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Where It Can Go Horribly Wrong

A report from New Hampshire Public Radio. “In New Hampshire, the rate of foreclosure filings on properties has risen 149.72 percent from mid-year 2021 to mid-year 2023, according to ATTOM. Most of that increase has happened in the last year. Because many home loans in the United States are connected to a government program, the lifting of the moratorium last year affected many borrowers, said Stephanie Bray, an attorney for New Hampshire Legal Assistance and the director of the organization’s Foreclosure Relief Project. ‘The knowledge was always there that the piper would have to be paid eventually,’ Bray said, speaking on the end of the government-led freeze.”

Bisnow South Florida. “The collapse of Champlain Tower South in Surfside, Florida, in June 2021 killed 98 people and reverberated across the state’s coastal communities. Some owners looked for a way out and, in the months that followed, developers began negotiations to acquire at least eight condo buildings. But as the cost of acquisitions, insurance and development skyrocketed in the last year, potential buyers have become less interested in negotiating with dozens or hundreds of individual owners. Not even Miami’s beachfront property is immune to the slowdown in capital markets and development driven by increased costs at every stage of development. ‘It paused the development just because of the economics, between the cost of capital going up, the cost of insurance doubling and tripling year-over-year, and then the cost of construction also going up,’ said Jaime Sturgis, the CEO of Native Realty who has worked on several buyouts. ‘It’s very difficult to pencil around on multifamily construction right now.'”

“Florida law didn’t previously require condos to conduct reserve studies, and associations were previously allowed to waive or reduce reserve contributions through a membership vote. ‘Unit owners often exercised this ill-advised option to keep assessments as low as possible and/or to avoid paying for major components scheduled to be repaired or replaced, which they contemplated would be after the sale of their units,’ Kevin Koushel, an attorney at Blizin Sumberg, wrote in an analysis of the law. ‘The new legislation is truly a ‘time to pay the piper’ moment for older condominiums where skipping a reserve study, and/or waiving or reducing reserves has been an annual tradition,’ Koushel wrote.”

Community Impact in Texas. “Home prices in San Marcos, Buda and Kyle have largely plateaued in recent months from their meteoric ascent since prior to the pandemic. From May 2020-May 2022, the median home price across Hays County rose from $265,900 to $470,000, or nearly 77%. The most recent data from the Realtors association shows it fell in May 2023 to $400,000.”

The Dallas Morning News in Texas. “With businesses bailing out of millions of square feet of office space since the pandemic, building vacancies in Dallas-Fort Worth have risen to the highest point in more than 20 years. At midyear, almost 50 million square feet of D-FW office space was vacant. Throw in millions more square feet of sublease office space on the market and vacancy rates are headed toward 27%. The last time local office vacancies were so high was in the dot com era bubble and telecom sector shakeout of more than 20 years ago. ‘Depending on how you slice the numbers, we are back to the bad old days of the 1990s,’ said Walter Bialas, senior analyst with commercial property firm Avison Young. ‘It’s hard to say where this is going to shake out. I’d like to see more green shoots than I’m seeing.’ The growing glut of office space isn’t just a D-FW problem. Major cities across the country are struggling to figure out what to do with millions of square feet of empty buildings.”

Cascadia Daily in Washington. “Hardest hit in this decade of hybrid work were the downtown Bellingham and the Barkley Village areas, according to Ryan A. Martin, broker at Pacific Continental Realty. Asking prices for office space dropped as availability rose. Martin is quick to point out that the decline in office space demand doesn’t portend a Seattle-like collapse — a different report cited a 24% Seattle vacancy rate in the second quarter. The short version of the state of home sales in Whatcom and Skagit counties as 2023’s first half came to a close: sagging but stubborn median prices, fewer sold and a continuing lack of inventory. Whatcom County had a median sales price of $600,000, according to a Q2 report issued by Peter Ahn, co-owner of The Muljat Group in Bellingham. That’s down 7.6% from a year earlier. The number of homes sold was down 18.3%. Skagit County saw a similar pattern. The two brokers’ analyses noted a second-quarter median price in Bellingham of $712,000, down 9.3% from a year earlier.”

