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It’s Grapes Of Wrath Stuff

A holiday topic starting with the Herald Tribune in Florida. “After back-to-back double-digit yearly growth coming out of the pandemic, real estate prices in Sarasota-Manatee will round out the year mostly flat. Robert Goldman, a local Realtor with Michael Saunders & Company, said the 2021 and 2022 real estate markets were fueled by a once-in-a-lifetime event, pointing to COVID lockdowns across the country as well as the many people who accelerated retirement during that period of uncertainty.”

WSPA in South Carolina. “Home sales have been slowing nationwide, but the Spartanburg County market is stronger than most. In 2020 the housing market was booming everywhere, Brian Hurry, a realtor at Coldwell Banker Caine in Spartanburg, said. ‘During COVID it was just the unicorn years of real estate. There were 20 buyers for every for sale sign that we put in front of a house,’ he said. ‘When we do the research and we look at what’s for sale and what’s under contract what has sold, 45% of our home sales have been new construction. ‘They have either priced their homes well, given you incentives on an interest rate, helped you with closing costs. So how’s that impacted the market, it’s made it harder for someone that has a house to compete against them to sell because they can’t offer as many incentives as a builder.'”

“‘There are 5,000 homes in Woodruff right now under construction,’ David Britt, Spartanburg County Councilman said. ‘If there wasn’t a need for all this housing whether its single family multi family townhomes trust me those developers would not be building.'”

The News Times. “A group of residents at Cambridge Crossing who are suing developer William Ferrigno to gain control of the homeowners association scored a victory in Waterbury Superior Court Thursday. Judge W. Glen Pierson ordered Ferrigno, owner of Sunlight Construction, to turn over control of the Cambridge Crossing Association Inc., provide a full accounting of funds received by and held for it, and allow for the election of a new board by Jan. 18, or face a contempt of court charge. The group of 44 plaintiffs at the half-finished neighborhood near the International Skating Center of Connecticut had filed suit in October to gain control of the association’s books and governance, which has been held solely by Ferrigno since its establishment in 2019.”

“Ferrgino had been charging the plaintiffs monthly fees to cover the cost of snow plowing, trash removal, and landscaping for multiple years, they contend, but the contractors have left due to a lack of payment. Ferrigno, who did not respond to a request for comment, is also facing at least 22 civil suits from potential home buyers, contractors, suppliers, the towns of Avon and Simsbury, and two banks. Ferrigno is also facing criminal charges, including a felony larceny charge in Avon for allegedly selling property that did not belong to him, and three misdemeanor charges for allegedly failing to return deposits he had collected from dissatisfied clients to buy land and build homes.”

The Daily Mail. “A wealthy Masschusetts couple found dead alongside their teenage daughter in a ‘violent domestic incident’ in their $6.7 million mansion had filed for bankrupcty and had a foreclosure notice on their home. Teena Kamal, 54, her husband Rakesh, 57, and daughter Ariana, 18, were found dead in the 27-room home at 8 Wilson’s Way in Dover – the state’s richest town, just 19 miles from Boston. On Thursday night, a family member went to their home to check on him around 7.30pm, although it’s unclear why. Once there, he discovered one of the bodies and called 911. Police later discovered the two other bodies, as well as a firearm.”

“Over the past two years, the Kamals faced financial trouble and in 2022 filed for bankrupcty. Teena, 54, filed for Chapter 13 bankruptcy, listing between $1 million to $10 million in debt, in September 2022. The Wilson’s Way Homeowners Association was listed as a creditor in documents obtained by DailyMail.com. The case however was dismissed in October and eventually closed this month because the correct forms and documents were not filed. There was also a foreclosure notice on their home, assessed at $6.7 million according to town records. It sits on a private road dotted with about eight mansions that sell for upward of $5M each, and are sprawled across acres of land. Both Teena and husband Rakesh were listed on the EduNova website – a defunt tech company that hawked a ‘student success system’ to help them improve their grades. The company, which Teena founded and launched in 2016, dissolved in December 2021. Raskesh was listed as being the company’s chief operating officer.”

The Real Deal on California. “The Federal Reserve raised rates, and loans broke. San Francisco’s commercial real estate market, like many others, was pummeled by a wave of defaults this year, as owners struggled to pay off debt tied to offices, malls and hotels. The largest default of the year was on a loan for Veritas Investments, San Francisco’s largest residential landlord. The firm defaulted on nearly $1 billion in loans tied to 95 apartment complexes across the city. But defaults were tied to some of the largest real estate players in the city — Brookfield, Unibail Rodamco-Westfield, Park Hotels & Resorts and WeWork.”

Canadian Accountant. “Nearly half of Canadian workers feel as though the economic conditions in Canada are ‘poor,’ according to our survey of 2,500 Canadian workers in September of 2023. These findings are unsurprising, given the poor state of the Canadian economy and the growing pessimism among Canadians toward it. Inflation and interest rates both remain high, and job openings are struggling to keep up with the growing labour force. We asked participants: ‘How has your experience of the cost of living changed during the past few years?’ The number of Canadian workers who said their experience was ‘much worse’ jumped from 28 per cent in 2019 to 49 per cent in 2023.”

