, ECB officials warned in a macroprudential bulletin on Monday.

        “Policies should be developed to address the structural vulnerabilities” of such open-ended property funds, the officials said, “given the risks they pose to commercial real estate markets and wider financial stability”.

        The report added that the “clear signs of vulnerability” included “declining market liquidity and price corrections, driven largely by uncertainty in the macro-financial outlook and by monetary tightening”.

        The MSCI Europe Real Estate index of large and mid-cap property companies tumbled 14 per cent in March to close to its lowest level since early 2009.

        The ECB cited Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust’s recent decision to limit investor redemptions after a surge in requests to withdraw money out of its $125bn fund. It also noted limits imposed by UK property funds on outflows after last year’s “mini” Budget led to a sell-off in gilt markets.

        The report said tighter rules would allow property funds to “manage spikes in liquidity demands and to internalise the cost of redemptions which can arise during market stress”. It added that, without sufficient liquidity management tools, such funds could “have to resort to asset fire sales, thus amplifying market stress”.
        …

        1. The European Central Bank has called for a clampdown on commercial property funds to tackle the risk that a downturn in the €1tn sector could trigger a liquidity crisis if investors rushed to withdraw their money.

          What???? You mean if I go down to my local bank because I want to withdrawal all of my money in cash because I want to decorate my dining room with $100 bills, my bank won’t give me MY OWN MONEY because somebody in the NWO said that I no longer had control over my own money.

          Did I miss this story line in “1984”?

          1. my local bank

            Things at your local bank should work out better than at a real estate investment fund. Should.

        2. “The European Central Bank has called for a clampdown on commercial property funds to tackle the risk that a downturn in the €1tn sector could trigger a liquidity crisis if investors rushed to withdraw their money.”

          How do we prepare boiled frog for the main course?

    7. The only reason the money center banks and private equity like Blackstone and Blackrock are able to make money is due to their connections to the Fed. They get loans at much lower rates. You borrow at 7%, they borrow at 4%. You borrow at 4%, they borrow at 1%.

      1. “You borrow at 7%, they borrow at 4%. You borrow at 4%, they borrow at 1%.”

        Being TBTF must greatly boost their credit rating!

      2. You borrow at 7%, they borrow at 4%. You borrow at 4%, they borrow at 1%.

        7%? All of my credit cards are charging 25% interest on balances. Tell me where I can get a 7% card since I’ll apply for one right now.

  3. Elon Musk says he doesn’t ‘know what the hell is going on’ with the economy
    Huileng Tan Jul 19, 2023, 10:55 PM ET
    – Elon Musk standing in a field while putting his hand on his head with a confused expression on his face.
    – Even Tesla CEO Elon Musk is stumped about the uncertain macroeconomic environment.
    – Tesla has slashed EV prices this year to keep up with the competition and rising interest rates.
    – Tesla beat expectations when it reported an all-time high revenue of $24.93 billion on Wednesday.

    To put it mildly, it’s been a wild ride these past three years with the economy on a roller coaster reacting to the COVID-19 pandemic, inflation, rate hikes, recession fears, and new hopes of a soft landing.

    The situation has been so confusing that even Elon Musk, the boss of several visionary and futuristic tech companies, seems exasperated and has precisely the right combination of words to express how many feel.

    “One day, it seems like the world economy is falling apart, next day, it’s fine. I don’t know what the hell is going on,” the Tesla CEO said during a second-quarter earnings call with analysts on Wednesday.

    “We’re in, I would call it, turbulent times,” he added.
    …
    https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-tesla-whats-going-on-with-economy-earnings-2023-7

    1. I don’t know what the hell is going on

      Like hell you don’t know what’s going on. Elon, you made a fortune by gaming the system. You’re the biggest Snake Oil Salesman of all time. Your electric cars are the biggest joke in the history of the automobile! ZERO EMISSION. Yeah right. You sold the World on the big lie that there is such a thing as “ZERO EMISSION”. And you made a fortune out of this fable. To the average person, owning an electric car is like owning a garage full of Pet Rocks. Totally Useless!!!

      But don’t worry, Elon. You’re way ahead of the crowd. I can’t wait to see how you plan to make your next $500,000,000,000.