The Coast News in California. “Home values in North County San Diego fell over the past year, according to a new report from SmartAsset. Between May 2022 and May 2023, Carlsbad saw a 3.45% drop in housing prices, followed by Vista (3.55%), Oceanside (3.81%), Escondido (4.75%) and San Marcos (5.74%), the report shows. But home values have fallen in cities across the Golden State and some places far more dramatically than North County, such as the 12.82% drop in Palo Alto. While Carlsbad had the largest drop in home prices, the city’s average listing is nearly $500,000 more than in San Marcos. While the report only studied cities with a population of more than 65,000, SmartAsset did review smaller coastal cities like Del Mar, Encinitas and Solana Beach, each experiencing a small decline in home values since last year.”

The Real Deal on California. “Lenders are poised to foreclose on a 20-story office tower in San Francisco’s Financial District owned by an affiliate of WeWork, which occupies half the building. A special servicer has sued the New York-based WeWork Capital Advisors to foreclose on 600 California Street after the co-working firm fell behind on a $240 million loan, the San Francisco Business Times reported. A special servicer based in New York sued the co-working company’s investment arm that owns stakes in buildings where WeWork leases offices. WeWork leases more than 186,000 square feet at the 359,000-square-foot building, but stopped paying rent in March, resulting in a default, according to disclosures to bond investors affiliated with the commercial mortgage-backed securities loan filed last month.”

“The potential foreclosure is the latest Downtown San Francisco default as owners, facing higher interest rates and office vacancies in the era of remote work, fail to make payments as loans mature. Last month, Swift Real Estate Partners defaulted on a $62.3 million loan tied to an eight-story building at 55 New Montgomery Street. New York-based Columbia Property Trust defaulted on a $1.7 billion loan backed by a seven-building portfolio, including two office buildings at 650 California Street and 201 California Street. Nearly $2 billion in loans are coming due this year for office buildings in the city, followed by nearly another $2 billion next year, signaling other possible defaults, according to Trepp.”

From Fortune. “Surging interest rates and the rise of remote work have combined to create a nightmare scenario for commercial real estate investors. Just ask Barry Sternlicht, CEO of Starwood Capital Group, a real estate investment firm with $115 billion in assets under management. ‘There’s a hurricane over real estate right now,’ the billionaire investor told ​​David Rubenstein, co-founder of The Carlyle Group, in an interview for Bloomberg Wealth. ‘We’re in a category 5 hurricane, and it’s sort of a black cloud hovering over the entire industry until we get some relief or some understanding of what the Fed is going to do over the long term.'”

“Two of Starwood’s biggest corporate landlord peers, Blackstone and Brookfield Asset Management, have stopped making payments on some offices with high vacancy rates amid the work-from-home trend, Bloomberg reported. Sternlicht argued this is evidence the office sector will be split into haves and have-nots in the coming years—and many have-nots may go out of business. ‘The nice buildings will stay rented and my guess is at pretty good rates. And the B and C stuff is going to be —maybe fields of grain or something. It’ll be very pretty. We’ll have all these little mid-block parks in New York City because there won’t be anything else to do with those buildings,’ he said.”

“In 1991, he started Starwood Capital Group to buy apartment buildings from the Resolution Trust Corporation, an entity made by the federal government to liquidate the assets of the failed banks from the S&L crisis. Now, Sternlicht believes that if more banks fail, there could be a ‘second RTC,’ which means he may be able to wind back the clock to when he was just 31, starting Starwood, and buy up some distressed assets on sale. ‘They [the failed banks] will have to sell,’ he said, calling it ‘a great opportunity.'”