“‘We’re so careful with our money,’ a 31-year-old operations assistant told us. ‘Housing, food, utilities and fuel are becoming too astronomical to handle — we shouldn’t be suffering!’ ‘Everyone I know has been cutting purchases,’ a 59-year-old delivery worker said. ‘I haven’t purchased undergarments for five years, toiletries for three years, and I’m only able to eat one meal a day, not extras of anything.’ Our discoveries support a recent report from Léger, a Canadian market research firm, that found two-thirds of Canadians feel like ‘everything feels broken in this country right now.'”

From The BBC. “At the age of 31, Justin Dowswell never imagined he’d be living in a shared room in his childhood home. He had a full-time, well-paying job in Sydney, and had rented for a decade before an unprecedented housing crisis forced him to upend his life and move back in with his parents, two hours away. ‘It’s humbling,’ he says. But the alternative was homelessness: ‘So I’m one of the lucky ones.’ It’s a far cry from the promise of the Great Australian Dream. After decades of government policies that treat housing as an investment not a right, many say they would be lucky to even find a stable, affordable place to rent. ‘The Australian Dream… it’s a big lie,’ Mr Dowswell says.”

“Underpinning it all is that buying a house is astronomically expensive – the average property now costs about nine times an ordinary household’s income, triple what it was 25 years ago. It’s particularly dire for the three quarters of Australians who live in major cities. Sydney, for example, is the second least affordable city on Earth to buy a property, trailing only Hong Kong. Australian news has been awash with stories of massive rent increases and images of desperate people queuing to inspect properties riddled with defects and – in some cases – obviously covered in mould.”

“Almost everything that could go wrong with housing in Australia has gone wrong, says Michael Fotheringham. ‘The only thing that could make it worse is if banks started collapsing,’ the head of the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute tells the BBC. ‘It’s Grapes of Wrath stuff,’ Dr Fotheringham says, referring to the famous Great Depression-era novel about a family struggling to build a life.”

The Telegraph. “Xi Jinping has admitted people are struggling to find jobs and ‘meet basic needs’ in China as fresh data pointed to a continued slowdown at factories and in the housing market. In a rare admission of economic weakness made in his New Year message, the Chinese President acknowledged that businesses had faced a ‘tough’ year in 2023, adding that ‘some people had difficulty finding jobs and meeting basic needs.'”

Estonian Public Broadcasting. “Kadri and Tarvo Veski are raising three children. They’ve been building a life in the Valga County village of Karula, where both of them are self-employed; Tarvo works in the construction field, while Kadri runs a veterinary clinic in Antsla. And for Kadri, it’s precisely the vet’s office that gave the first tipoff that the economy has changed. ‘People are trying to get things as cheaply as possible,’ Kadri said. ‘Sometimes they’ll come in and just ask for stuff – that maybe they can just get medications [for free], maybe they don’t have to make an appointment. Or they’ll brutally try to stiff [us] – that they’ll just stop in the clinic as they were passing by and ask a lot of questions and then simply go, ‘Oh, but I don’t even have my wallet on me!'”

“Their family has a mortgage on their home as well, but it is a small one, sparing them from the brunt of high interest rates. ‘We have to pay around €50 more each month now,’ Kadri said. ‘But in that regard we feel like this situation is alright, at least for our family. Friends and family have seen tenfold hikes in interest.’ The effects of the increased cost of living go beyond just the fall in purchasing power, however. ‘Because life has gotten more expensive, then I need to try harder, work more, and as a result we don’t have time for our family,’ Kadri Veski admitted. ‘Nothing goes unbought. Generally speaking, we can manage. But precisely that not having time for family, or to go out, or to go on a trip; we’d have to work really hard indeed to afford that.'”

The Independent in the UK. “More big firms are likely to go bust next year amid the ‘double whammy’ of high borrowing costs and pressure on consumer budgets, according to insolvency experts. Official figures from the Insolvency Service earlier this month showed the total of company failures over the first 11 months of 2023 was more than reported during the entirety of 2022. Rob Hornby, partner of AlixPartners, said he expects company insolvencies to continue apace in 2024. ‘That is likely to be across the board, both in terms of geographies and sectors,’ he said.”

“Mr Hornby said: ‘I personally think we are definitely seeing an element of the dotcom bubble repeating itself. Since before the pandemic, there was plenty of investment money around, with VCs (venture capitals) worried about missing out. You ended up with some areas of tech, for example, where you had more competitors funded in one space than were ever likely to succeed sustainably in the longer term. Now some of that funding is running dry, you will start to see consequences.'”

From Philip Pilkington. “The weekend before the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee (FOMC) met, The Wall Street Journal published an article showing that Donald Trump had overtaken President Joe Biden in the polls, and that a key reason Trump had pulled ahead was because of Biden’s handling of the economy. This is the latest episode calling into question the independence of central banks around the world. If inflation takes off again – possibly driven by rising tensions in the Middle East – the Federal Reserve will have egg on its face, having missed two bouts of rising prices.”