    2. “One day, it seems like the world economy is falling apart, next day, it’s fine. I don’t know what the hell is going on,”

      Maybe take a break from all the Twitting and Tweeting and fake news.

    3. “Elon Musk standing in a field while putting his hand on his head with a confused expression on his face.”

      Real money managers prefer navel-gazing.

      1. Too Big to Fail, COVID-19 Edition: How Private Equity Is Winning the Coronavirus Crisis
        Private equity has made multibillionaires of executives like Blackstone’s Steve Schwarzman (net worth: $17.5 billion) and Apollo’s Leon Black ($7.5 billion). Thanks to the $2 trillion bipartisan bailout bill, the industry’s coronavirus losses will belong to all of us.
        By Bethany McLean
        April 9, 2020
        Image may contain Steven Mnuchin Tie Accessories Accessory Human Person Advertisement Poster Suit and Coat
        …
        https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/04/how-private-equity-is-winning-the-coronavirus-crisis

        2. “Schwarzman tried to project a sense of calm, telling staff that Blackstone had navigated many bouts of market turmoil over the years and always came out ahead.”

          And the Band Played On.

    2. That is why they’re flooding the system with money while pretending to tighten by raising rates.

  7. Charlottetown mortgage broker Kim Reddin said that has many of her clients worried. ‘I’m getting emails in my inbox all the time. They’re very concerned,’ she said. ‘Their mortgage is coming up for renewal in the next year. They’re worried about maybe not being able to afford their house. I don’t want people to panic like that.’

    Must.not.laugh.

  8. ‘There’s no point getting angry, because there’s nothing I can do,’ said 24-year-old homebuyer Wang, using a pseudonym.

    You can stamp your little feet, Wang.

  9. ‘And I won’t believe all the rhetoric the government and others come out with.’

    Anyone who trusted the CCP or REIC shills deserves to rack up huge housing losses.

  11. LOL@ Marxist globalists trying to cancel Jason Aldean for his song “Try That In A Small Town” because its video displays actual footage of Burn Loot Murder and Pantifa (Democrat Party brownshirts) burning, looting, and murdering.

    And now the song is #1 in the charts. Real Americans are done with your wokeness.

    2. Trans-Identifying Swimmer Shows True Colors In Social Media Post

      By Virginia Kruta
      Jul 15, 2023 DailyWire.com

      Trans-identifying swimmer Lia Thomas dressed the part of an “Antifa super soldier” in a recent Instagram post shared by partner Gwen Luxemburg.

      Thomas, who made headlines competing for the women’s NCAA swimming championship while still a fully intact biological male, wore all black – sunglasses, black shorts, a black BDSM harness, and a black shirt emblazoned with the words “Antifa super soldier.”

      https://www.dailywire.com/news/trans-identifying-swimmer-shows-true-colors-in-social-media-post

      1. Marxists gonna Marx.

        Let’s hope that Jason Aldean song inspires and motivates the next thousand Kyle Rittenhouse’s.

        Look at the rap sheets of the 2-1/2 commies he ventilated. Nobody wants people like that around in a small town. Keep it in Portland.

      2. I’ll bet THomas grew up in an upper middle class home. He’s planning on attending Law school so he’s also trying to join the upper middle class. Don’t surprised if “she” later marries a woman.

  13. “Cut off from the easy money that had fuelled the boom of the last few decades, many companies began floundering under accumulated debts.”

    – Central banks are a global economic pandemic for the 99%, as per the plan. The “wealth effect” cuts both ways. Think “pump and dump” and you won’t be far wrong.

    – Asset bubbles always burst. The world housing bubble is bursting with huge knock-on effects to the economy.

    – The U.S. is privileged to have The Everything Bubble, aka The Central Bank Bubble, which includes CRE, RRE, stonks, debt, autos, etc. (basically everything). Now also deflating.

    – Gradually, then all at once.

    – Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind.

    – The Fed: Doing the most harm and impoverishing the most people via inflation and then deflation since 1913.

    – Free markets have been replaced with central planning and command and control economic policies with predictable outcomes.

    – The slow motion train wreck continues, but I’m assured by TPTB and their lapdog minions and MSM that all is well.

    1. Not so easy to flood the system with trillions this time due to high inflation, wars, shortages of goods and skilled employees, and BRICS. If the costs of living keep going up, there will be riots and tanks in the streets.