The Globe and Mail. “If you’re in Canada’s major urban centres, ‘affordable’ housing can seem an impossibility, but according to the Canadian Real Estate Association there are still options in almost every province that are cheaper than they were last year. In British Columbia, the Chilliwack area on the eastern end of the Fraser Valley, prices in May were down 13.5 per cent from last year. Edmonton remains one of the cheapest and slowest-growing price environments among large cities in the country, with a HPI benchmark price of $362,400. Edmonton is up only 8.5 per cent from three years ago but is still down 8.8 per cent from one year ago.”

“Some of the steepest price drop-offs in the country have been seen in rural and recreational communities in Ontario such as Grey-Bruce-Owen Sound, neighbouring Huron-Perth, the Niagara Region and Simcoe County. All of those areas have prices that are about 15 per cent off the peaks of a year ago but still see a benchmark price typically between about $500,000 and just less than $700,000. The two areas that are even further off the mark are Peterborough and the Kawarthas and the Windsor-Essex corridor where the benchmark price is down 17.6 per cent and 17.2 per cent respectively, the slowest regional recoveries in the country. Between the two, Windsor has the cheaper benchmark price of $545,700.”

Daily Mail in the UK. “Many home hunters are likely to try and haggle a property under asking price amid the apparent slowdown across the housing market. More than two-fifths of sellers are now accepting offers that are more than 5 per cent below the asking price, according to Zoopla. This is the highest proportion recorded since 2018. Duncan Ley of Cornwall based estate agency, Humberts, said: ‘Whilst some vendors don’t want to accept that we are no longer in the market frenzy of Covid, most are aware that we are in a softening market now. Cornwall obviously boomed during the pandemic and that level of activity was never going to continue, so it’s no surprise that properties aren’t selling for 20 per cent over the asking price like they were a couple of years ago. ‘Sellers don’t need to panic though. We’re finding it’s the correctly priced homes that are selling quickly and receiving the full asking price or slightly under. Where it can go horribly wrong is if a house is overpriced. That is when you will see lots of price reductions.'”

The Daily Telegraph in Australia. “A gutted Inner West home that needs $1m+ in repair work has sold for a massive loss prior to auction. A Drummoyne home with issues arising from the building slab in its 2020 extension sold at an undisclosed price on auction eve through BresicWhitney. The gutted Bowman St offering had a $2.7m price guide for Saturday’s auction, up on its initial $2.5m guidance. It had, however, cost $4.11m in June 2021, with Macquarie Group financing, when the four-bedroom, three-bathroom house was marketed by BresicWhitney as having a ‘well-executed architect vision.’ It was a flip after the 1910 house on 550sq m was bought in 2019 for $1.63m. BresicWhitney was ‘supporting’ the owner ‘given the stressful nature of the situation,’ BW advised after local speculation they were selling it for no commission.”

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This Post Has 90 Comments

  1. ‘The nice buildings will stay rented and my guess is at pretty good rates. And the B and C stuff is going to be —maybe fields of grain or something. It’ll be very pretty. We’ll have all these little mid-block parks in New York City because there won’t be anything else to do with those buildings’

    Did you hear that frozen soup line Larry?

    ‘if more banks fail, there could be a ‘second RTC,’ which means he may be able to wind back the clock to when he was just 31, starting Starwood, and buy up some distressed assets on sale. ‘They [the failed banks] will have to sell,’ he said, calling it ‘a great opportunity’

    Except this time we’ll be feasting on YER bones Barry.

  2. ‘Home prices in San Marcos, Buda and Kyle have largely plateaued in recent months from their meteoric ascent since prior to the pandemic. From May 2020-May 2022, the median home price across Hays County rose from $265,900 to $470,000, or nearly 77%. The most recent data from the Realtors association shows it fell in May 2023 to $400,000’

    There’s no way 400k is gonna hold in Hays County Jerry, you screwed up big time.

  3. ‘Lenders are poised to foreclose on a 20-story office tower in San Francisco’s Financial District owned by an affiliate of WeWork…WeWork leases more than 186,000 square feet at the 359,000-square-foot building, but stopped paying rent in March, resulting in a default’

    So they stopped paying rent to themselves and stopped paying the mortgage. They’re renting fooking desks! Wa happened to the mastermind?