“Yet questions about the competency of central banks run far deeper. The latest round of rate hikes we have seen from central banks around the world are the culmination of 15 years of the largest monetary experiments since at least the Second World War. The fact of the matter is that we have never really had a public discussion of the merits and demerits of central bank quantitative easing (QE) programmes.”

“Perhaps there was a solid case that large liquidity provision needed to be provided to the banking system in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. But this case could not be used to justify the fact that this liquidity was maintained for the next decade and a half. The rationalisation of this strange action was that leaving the sea of cash to slosh around the banking system would help the battered and bruised economy recover.”

“Is there any evidence for this? Not much. The economy remained sluggish. But financial markets went wild. Everything from stocks to classic cars to Rolex watches massively increased in value. The sea of cash never flowed into the economy. Rather it stayed within the financial system itself, bidding up anything that investors could rationally designate as an asset. As we move into 2024 the experiments look like they have yielded wacky funny money programmes, grotesque asset bubbles, a seemingly broke Bank of England trying to snatch taxation powers from the King, and, despite all this, a sluggish economy that has recently experienced a painful bout of inflation.”

From Mises.org. “Although the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank’s message regarding interest rate cuts seems clear, reiterating their commitment to reducing inflation, the market is expecting between five and six interest rate cuts in the next twelve months. This shows us the bubble bias of many investors. We live in a world where two generations of market participants have only seen rate cuts and massive liquidity injections. Central banks have created huge perverse incentives in markets that should have been prevented if they truly followed their mandate of stable prices.”

“Central banks are placing all the focus on the price and not the quantity of money. Ignoring monetary aggregates is very dangerous, and centering decisions only on rates may create a larger problem: a market bubble and a real economy contraction. By ignoring monetary aggregates, central banks may cut rates with no real effect on the productive economy and solve nothing. There may be a significant contraction in economic activity even if rates decline, as credit availability worsens even with declining rates, but markets keep inflating the financial bubble.”

“The greatest economic aberration of our time, negative interest rates, actually made the structural weakness in the economy worse, causing it to slow down. The economy has been accumulating poor and indebted growth data for years in which misguided so-called ‘expansive’ monetary policies have been implemented. Negative rates and extreme liquidity injection have not generated greater or better growth but have left states with enormous imbalances.”

“Consumers are still suffering from the monetary disaster created in 2020. We are talking about a cumulative inflation rate of more than 22% since 2018 and a price rise that continues to be worrying, particularly in non-replaceable goods. Inflation is a monetary effect. What some call cost inflation, commodity inflation, or supply shock is nothing more than more units of issued currency than real economic growth going to relatively scarce assets.”

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  1. ‘The greatest economic aberration of our time, negative interest rates, actually made the structural weakness in the economy worse, causing it to slow down. The economy has been accumulating poor and indebted growth data for years in which misguided so-called ‘expansive’ monetary policies have been implemented. Negative rates and extreme liquidity injection have not generated greater or better growth but have left states with enormous imbalances’

    The US’s mountain of debt is growing every day – and the government could soon be spending more on interest payments than on defense, according to Capital Group.

    “US debt dynamics are evolving in a way that requires attention,” Darrell Spence, an economist for the US asset manager, said in a research note back in October. “Over the next five years, net interest payments on the debt are expected to surpass defense spending.”

    Spence added that if the world’s largest economy’s debt pile rises at the rate expected by the Congressional Budget Office, the government’s spending on net interest payments could rise from under $500 billion to a staggering $1.4 trillion by 2033.

    https://finance.yahoo.com/news/us-debt-mountain-growing-fast-193006391.html

  2. ‘ ‘I personally think we are definitely seeing an element of the dotcom bubble repeating itself. Since before the pandemic, there was plenty of investment money around, with VCs (venture capitals) worried about missing out. You ended up with some areas of tech, for example, where you had more competitors funded in one space than were ever likely to succeed sustainably in the longer term. Now some of that funding is running dry, you will start to see consequences’

    ‘A wealthy Masschusetts couple found dead alongside their teenage daughter in a ‘violent domestic incident’ in their $6.7 million mansion had filed for bankrupcty and had a foreclosure notice on their home. Both Teena and husband Rakesh were listed on the EduNova website – a defunt tech company that hawked a ‘student success system’ to help them improve their grades. The company, which Teena founded and launched in 2016, dissolved in December 2021. Raskesh was listed as being the company’s chief operating officer’

    1. a defunt tech company that hawked a ‘student success system’ to help them improve their grades

      They must have had an app.

  3. ‘Xi Jinping has admitted people are struggling to find jobs and ‘meet basic needs’ in China as fresh data pointed to a continued slowdown at factories and in the housing market. In a rare admission of economic weakness made in his New Year message, the Chinese President acknowledged that businesses had faced a ‘tough’ year in 2023, adding that ‘some people had difficulty finding jobs and meeting basic needs’

    Globalism’s failure can be defined by it’s own benchmarks. An end to wars? Bzzz, nope. A middle class in Mexico? Nope, China has no middle class and never will under communism.

    The whole sh$tcart was simply a race to the bottom in real wages, privacy, pollution, workers rights and debt. And in China’s case, unresolved unless millions of people rise up against the army. Joy!