    2. – The slow motion train wreck continues, but I’m assured by TPTB and their lapdog minions and MSM that all is well.

      Well, they’re saying that the CPI is down to a 3% annual increase. Don’t believe your lying checkbook when it tells you otherwise.

    1. The Wall Street Journal
      Markets
      Tech Stocks, Meme Stocks, Crypto: Investors Are Feeling Bold Again
      The market looks a lot like 2021—right before stocks entered a deep slump
      Bullishness among individual investors
      Highest since November 2021
      Source: American Association of Individual Investors
      By Eric Wallerstein
      Updated July 19, 2023 4:41 pm ET
      …

    2. Financial Times
      Markets Briefing Markets
      Nasdaq drops more than 2% after Netflix and Tesla results disappoint
      Tech-heavy index drops most since March as jitters emerge at start of earnings season
      Montage of a Wall Street road sign and a falling chart
      Large tech companies have driven much of the rally on Wall Street since the start of the year
      Kate Duguid in New York and Daria Mosolova in London 56 minutes ago

      The Nasdaq Composite had its biggest one-day drop in more than four months as investor disappointment with results from Netflix and Tesla called into question the strong, months-long rally in the tech sector.

      The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite dropped 2.1 per cent on Thursday, its biggest daily decline since March 9. Wall Street’s benchmark S&P 500 sank 0.7 per cent.

      Tesla shares plunged 9.7 per cent, its biggest single-day drop since early January, after the electric-car maker said on Wednesday its profit margins slipped as a series of price cuts aimed at boosting sales weighed on earnings.
      …

  16. For perspective, 14 years ago was 2009, the tail end of the Great Recession. The housing market was FUBAR.

    1. Real Estate
      June home sales drop to the slowest pace in 14 years as short supply chokes the market
      Published Thu, Jul 20 2023 10:00 AM EDT
      Diana Olick

      WATCH LIVE
      Key Points

      – June home sales were 18.9% lower compared with last year. That is the slowest sales pace for June since 2009.

      – “There are simply not enough homes for sale,” said Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the Realtors.
      …
      https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/20/june-home-sales-drop-to-the-slowest-pace-in-14-years.html

  17. Watch Live: Breitbart’s Emma-Jo Morris, RFK Jr. Testify on Govt, Big Tech Censorship

    BREITBART NEWS
    20 Jul 2023

    Over the last few years, my reporting has been confirmed by virtually every mainstream news outlet, from the Washington Post, to the New York Times, to Politico. No one denies that the laptop is real, that the origin story is exactly what I told you it was in the first place.

    This elaborate censorship conspiracy wasn’t because the information being reported on was false. It was because the information was true, and a threat to the power centers in this country.

    What this relationship between U.S,government officials and American corporations represents is an unprecedented push to undermine the First Amendment — the right to think, write, read, and say whatever we want — and how we respond will determine whether we see a free press as inalienable, or as optional.

    Multiple media outlets, including the New York Times, CNN, the Washington Post, and CBS admitted they had independently confirmed the veracity of the Hunter Biden laptop well after the conclusion of the 2020 presidential election. A 2022 TIPP poll reported 71% of Americans believe had the story not been suppressed, it would have changed the result of the election between Donald Trump and Joe Biden.

    https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2023/07/20/watch-live-breitbarts-emma-jo-morris-rfk-jr-testify-on-govt-big-tech-censorship/

  18. The Atlantic — What Happened When Oregon Decriminalized Hard Drugs (7/19/2023):

    “Three years ago, while the nation’s attention was on the 2020 presidential election, voters in Oregon took a dramatic step back from America’s long-running War on Drugs. By a 17-point margin, Oregonians approved Ballot Measure 110, which eliminated criminal penalties for possessing small amounts of any drug, including cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine. When the policy went into effect early the next year, it lifted the fear of prosecution for the state’s drug users and launched Oregon on an experiment to determine whether a long-sought goal of the drug-policy reform movement—decriminalization—could help solve America’s drug problems.

    Early results of this reform effort, the first of its kind in any state, are now coming into view, and so far, they are not encouraging. State leaders have acknowledged faults with the policy’s implementation and enforcement measures. And Oregon’s drug problems have not improved. Last year, the state experienced one of the sharpest rises in overdose deaths in the nation and had one of the highest percentages of adults with a substance-use disorder. During one two-week period last month, three children under the age of 4 overdosed in Portland after ingesting fentanyl.