      2. WeWork, meet Luxury Student Housing.

        I am sure you scam artists, oops, I mean cultists, oops, I mean investors have a lot in common and much to talk about.

  4. ‘A gutted Inner West home that needs $1m+ in repair work has sold for a massive loss prior to auction…The gutted Bowman St offering had a $2.7m price guide for Saturday’s auction, up on its initial $2.5m guidance. It had, however, cost $4.11m in June 2021…BresicWhitney was ‘supporting’ the owner ‘given the stressful nature of the situation,’ BW advised after local speculation they were selling it for no commission’

    That’s a mighty a$$ pounding right there.

      1. Gallup (9/3/2021):

        “The variation across these party/vaccination status groups is extreme. For example, 96% of vaccinated Democrats favor the requirement for proof of vaccination before flying on an airplane, compared with 12% of unvaccinated Republicans. Ninety-four percent of vaccinated Democrats favor the requirement for attendance at events, compared with 9% of unvaccinated Republicans.”

        https://news.gallup.com/poll/354506/update-american-public-opinion-vaccination-requirements.aspx

        LOL@ these people think they’re going to get a pandemic amnesty. It’s a medical genocide.

        Nuremberg v2.0 coming soon…

          2. Colorado has open primaries. I’ll be voting for RFK Jr. next year as a FU to the unelected occupant.

            It’s my only 2024 vote that will count, since voting for Orange Man Bad in the state of Colorado is meaningless, this state is controlled by Marxists.

          3. Yes he’s a long shot. My opinion, mark it down today. He (Vivek Ramaswamy) will be the (R) nominee.

          4. According to The Bee, Trump has vowed to make Vivek ‘head of tech support’ if he wins again. 🙂

          1. There will be more casualties from the safe and effective than from the Iraq and Afghan wars combined

    3. J&J Covid vaccine was only approved for adults. They never sought approval for children under 18.

        1. Multitasking and the cumbersome keypad on my iPhone. Sorry, I’ll get a technical editor next time I post on this very consequential blog.

          1. The blog is very consequential. You and I are allowed the grace of inconsequential comments.

        3. The prerequisite for EUA is no available alternative treatments. FDA approval used to require a helluva lot more clinical trials.

      3. J&J Covid vaccine was only approved for adults. They never sought approval for children under 18.

        You’re the kind of person that says that SOME of the Nazi Concentration Camps were not extermination camps–some Concentration Camps were actually “work camps” where the Jews were working in factories producing things. So not ALL Concentration Camps were bad.

        The ENTIRE Covid 19 response was a complete and utter failure. Even the New York Times admitted that 20% of the reported Covid deaths were not caused by Covid. And a recent study concluded that at least 20% of infected Covid cases were asymptomatic. And now everyone agrees that Covid was made in a lab by the Chinese.

        In fact the entire Covid-19 narrative has completely changed. The biggest revelation that is becoming obvious is that the shutting down of the entire American healthcare system resulted in MILLIONS of deaths that would have been prevented had the government not restricted and closed our medical industry down.

        More people died of non-Covid causes than Covid even at the height of the phony pandemic.

        So the Covid-19 vaccine killed lots of people. People who were vaccinated were more likely to get Covid. Closing and restricting healthcare access resulted in millions of Americans dying or becoming more sick from everything else.

        Aside from those things, the Covid-19 vaccine was “effective”. You are a freaking idiot. It’s obvious that you’ve never taken a single course in biostatistics, epidemiology, infectious disease epidemiology or even basic public health. Just go back to your government lab and wait for your fat pension checks.

      4. They never sought

        It doesn’t matter what they sought. Jabs were administered without care.

    4. I get the constant bashing of the MRNA vax’s as they’re completely new and were forced on us as some miracle breakthrough. But J & J is a traditional vax that doesn’t alter the body’s DNA. Seizures killed long before Covid.