    1. Thinking about it, Xitler is more likely to go out via coup/assassination. Some of those China videos I watch say it’s been tried more than once. There was a big military purge recently, possibly a reaction. In this case purge meant they disappeared.

      1. Interesting, I did not know this. I know he’s not very popular, and his second round of zero covid was deeply damaging to the economy. It seems from these stories that China is in a depression – it’s real estate market is for sure – but all i see are articles like “growth slows in china to 4.6%” and Bloomberg describes the recent military purges as “anti-corruption probes”.

        2. growth slows in china to 4.6%

          They stopped reporting youth unemployment after it grew to 20%+. Not likely that growth is actually 4.6%

    2. More about China…

      “The official manufacturing PMI dropped to 49 last month, down from 49.4 in November, according to a statement from the NBS.

      A PMI reading above 50 indicates expansion, while any reading below represents a contraction. December also marked the third straight month the manufacturing PMI has contracted.

      …After a brief pickup in economic activity in the first quarter of last year, the official manufacturing PMI contracted for five months until September. Then it dipped below 50 again.”

      Everyone (except A-Dan and his ilk) used to assume China’s official economic stats were always exaggerated/inflated to the good side. Unless that has changed, we can conclude their economy is in worse shape than gov’t numbers indicate. Which might explain why Xi is publicly assuring people he knows things are not going well. After all, the people know what’s really going on.

      1. It seems like it’s really bad over there. The real estate industry is in full meltdown a hundred times worse than here.

  4. Both Teena and husband Rakesh were listed on the EduNova website – a defunt tech company that hawked a ‘student success system’ to help them improve their grades.

    Another “unicorn” tech startup that was only viable in a world awash with Yellen Bux funny money.

    1. The senile pedo’s ghastly rictus grin is creepy AF. If the globalists really intend to give this universally detested puppet a 2nd term, the DNC is going to have to pull off electoral fraud on a scale that dwarfs what they managed in 2020.

      3. They don’t even need to pull off election anymore. They just say “Biden won, don’t question what I say” and then the Secretary of State can say whatever they want. And really, who is going to audit a Dem Secretary of State in a Democrat run state like PA, or AZ or WI? Those states aren’t ever going back to Rebpulicans again. They simply won’t allow it.

  8. “If there wasn’t a need for all this housing whether its single family multi family townhomes trust me those developers would not be building.’”

    😂🤣🤣

  9. I live 2 counties away from Spartenburg County SC…It’s known as a drug county , a lot of folks there are either doing it ,growing,selling etc….or running it up and down the I-85 there ….That crazy Real Estate broker , Kolkoff, who was offing all those people ,and keeping a girl in a shipping container , and selling real estate on the side , yeah , that’s where he was operating out of , and he was considered about normal for the area …it’s not a normal place , by any measurements ….

  10. Never forget how bad things were during the “pandemic”

    In 2022, 27% of Democrats wanted to take kids away the unvaccinated.

    55% wanted to fine the unvaccinated.

    60% wanted to place the unvaccinated under permanent house arrest.

    45% wanted to put the unvaccinated in government-run forced FEMA camps.

    NEVER FORGET what they have done.

      1. You were not told that. You are exaggerating, talking past the sale, misrepresenting other parties, like any typical practitioner of a profession whose trust rating ranks below that of real estate agents.

        You were told that a pandemic was predicted. There have been books and reports galore about pandemics. There’s even a video game where you could play the role of the virus.

        It was the sequence of virus evolution that was not predicted. The response to the pandemic is a separate issue.

        2. It’s a tad ironic to be so forward about what you know about something that was riddled with lies.

          1. You can conspiracy theory yourself all you want about the causes or response to the pandemic, but it is well known that (1) a pandemic has been predicted for a long time, by novelists, video game devs, movies etc. (2) the sudden downshift from Delta to Omicron was a surprise.

          2. the sudden downshift from Delta to Omicron was a surprise

            According to “Dr” John Campbell?!

          4. I haven’t watched Campbell 18 months.

            Omicron was a surprise to ME. My original comment was that the pandemic itself was not a black swan because a pandemic was predictable (and had been predicted). However, the swift evolution from Delta to Omicron WAS an unpredictable Black Swan.

            Delta was just contagious enough that it couldn’t be contained; the only way for it to end was for everyone to get it at some point. But Delta was just deadly enough — even with the shots — that the Powers that Be felt they were justified in keeping us in fear and under control. Delta could have easily dragged on for another year of masking, boosters, quarantine camps, moratoriums, and stimmie checks, all in the name of “flattening the curve,” as we waited for Delta to grind through the population.

            But Omicron changed all that. Omicron was mild, it displaced Delta in a month, and it was so contagious that vaccines and masks and quarantines did nothing to stop the spread. Instead of a long flat curve, Omicron gave us an unstoppable spike. No matter how much masking and disinfecting and social distancing we did, everybody got Omicron, and its wonderful natural immunity, over the Christmas holidays 2021-22. It was all over by Easter.

            The governments, who had been salivating over another year not letting the Delta crisis to go to waste, were dismayed to see the spike come and go, and hospitalizations drops like a rock. With the crisis over, they were forced to dismantle their socialist strategies for control. HBB can cat fight and disagree and put words in my mouth, but at least maybe some lurkers out there will agree with me when I say that Omicron was a gift.