    In a nonpartisan statewide poll earlier this year, more than 60 percent of respondents blamed Measure 110 for making drug addiction, homelessness, and crime worse. A majority, including a majority of Democrats, said they supported bringing back criminal penalties for drug possession.”

    https://archive.li/evjRg

    1. Last year, the state experienced one of the sharpest rises in overdose deaths in the nation

      This is a feature, not a bug.

      1. The Brits, Westerners, and later Japanese did it to the Chinese in the 19th century.

        Today the globalists do it to America. Destroy, divide, conquer.

  19. In a nonpartisan statewide poll earlier this year, more than 60 percent of respondents blamed Measure 110 for making drug addiction, homelessness, and crime worse. A majority, including a majority of Democrats, said they supported bringing back criminal penalties for drug possession.”

    Which means that Oregon Democrat lawmakers will eliminate even more laws with the goal of eliminating drug related crimes and deaths. Next Oregon will close all its prisons and fire all of its police officers. That should fix things.

  21. ‘said clients were ‘really holding in there’ and though owners might have one troubled asset, most were willing to work to throw in more capital to rightsize struggling properties’

    That’s the spirit loanowners, tie yerself to the mast, don’t give it away!

  23. Above All Else, It was a Spectacle

    BY Toby RogersTOBY ROGERS
    JULY 20, 2023
    12 MINUTE READ

    Over the last few weeks I’ve been chewing on The Spectacle of Covid. The more I think about it, the weirder it gets. What’s striking about the iconic images from the pandemic is how contrived and artificial they now appear. These photos were presented as “breaking news” but now it seems that nearly all of the iconic images of the pandemic were elaborately staged to tell a particular story and achieve certain political outcomes.

    People “dropping dead” on the streets of Wuhan

    The Guardian officially launched the pandemic with their article, “A man lies dead in the street: the image that captures the Wuhan coronavirus crisis.”

    Billionaire psychopath Bill Gates forcing Dr. Sanjay Gupta to smell the glove every Saturday night for months.

    Every night during the height of the pandemic, when millions of Americans were locked down in their homes with nothing to do, billionaire psychopath Bill Gates, who did not finish college, bought his way onto Anderson Cooper 360 (CNN) where actual neurosurgeon, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, was forced to treat Gates as the expert on the pandemic.

    The US Naval Ship Comfort contained 1,000 beds and 1,200 medical personnel and sat mostly empty before departing.

    The Javits Convention Center was converted to a 3,000 bed emergency hospital. It too sat mostly empty.

    But the Powers That Be wanted everyone to know that things were really bad and everyone was going to die unless they obeyed.

    In April and May 2020, refrigerated morgue trucks captured the public imagination for weeks. But they were not the result of Covid per se, rather this is what happens when hospitals kill 90 percent of their Covid patients by using the wrong protocols. An analysis by Jeffrey Tucker at Brownstone Institute showed that refrigerated morgue trucks became necessary because lockdowns closed funeral homes and cemeteries, artificially creating a backlog.

    And if the refrigerated morgue trucks were not enough, as the New York Times, Washington Post, Time Magazine, USA Today and other mainstream publications all ran with overhead photographs of New York City’s potter’s field on Hart Island. Later analysis challenged the notion that there had been an increase in such burials, but by then the visual message of danger and doom was already firmly planted in the public imagination.

    Dancing nurses

    Nothing captured the psyop better than the thousands of videos on TikTok of nurses and doctors in empty hospital wards at a time when the world was locked down in order “to preserve hospital capacity.” These are elaborate dance routines that would have taken many hours to choreograph, practice, and record.

    Coordinated global media bombardment of nations that failed to obey the Pharma agenda

    As Big Pharma tightened its grip throughout the world, it engaged in a “Clear and Hold Operation” to punish nations that were not sufficiently obedient to its diktats.

    Sweden kept schools, their borders, and the economy open and refused to mandate vaccines when they became available. So the media engaged in a protracted digital bombing campaign designed to force Sweden to turn its citizens over to the cartel. The focus of their rage was Sweden’s state epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, who actually read the scientific evidence for himself and followed the data (unlike the captured bureaucrats in the US).