      1. The problem with all of the Covid-19 vaccines is that they result in the production of the spike protein. Using this spike protein to invoke an immune response is looking like a really bad idea with major complications/side effects that were NOT predicted or found before the idiot governments around the World vaccinated hundreds of millions (or billions) of people!

        It’s no good going around justifying this spike protein strategy by saying, “Well, we’re having a few unintended side-effects but they are most probably minor…”. No, before you approve ANY drug, you have to first demonstrate their safety. This wasn’t done with any of the Covid-19 vaccines.

        Short cuts mean bad outcomes which means dead people.

        1. And if it is true that the J&J jab was never given to minors, it’s likely she did get an MRNA jab. While it is true that we don’t know why she suddenly had seizures, it is quite possible that it was the jab.

        2. The Salk Institute published a peer reviewed study in fall of 2020 that the spike protein by itself is cytotoxic…a poison created in the body by any of the jabs.

      2. But J & J is a traditional vax that doesn’t alter the body’s DNA.

        Incorrect. The delivery system (DNA vector) was new in the vaccine space. You’d need genotoxicity studies to show that they don’t alter DNA, which we didn’t get because these “vaccines” were reviewed by a division of the FDA that wasn’t familiar with gene therapy products and their issues.

  6. A reader sent these in:

    Welcome to Canadian real estate. 🫣

    https://twitter.com/ManyBeenRinsed/status/1680248113980747776

    My DM’s full of ppl on the brink of bankruptcy, divorce & in some instances worse. Got these stories last year but they really ramped up the last few weeks. I feel like a therapist at times but that’s okay … ppl just need someone 2 talk to & listen. Sad state of affairs. 😔

    https://twitter.com/ManyBeenRinsed/status/1680217864647712770

    Today I learned where Cedar City, Utah is. I’ve driven by but I must not have been paying attention. So I looked up the house. I particularly liked “It would make a great investment property!”

    https://twitter.com/RudyHavenstein/status/1679900538144538624

    Korea is facing red flags due to rising non-performing real estate project financing (PF) loans, with the outstanding balance of such loans in the financial sector exceeding 131 trillion won ($103.65 billion) and the delinquency rate topping 2 percent.

    https://twitter.com/kimchipump/status/1681897900320886784

    Current freight market explained in one graphic

    https://twitter.com/BenTschirgi/status/1681397570222866441

    Shady numbers. Wells Fargo increased their credit loss allowances by $949 million in their commercial loan portfolio per its earnings report. A huge skyscraper here in Baltimore just sold for $24 million this week down from $66 million in 2015.

    https://twitter.com/StealthQE4/status/1681635488636059648

    Seeing deals on the market for less than they sold for 11 years ago is humbling

    https://twitter.com/DDrolapas/status/1681827498055860226

    Canada, where you could end up paying for a mortgage without ever actually getting a mortgage or a home of your own. Its only a matter of time until this level of stupid makes it to Australia.

    https://twitter.com/AvidCommentator/status/1681868213234065413

    Rental market right now: “Looking for top 10% income family to rent out our basic 3bd 2ba sh$tbox that’s been listed for 6mo priced 3x too high.”

    https://twitter.com/GRomePow/status/1681873797954310144

    Translation: Please buy an investment property. There just aren’t enough first home buyers to absorb all these new properties, as illustrated nicely by this chart from the Financial Times.

    https://twitter.com/AvidCommentator/status/1681866973708181505

    It’s a clown show in the for rent and for sale housing market right now in Dallas. Realtors are getting desperate and sellers are getting reality checks. Appropriately priced houses are still transacting relatively efficiently though.

    https://twitter.com/akm515/status/1681866540616937472

    Colleague of mine moving out of Dallas because they can’t afford their 3400 sq ft house anymore. Listed it for RENT for $6500/month 3 months ago. Zero interest. Seriously, who is going to pay $6.5k/month when you can buy a new build for $4k/month? 🤡😂🤡😂

    https://twitter.com/akm515/status/1681864896722489344

    (7a) Lower Priced Teslas. The average price of a used Tesla is over $24k lower than the peak last July.