          5. IDK, I feel like Omnicron was inevitable, coronaviruses mutate so much, they’re known for that, it’s the reason why we can’t get a regular cold vaccine. I caught Delta in Dec 2021, it hospitalized me for over a week and I’m a middle aged guy with a normal BMI. I’ve never caught COVID again since. I’m also unvaccinated. The people I know who are vaccinated have caught it multiple times since 2020. My neighbor just caught it again last month for the third or fourth time.

          6. I too had Delta late 2021. Was not hospitalized. Fever was 100F at times and was easy to break with tylenol. Congestion was mild and could be offset with robitussin. I was tired for a few days. Anyway, I haven’t been sick with anything since then except for a mild cough In June 23, and that was gone before I knew it. I too know jabbed folks who keep getting reinfected. Omicron was never on my radar.

          7. Omicron was inevitable, eventually. But it really feels as if we skipped one or two intermediate viruses between Delta and Omicron. If COVID had evolved more slowly, hospitalizations probably would have stayed high for an extra 6-12 months, despite all the N=1 data cited here.
            We were already pretty close to digital vaccine passports and quarantine camps in Australia. Another six months, and we would have been a security state with a public health social credit score. Omicron made that fizzle out quick.

          8. Even the original vaus was overhyped. The numbers were exaggerated, especially the death numbers.

          1. Scott Adams went through a divorce where his younger, great looking wife left him. He’s probably always thought this way, but his wife leaving him broke him. Men don’t handle breakups very well, as the Lindyman likes to regularly opine.

          2. Before his wife with Stage 3 breast cancer left him, Scott lost a lot of listeners, me included, because he maintained that those of us who chose not to get jabbed were just lucky. He couldn’t fathom that he was wrong and chose poorly.

          3. “…Scott lost a lot of listeners, me included, because he maintained that those of us who chose not to get jabbed were just lucky.”

            I thought it was because he described Blacks as members of “a racist hate group” during an online video show.

          4. I thought it was because he described Blacks as members of “a racist hate group” during an online video show.

            He got deplatformed and cancelled for that. He then alienated those who were still with him by defending the jab.

          5. he described Blacks as members of “a racist hate group” during an online video show

            I don’t recall that but Scott has said that he was told by at least 2 employers that he wouldn’t advance within the company because he was white and male.

        5. Keep justifying allowing the government to pump a phony vaccination into your body. One day you might really convince yourself.

  11. The rationalisation of this strange action was that leaving the sea of cash to slosh around the banking system would help the battered and bruised economy recover.”

    Their banking friends recover . They don’t care or even understand anything else .

  12. “Underpinning it all is that buying a house is astronomically expensive – the average property now costs about nine times an ordinary household’s income, triple what it was 25 years ago.”

    Welcome to the Hotel Australifornia.

    1. A country that is sparsely populated with empty land extending far beyond the horizon and thousands of miles of coastline, with an artificial housing shortage and sky high prices.

      1. I was going to post something similar, their continent is mostly empty. It is all a grand illusion, we are living a lie but everyone wants to believe it. It’s odd behavior and is one really good example of markets not being at all rational.

      2. Yes, prices are crazy there, but most of the country is bush or scrub and unsuitable for human habitation. And there’s only a handful of major cities spread very far apart, that can only sprawl so far before they’re too big to function with the typical city structure – one downtown, inner ring suburbs, outer ring exurbs, rural.

    2. Per Zillow:

      The average San Diego home value is $961,892, up 6.0% over the past year and goes to pending in around 12 days.

      https://www.zillow.com/home-values/54296/san-diego-ca/

      The median income in San Diego was $98,928 in 2022, compared to a statewide median of $91,551.

      https://www.axios.com/local/san-diego/2023/09/14/income-increase-california-census

      So the median home price to income ratio here in Australiego is
      $961,892 / $98,928 = 9.72, which doesn’t pencil out for many households in the era of higher-for-longer interest rates.

      I guess that, along with mass pandemic-era refinancing to once-in-a-lifetime 3% rates, helps explain why San Diego used home purchase market volume has shriveled to all-time lows?

  13. Financial Times
    Commercial property
    US office owners face $117bn wall of debt repayments
    Pain likely to be widely spread as landlords struggle to refinance at current interest rates
    The Willis Tower in Chicago. There is $1.3bn in debt secured against the building, formerly known as the Sears Tower, due in March
    Stephen Gandel in New York 3 hours ago

    Billions of dollars of debt will fall due this year on hundreds of big US office buildings that their owners are likely to struggle to refinance at current interest rates.

    There are $117bn of commercial mortgages tied to offices which either need to be repaid or refinanced in 2024, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association.

    Many of those were taken out a decade ago in an era when interest rates were far lower. Since then, commercial mortgage rates have nearly doubled, while the performance of many buildings has sunk, raising the prospect of billions of dollars of losses for investors.
    …

    1. Blackstone ownership

      By March 2015, the Willis Tower was being marketed at a price of $1.5 billion. The same month, the Blackstone Group purchased the tower for a reported $1.3 billion, the highest price ever paid for a property in the U.S. outside of New York City. Blackstone announced a $500 million renovation in January 2017, which would include the construction of the Catalog, a six-story commercial complex, replacing a plaza on Jackson Boulevard and the entrance on Wacker Drive.