    It’s almost comical to look back on it now, given that Sweden actually had the lowest excess mortality in all of Europe and has been vindicated on every count. But Big Pharma had a trillion dollars of profit to harvest and they used the media to make an example out of Sweden while they could.

    Others were not so lucky. The President of Tanzania, John Magufuli, embarrassed the World Health Organization by testing a goat and a pawpaw for Covid — both tests came back positive. On February 8, 2021, the Guardian, with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced that, “It’s time for Africa to rein in Tanzania’s anti-vaxxer president.”

    In effect, the mob boss had announced that Magufuli needs to get got. And 37 days later, he was dead. The Guardian rejoiced along with the rest of the mainstream media. Mathew Crawford published an extraordinary article documenting the enormous death toll among African leaders who resisted Big Pharma’s Covid diktats.

    https://brownstone.org/articles/above-all-else-it-was-a-spectacle/

    1. What was truly disheartening about the psyop was how people we were supposed to be able to trust, betrayed us. I will never look at a doctor or a nurse as I did before. I will be suspicious of all new “wonder treatments” and even long used ones like flu vaccines. These people, with few exceptions, were either bought off or were threatened. In the end they lied to us.

      1. either bought off or were threatened.

        It’s much worse than that. Going back to my college time, which reaches the 50 year mark, Doctors were trained not so much on understanding disease, but knowing what drugs to dispense. They don’t make stuff up, they follow the Pharma guidelines. They trust.

  24. ‘It was like salt in the wound for dozens of furious creditors gathered at Drummoyne Oval. They were within view of the palatial home as they met administrators who are sifting through the carnage of Nassif’s collapsing construction empire. Up to $1 billion in assets and liabilities are at stake across the 75 companies in the Toplace group that have now been placed into the hands of the administrators’

    That’s a spicy meatball right there.

  26. ZeroSludge (7/20/2023):

    “Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) has released a bombshell FBI document dated July 30,2020, in which a respected confidential human source (CHS) alleged that then-presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden received $10 million in bribes.

    As the Epoch Times notes, the CHS said he traveled to Burisma’s office in Ukraine in 2015 or 2016 with a man named Oleksandr Ostapenko. During the meeting, Vadim Pojarskii, chief financial officer of Burisma, told the source that the company hired Hunter Biden “to protect us, through his dad, from all kinds of problems.”

    Burisma contacted the source to seek assistance in buying an American company to merge with in the hope that it could go public in the United States.

    After an investigation of Burisma by Ukraine Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin was disclosed in 2016, the source told Mykola Zlochevsky, the owner of Burisma , that the disclosure would have a negative impact on the prospective initial public offering. Mr. Zlochevsky replied that Mr. Hunter Biden “will take care of all of those issues through his dad,” according to the document.

    Mr. Zlochevsky was also cited as saying that it cost $5 million to pay one Biden, and $5 million to pay another Biden.

    The source replied that payments to the Bidens would complicate matters and the Bidens did not have experience with the oil and gas sector, according to the document. Mr. Zlochevsky said his dog was smarter than Mr. Hunter Biden but that he needed to keep him on the board “so everything will be okay.” Both Mr. Hunter Biden and Mr. Joe Biden had told Mr. Zlochevsky that Hunter Biden needed to remain on the board, Mr. Zlochevsky said.

    Around the same time, Mr. Joe Biden, the U.S. vice president at the time, was pressuring Ukrainian officials to fire Mr. Shokin. “We’re leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor’s not fired, you’re not getting the money,” Mr. Joe Biden said at a public event about the interaction, referring to a $1 billion loan guarantee he threatened to withhold. “Well, son of a [expletive]. He got fired.”

    81 million ballots, not 81 million votes.

  28. Former New York Post Editor Laughs When Detailing Censorship Of Bombshell Hunter Biden Laptop Story
    Forbes Breaking News
    Jul 20, 2023
    Emma-Jo Morris, editor at Breitbart and former editor at the New York Post, testified before the House Weaponization Committee about the censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M28tXX0cvvI

    5:37.

    2. House Weaponization Committee

      Watching this now and liking RFK Jr. more and more. Four more years of DJT with RFK Jr. as VP then 8 years of RFK Jr. as P and Our Country could be back on track.

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