    https://twitter.com/charliebilello/status/1681502583054123010

    🇺🇸 United States Housing Starts (MoM) (Jun) $USD
    Actual: -8.0% 🔴
    Expected: 7.2%
    Previous: 15.7%

    https://twitter.com/PriapusIQ/status/1681642566993821697

    The lion’s share of CRE loans — 30% of which are now overdue — come from small banks. Time bomb 💣

    https://twitter.com/JoeConsorti/status/1682561462475030528

    Y’all gotta let me in on the secret!! How do people making $90k drive a $75,000 truck, pulling a $50,000 boat, park it and hook up their $30,000 RZR, and live in a $500,000 house with 3 kids, a wife, 2 dogs, and 10 acres?

    https://twitter.com/financecowboy/status/1682345871910862848

    For what it’s worth… Someone with a 450 Fico score was approved for an auto loan at our store yesterday.

    https://twitter.com/carsales_guy/status/1682450435557281809

    Phoenix is going to be ground zero for the bubble popping yet again

    https://twitter.com/GRomePow/status/1682428391029637120

    The National Association of Realtors is facing a MASSIVE wave of lawsuits and may not survive. Bye bye bribing Washington to crush young families with high housing costs.

    https://twitter.com/GRomePow/status/1682527293544226818

    Translation: “I was only successful because rates fell” “Now I’m failing because rates are returning to normal.”

    https://twitter.com/GRomePow/status/1682525461161865216

    It was all a fugazi
    SNAP
    PPP
    ERC
    Payments for having kids (LOL wtf?)
    Stimmies
    Not paying student loans
    Not paying rent
    Not payment mortgage
    Not paying CC
    Not paying car loans

    https://twitter.com/GRomePow/status/1682517670539960321

    30,000 employees will likely be laid off next week when Yellow, the 3rd largest trucking company in the US, shutters its doors after nearly 100 years. RIP Yellow, Roadway, USF, NewPenn

    https://twitter.com/FreightAlley/status/1682501713536643073

    It’s pretend time for housing: Tiny number of homes selling at high prices & the bubble deniers are telling us that the other 99% are worth peak Zestimates. Reality: There are only a small number of qualified buyers left, becoming fewer by the month.

    https://twitter.com/Tryng2lookahead/status/1682513235138973696

    M2 deepest decline EVER

    https://twitter.com/WinfieldSmart/status/1681035971419095042

    A $5 billion company straight to liquidation.

    https://twitter.com/DiMartinoBooth/status/1682505646355230720

    I wonder if the younger generation can ever recover from what the government & Federal Reserve have done. Not only did they artificially inflate prices of assets out of the reach of young Americans, they then handed the rich ONE TRILLION DOLLARS in PPP/ERC to hoard more assets.

    https://twitter.com/GRomePow/status/1682468321227333632

    Bottle girl to Real Estate agent pipeline

    https://twitter.com/Titsandnuggies/status/1682389989617725441

    Austin home prices going to zero lol. Already down more than anywhere else in the country. RIP to the people who bought the top

    https://twitter.com/buccocapital/status/1682447688455933958

    U.S. auto loan rejections have surged 📈 Basically, unlike the past couple of years, it’s a rough time to be a car shopper if you don’t have decent credit and/or some money down.

    https://twitter.com/GuyDealership/status/1682435474831319048

    My observation: most sellers are still trying to get their money back by selling. If no offer for 4 weeks, you can’t expect to break even. You need to sell at a loss. That’s how investment works.

    https://twitter.com/__broken_mike/status/1682491576780554241

    1. Brilliant compilation. I’ve taken the liberty of reposting them to wake up the sheeple. Thanks, bruh!

    2. “If no offer for 4 weeks, you can’t expect to break even. You need to sell at a loss. That’s how investment works.”

      If no offer for 2 weeks, lower the price and relist. Repeat until an offer is made. That’s how Dutch auction works.