      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willis_Tower

      1. Fun fact: prior to 9/11, I was a clerk downtown during college, making deliveries all over the loop. Great pay at $14 an hour part-time and lots of walking all over Chicago. Before 9/11, anyone could pretty much enter any Chicago office building without signing in and walk to any floor you want, and no one batted an eye if you were carrying a package. In college, I took a handful of dates up to an elevator switching bank on a really high floor, like the 70th floor or something, and you could walk around and see views from three of the four directions, for free, without paying $$$ for the skydeck 30 floors up. Yeah, it was a cheap date, but it also felt like one of those ‘hidden Chicago’ things where you can explore the Sears tower as a resident and everyone was totally cool with that. Nowadays you can’t get past security and I think they have their own internal delivery system there.

        The Willis Tower area now is getting kinda sketchy, as is all of Chicago’s downtown. During the pandemic, some bleeding heart liberal grad student was randomly murdered by stabbing by a homeless guy living under lower Wacker drive. IIRC she had several months earlier co-authored an academic paper arguing that black murderers were unfairly punished (Researching Disparity In Probation Sentences). You can look up the woman’s name on Google, it’s not hard to find the story about her death.

        1. Tony Robinson, 41, is accused of stabbing Anat Kimchi, 31, to death on Wacker Drive near Van Buren Street.

  14. From Philip Pilkington.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/12/31/central-banks-must-reevaluate-monetary-dark-arts/

    It’s time to reassess the ‘dark arts’ of central banks

    Economic policies look more like the result of wacky experiments than scientific theory

    Philip Pilkington
    31 December 2023 • 6:00am
    Philip Pilkington

    “Between the time of its last meeting at the start of November and this meeting in mid-December, the data had not changed noticeably. Inflation is falling but there remain signs that it might be stickier than central bank policymakers would like, with US core services inflation remaining elevated. This has led many to suspect that the surprise announcement by the Federal Reserve might be political.”

    “The weekend before the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee (FOMC) met, The Wall Street Journal published an article showing that Donald Trump had overtaken President Joe Biden in the polls, and that a key reason Trump had pulled ahead was because of Biden’s handling of the economy.”

    “Yet questions about the competency of central banks run far deeper. The latest round of rate hikes we have seen from central banks around the world are the culmination of 15 years of the largest monetary experiments since at least the Second World War. The fact of the matter is that we have never really had a public discussion of the merits and demerits of central bank quantitative easing (QE) programmes.”

    “Perhaps there was a solid case that large liquidity provision needed to be provided to the banking system in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. But this case could not be used to justify the fact that this liquidity was maintained for the next decade and a half. The rationalisation of this strange action was that leaving the sea of cash to slosh around the banking system would help the battered and bruised economy recover.”

    “Is there any evidence for this? Not much. The economy remained sluggish. But financial markets went wild. Everything from stocks to classic cars to Rolex watches massively increased in value. The sea of cash never flowed into the economy. Rather it stayed within the financial system itself, bidding up anything that investors could rationally designate as an asset.”

    “Perhaps there are more things in Heaven and Earth, central banker, than are dreamed up in your philosophy. And perhaps it is time for politicians to ask what dark arts the PhDs are playing with in Threadneedle Street.”

    – The U.S. The Federal (Feral?) Reserve System is allegedly under the oversight of Congress, but with insider trading, corruption, sex scandals rampant there, they’re just to darned busy to look out for the best interests of their constituents and the nation at large. It’s “taxation without representation” all over again. Similar outcomes likely to follow, quite possibly requiring exercising 2A Constitutional rights. Free markets, I hardly knew ya!

    “Inflation is a monetary phenomenon. It is made by or stopped by the central bank.” – Milton Friedman

    “One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.” – Milton Friedman

    “The enduring lesson of the 20th century is that socialism is a failure, and free markets are a success. But the politicians keep advocating just a little more socialism.” – Milton Friedman

    “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable.” – John F. Kennedy

    https://www.dumpaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/well-there-is-your-problem-right-there.jpg
    “Well, there’s your problem!”
    My interpretation: Water level = Federal Reserve $ printing; stuck car + dead engine = U.S. economy.

  15. From Mises.org.
    https://mises.org/wire/central-banks-brought-inflation-now-they-bring-stagnation
    Central Banks Brought Inflation. Now they Bring Stagnation.
    12/30/2023
    Daniel Lacalle

    “Don’t be mistaken; for those who come up with soft words demanding “expansive-looking monetary policy,” what they are looking for is exactly what they have supported in Argentina, Venezuela, and Cuba: the expropriation of wealth through the dissolution of the purchasing power of the currency.”

    “Central banks are placing all the focus on the price and not the quantity of money. Ignoring monetary aggregates is very dangerous, and centering decisions only on rates may create a larger problem: a market bubble and a real economy contraction.”