  7. “Home prices in San Marcos, Buda and Kyle have largely plateaued in recent months from their meteoric ascent since prior to the pandemic.”

    ‘Plateaued’ would mean prices are not changing.

    “From May 2020-May 2022, the median home price across Hays County rose from $265,900 to $470,000, or nearly 77%. The most recent data from the Realtors association shows it fell in May 2023 to $400,000.”

    Percentage changes also work when prices fall:

    (470-400)/470 = 15% year-on-year decline, before considering leverage.

  8. 81 million ballots, not 81 million votes.

    The 2020 election was stolen. The * didn’t win the 2020 election. The * is not, and will never be the legitimate president. Merrick Garland is not a legitimate attorney general, and his Department of Justice is the Democrat Party Gestapo. The New York Times amd Washington Post are, as was once so eloquently stated, “the enemy of the American people.”

      1. The 2020 election was stolen.

        “Restore decency to the White House” what a f*ing joke. Last month a biological male with breast implants prancing around topless next to a topless biological female with double mastectomy scars on the White House lawn.

        This whole administration is an abomination.

        1. “Last month a biological male with breast implants prancing around topless next to a topless biological female with double mastectomy scars on the White House lawn.”

          Video url?

    1. David Weiss’ father worked as an IRS agent and was caught accepting over $200k in bribes from businessmen and was sentenced to four years in prison

      His father Meyer spent almost $71,020 on David’s college and law school tuition, in part financed by the bribe money, according to a 1995 US tax court ruling

  10. Any time you see the word “misinformation” in corporate globalist media, you’re reading deep state propaganda.

    HuffPaint: “The good news: A federal appeals court temporarily blocked a controversial order that had restricted most of Joe Biden administration officials and federal agencies from talking to social media companies about certain content.

    The bad news: A lower court judge actually issued such an order in the first place.

    The content is misinformation, which, as we know, has been widespread on those social media platforms.

    The case could have major implications for the First Amendment, for how social media companies work with government agencies, and whether the proliferation of misinformation on social media can be abated if it even should.

    This is a thoroughly debunked conspiracy theory. The government is not forcing, and has not forced Big Tech to censor conservative speech. This would violate the First Amendment, and the tech companies likely would have filed their own lawsuits. But they didn’t, which means their free speech rights were unobstructed ― but never let a debunked conspiracy theory stand in the way of a conservative temper tantrum.”

    Enemy of the American people.

    1. Bloomberg
      Economics
      Inflation & Prices
      Investors Flock to Inflation Protection to Hedge Perfect-Fed Bet
      – TIPS auction gets strong demand, ETF sees millions in inflows
      – Wage growth among reasons to bet inflation will top the target
      The Federal Reserve building in Washington, DC.
      Photographer: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
      By Elizabeth Stanton
      July 21, 2023 at 1:27 PM EDT

      Bond investors made clear this week that they doubt the Federal Reserve’s ability to return inflation to its 2% target.

      Yields on inflation-protected Treasury debt have climbed to levels about 2.3 percentage points lower than regular rates on US government bonds. The gap represents the average annual change in the consumer price index needed to equalize their returns.
      …

    2. lost faith in the Fed’s commitment

      That’s an awkward phrase. I think a more accurate description is: “Bond market signals that they intend to browbeat Powell into caving.”

  12. we knew decades ago Afghanistan was a very rich country like Alaska was 100 year ago, but the taliban were in the way.

    A decade earlier, the U.S. Defense Department, guided by the surveys of American government geologists, concluded that the vast wealth of lithium and other minerals buried in Afghanistan might be worth $1 trillion, more than enough to prop up the country’s fragile government.

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/rich-lode-of-ev-metals-could-boost-taliban-and-its-new-chinese-partners/ar-AA1e7uSq

    1. Nauru is about 1/6 the size of Lanai, which has been partially transformed into Larry Ellison’s bunker.

    1. “Conveniently located if you’re into crimes, drugs, and thugs.”