    “Inflation was created by the wrong monetary policy, and incorrect central bank measures may have lasting negative impacts on the economy. The first effect is evident: governments continue to crowd out the real economy, and families and businesses suffer the entire burden of rate hikes. Maybe the objective was always to increase the size of the public sector at any cost and implement a gradual nationalization of the economy.”

    “Market participants should stop encouraging bubble-generating policies, and central banks should focus on monetary aggregates to avoid boom and bust cycles. The negative effects of the current money slump may arrive at once with the wall of maturities. Even if we avoid a recession, it will likely be a false way out with a debt-bloated government consumption figure, weak productivity, and private sector growth.”

    – Better yet, end the Fed and all of the other nefarious central banks! Only destructive to the Middle Class and the real, Main St. economy, as per the plan.

    – Happy New Year ya filthy animals! 🙂

    2. 4.1 can easily be confused with the impact of a truck running into the side of a large building. There is a sense that something broke, but nothing shakes or moves much.

  17. Happy New Year, Ben and my HBB friends!

    May 2024 bring you all many good things–including accelerating housing CR8R!!

  19. Darrell Petrey and Tony Thomas have been awarded nearly $300,000 in a settlement after Wilmington city officials (D) threw them out of a council meeting and had them arrested for having the gall to criticize corrupt, incompetent city officials and their commie malgovernance.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Thj3OwjYjao

  20. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CSUSHPINSA

    Has anyone been able to make sense of what the case-shiller index has done over the course of 2023?

    Looks like the clear downtrend established after Q2 2022 reversed course, and it fully recovered to a new all-time high.

    NOT what I was expecting to see as rates ticked higher…

    1. Here is something to ponder:

      What does the Case-Schiller Index mean when mortgage rates go up and sales volumes shrivel to a trickle? One might guess that only extremely wealthy or highly leveraged buyers are in the market at such a point. Is it possible this is subsample of potential buyers has unrepresentatively high wilingness to pay for housing?

      That’s my theory, and I’m sticking to it…

  21. Minnesota Red Flag Law in Effect as of January 1, 2024

    AWR HAWKINS
    1 Jan 2024

    Minnesota’s red flag law took effect Monday, January 1, 2024, and allows police or family members to petition a judge for an order to have guns taken from certain individuals.

    CBS News reported Minnesota’s red flag law is built on varying degrees of extreme risk orders, enabling guns to be confiscated for a period of time lasting anywhere from two weeks to one year.

    Minnesota Police Chief Association president, Renville County Sheriff Scott Hable, was asked how officers and deputies will approach the task of seizing firearms and he indicated his hope that people will surrender their guns peacefully.

    https://www.breitbart.com/2nd-amendment/2024/01/01/minnesota-red-flag-law-in-effect-as-of-january-1-2024/

  22. Tale of Two NYEs: Green Day Bashes MAGA, Meanwhile Trump Celebrates at Mar-a-Lago with Vanilla Ice, Ninja Turtles

    by Adan Salazar
    January 1st 2024, 1:27 pm

    Two very different New Year’s Eve celebrations encapsulate the political division in America heading into 2024, a pivotal election year.

    First, during a Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve performance in Los Angeles, Green Day singer Billie Joe Armstrong swapped out lyrics in the song “American Idiot” to say, “I’m not a part of the MAGA agenda.”

    The stunt illustrates how Donald Trump still lives rent-free in the minds of TDS-sufferers, even limousine liberals like Green Day.

    Armstrong’s outburst toward the former president, who’s currently leading the Republican presidential field, led to a slew of memes mocking him for siding with the establishment.

    Jack Poso 🇺🇸
    @JackPosobiec

    The GloboHomo NYE party had middle-aged men in eyeliner singing about hating Trump voters

    Trump had Vanilla Ice and the Ninja Turtles

    We are not the same
    11:36 AM · Jan 1, 2024
    ·
    144.3K
    Views

    https://x.com/JackPosobiec/status/1741860858706182169?s=20

    The Post Millennial
    @TPostMillennial
    Green Day singer Billie Joe Armstrong sings “I’m not a part of the MAGA agenda”, altering the lyrics of “American Idiot”

    https://x.com/TPostMillennial/status/1741827848812282030?s=20

    The Right To Bear Memes
    @grandoldmemes

    https://x.com/grandoldmemes/status/1741885332830765167?s=20

    https://www.infowars.com/

    1. Billie Joe is a perfect example of a leftist American Idiot. He is the very idiot he sings about but is too stupid to realize it. He was born in Oakland CA and grew up in the area around Oakland. He has watched as leftist policies have destroyed Oakland yet he clamors for more. His song ‘Welcome to Paradise’ is even about the sh*thole of Oakland! The irony is it has gotten MUCH worse since he wrote that and it is all because of leftist stupidity yet all they want is more of it. You can’t blame MAGA for any of the retarded crap that is happening in the bay area. Leftists own that and they want the whole country to look like that. They absolutely suck. Every time Green Day comes on I get so disgusted I change it. I have done business with them in the past, all three of them are douchebags.

      1. “I have done business with them in the past, all three of them are douchebags”

        Not shocking in the least little bit.

    2. “I’m not a part of the MAGA agenda”

      Twitter reply: But kept the lyrics “one nation controlled by the media”

    1. Can this country withstand another year of open borders?

      I suppose it depends on how much bigger the torrent becomes.

  24. ‘They have either priced their homes well, given you incentives on an interest rate, helped you with closing costs. So how’s that impacted the market, it’s made it harder for someone that has a house to compete against them to sell because they can’t offer as many incentives as a builder’

    These clowns drive the stake in yer heart every time. Even if you bought from them 6 months ago.

  25. ‘Ferrgino had been charging the plaintiffs monthly fees to cover the cost of snow plowing, trash removal, and landscaping for multiple years, they contend, but the contractors have left due to a lack of payment. Ferrigno, who did not respond to a request for comment, is also facing at least 22 civil suits from potential home buyers, contractors, suppliers, the towns of Avon and Simsbury, and two banks. Ferrigno is also facing criminal charges’

    That may well be but it was still cheaper than renting.

  26. ‘in his New Year message, the Chinese President acknowledged that businesses had faced a ‘tough’ year in 2023, adding that ‘some people had difficulty finding jobs and meeting basic needs’

    Here we go central planers, the biggest technocrat gamble in the history of globalism! They got no safety net BTW, so hope it doesn’t go all Hindenburg on ya.

  32. Jeremy Grantham rang the alarm on an ‘everything bubble’ and warned the S&P 500 could be cut in half. Here are the elite investor’s 10 best quotes of 2023.
    Theron Mohamed Jan 1, 2024, 3:35 AM PST
    Boston Globe/Getty Images
    Jeremy Grantham kept up his warnings of asset bubbles, crashes, and economic woes in 2023.
    The veteran investor said the S&P 500 could tank by over 50% to 2,000 points if things go poorly.
    Grantham also discussed house prices, the AI craze, Elon Musk, the Fed, and his long-term concerns.
    Insider Today

    Jeremy Grantham continued to sound the superbubble alarm and predict epic crashes and economic devastation in 2023, even as stocks rebounded and recession fears eased.

    The veteran investor, market historian, and GMO cofounder warned the inevitable reckoning would be worse than the dot-com disaster, and AI wouldn’t save the day. He also cautioned the S&P 500 could plunge by over 50% and a severe recession could hit if things go badly, and hailed Elon Musk’s skills as a stock promoter.

    Here are Grantham’s 10 best quotes of 2023, lightly edited for length and clarity:

    1. There’s a multi-asset bubble in markets

    “The trouble with this bubble is it’s an everything bubble. We have bubbled the important and dangerous housing market to record prices. We bubbled the bond market to levels that had never been seen in the history of man with the lowest rates ever recorded. Fine arts and every other asset through the roof, and equities, particularly in the US, at or close to the highest points ever reached.”

    2. The fallout could be worse than the dot-com crash

    “This one is pretty damn big. It’s bigger than 2000, because it includes real estate and bonds, and that one did not. The economy had a gentle recession. It had no problem with real estate. It had no problem with markdown of debt. And yet, the Nasdaq went down 82%, Amazon went down 92%, and the S&P went down 50%. Be advised, this is not a gentle setback like 2000.”

    3. The surge in the “Magnificent Seven” stocks hasn’t changed what’s coming

    “A dozen giant American stocks have had a hell of a run on the back of AI, and that has certainly created the impression that it’s game over. The problem is prices are incredibly high and basically the economy is beginning to unravel. So it’s a head fake, but it’s a hell of a head fake.”

    4. Housing has become brutally unaffordable

    “I would be very careful with real estate. All over the world, the last 20 years of declining mortgage rates have driven real estate to really crushing high multiples of family income, so high that young people can’t buy a house. So I wouldn’t touch real estate.”

    5. It’s not different this time around

    “One should expect something pretty bad this time. We await to see if this follows the pattern of history, or whether it is indeed that lovely creature, a new paradigm. But history is not kind to the new paradigm thinking.”

    6. Don’t believe the Fed

    “The Fed’s record on these things is wonderful. It’s almost guaranteed to be wrong. They have never called a recession – and particularly not the ones following the great bubbles.”

    7. The S&P 500 could be cut in half

    “The best we could hope for is that this market would bottom at about 3,000. The worst we should fear is more like 2,000.”

    8. Don’t bet on a soft landing for the economy

    “The recessions are mild if everybody does everything right and there are no complications. They are terrible if people get everything wrong.”

    9. Elon Musk is a “wonderful propagandist” who talked Tesla stock higher

    “It was almost miraculous management, generating the money out of thin air, out of bullshit and charisma. If you can look at a company that’s worth $1 and somehow imagine that it can talk its way to being worth $10 — good luck.”

    10. Stocks pale in importance to wealth inequality, climate change and other long-term issues

    “The economy, and particularly the stock market, are very secondary to a list of important long-term problems that we have that no one takes seriously enough yet. When we sit here discussing the stock market, we’re a little like Emperor Nero fiddling while Rome burns.”
    …
    https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/jeremy-grantham-everything-bubble-spx-crash-housing-recession-best-quotes-2024-1

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