      During my limited visits to Florida I’ve noticed that one doesn’t need to wander far to find grinding poverty.

    2. Depressing. We’ve seen this before: Flipper tries to renovate a questionable house and make bank during the pandemic frenzy. Problem is, we ran out of viable flips in the last bubble, and all that is left are the structural dregs. Anything remaining homes being worked on now have too many problems which take too long to renovate, and the frenzy ends before the flipper can finish.

      I find this depressing because the flipper wasted his money, time, and especially new materials on a house that isn’t worth renovating. The house was already old (1956), it never had any character, there’s no reason to maintain continuity with other houses on the block, and half the house is a badly built addition off the back. They should have demolished the place 10 years ago and sold the land for a song and been done with it.

  17. “SmartAsset did review smaller coastal cities like Del Mar, Encinitas and Solana Beach, each experiencing a small decline in home values since last year.”

    Is 5% considered ‘small’? 5% of $1 million is $50,000, which is approximately a 100% loss of equity for someone who bought last year with a 5% down payment on a $1 million dollar home. Also the median pretax household income in San Diego is around $90K, so a $50,000 loss would wipe out a good chunk of a year’s after tax income for a typical San Diego household.

    I guess whether $50,000 is a ‘small’ amount depends on who shoulders the loss.

    2. Did anyone actually LISTEN to what he said? McChrystal wasn’t “confirming” anything. He and his son were speculating about what they “think” happened.

  19. Biden names CIA Director William Burns to his cabinet

    By Andrea Shalal and Kanishka Singh
    July 21, 2023 5:48 PM EDT

    WASHINGTON, July 21 (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden on Friday said he had asked CIA Director William Burns to become a member of his cabinet, elevating one of his closest advisers on national security and foreign policy.

    “Under his leadership, the CIA is delivering a clear-eyed, long-term approach to our nation’s top national security challenges,” Biden said in a statement, referring to Burns’ approach to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and U.S. competition with China.

    https://www.reuters.com/world/us/biden-asks-cia-director-burns-become-member-his-cabinet-washington-post-2023-07-21/

          1. The standard punchline is “…but it’s a dry heat.” It was 115° when I went to the store yesterday. Short run from one AC to the next 💨
            Energy/water bills have got up like crazy. Lot of bitching online. Thanks, Warren (owns NVEnergy)!

          3. No snails (am I missing a joke there? What do I know – I’m a fan of the great indoors.)
            Lots of lizards that the cats drag in. Sometimes ABC birds, mice, but thankfully not often. One or two big waterbugs come and go that freak me out. If I don’t see it, and it’s close, I usually scream, husband laughs from afar. I hate those things. In another place, a mole-rat, at least I think it was.

          5. “No snails (am I missing a joke there?”

            The Columbia Basin is also a scrub desert, but it is roughly 900-miles north of you. We climb above 100-degrees F regularly, and then drop to 20-degrees F in the winter. When we lived near Morro Bay, CA we had snails everywhere, but haven’t seen one since!

          6. snails everywhere
            That’s interesting. Would think that snails need higher humidity.
            Forgot the scorpions we’ve had in the house a few times. Tiny reddish ones.

          7. “Would think that snails need higher humidity.”

            Morro Bay, CA is usually covered in ocean fog.

          9. Snails and slugs have been awful this year after all of our wet and gloomy weather.

          10. We had so many snails that we kept a push broom leaning against the wall outside the front door.

  21. ‘My observation: most sellers are still trying to get their money back by selling. If no offer for 4 weeks, you can’t expect to break even. You need to sell at a loss’

    That may be, but it’s under 6 months so it’s a sellers market!

  22. Ah memories of 08. It took 10 consecutive months of small declines before the wheels really started to wobble.

    “The nation’s home prices continued spiraling downward at a record-setting pace in October, according to a prominent index released Tuesday.

    The Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller index of home prices in 20 metropolitan areas was down 18% in October from the same month last year.

    The index has now reported 22 straight months of declines, the last 12 of which were record-setting.”

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