thehousingbubble@gmail.com
Blog

I Have No Money In My Account Now, I’m Struggling

A report from NBC Miami in Florida. “The clock is ticking for hundreds of people living in the Heron Pond condominium in Pembroke Pines. In July, the city gave residents until the end of August to vacate their homes after the entire complex was deemed unsafe. Cecilia Picon, 83, called Heron Pond home until September 2023 when she was ordered to vacate her unit at the complex. ‘They did not give my mother an ETA, as far as to when she would be able to come back,’ said her son Edward Picon. In January, his mother’s apartment was burglarized. On top of that, she now owes around $10,000 in a special assessment for the condo repairs. ‘She relies solely on social security and social assistance. She doesn’t have that kind of money. She just doesn’t,’ Edward Picon said. ‘A person that has never owned anything in her life,’ he said. ‘She finally owns something, and now she doesn’t have it.'”

“‘There basically was like a lack of maintenance,’ said Pembroke Pines Assistant City Manager Michael Stamm Jr., adding the city was left with no option. ‘The current reports will show you, there was a lot of unpermitted repairs made to the buildings,’ Stamm said, ‘They put stucco over rotted wood in some situations.'”

Fox 13 Tampa Bay. “In 2021, Ruth and her husband moved from Michigan to Central Florida– when the freedom of working from home, and COVID restrictions up north drove a mass migration south. They picked a home in Polk County. Ruth said she loved Florida—until she learned how property taxes shoot up when homes change owners and tax caps go away, and she discovered the soaring costs of home insurance (fueled by a mix of storm damage, climate change, and fraud). After three years of scrimping and trying to balance a budget, they’re bailing out. ‘And if we’re lucky being gone by the end of September,’ Allen noted. They’ve already picked a neighborhood in Tennessee, which has no income tax like Florida. ‘It would be at least $300-400 every month that we’d be saving,’ she said. She’s saving around three thousand dollars a year in home insurance, around $1,400 in car insurance, and she’s paying less for groceries and utilities.”

From Bloomberg. “Weeks after a busted wind turbine washed onto Nantucket shores, residents of this wealthy Massachusetts enclave are still angry. Some even liken the accident to an oil spill. Federal regulators ordered Vineyard Wind to halt construction and electricity production after the accident. In Nantucket, there’s a growing sense that the roughly 50-square-mile island has become a casualty in the push for cleaner energy. Although the company promised motion sensor lights for aircraft that would preserve Nantucket’s beloved night sky, locals say that hasn’t happened. ‘When we got here in June, it looked like a landing field out there,’ says Surfside resident Bonnie Carr, whose beachfront property looks out on the wind farm.”

ABC 7 San Francisco. “On his podcast and frequent social media posts, a Northern California man dreamed of becoming a billionaire by selling tiny homes. But now, his offices are closed and hundreds of customers across the country are wondering where their money went. ‘I think that becoming a billionaire is a worthy goal because in order for that to happen, I’m going to have to become a completely different version of who I am today,’ said Colton Paulhus. For someone who loves to appear on social media, Paulhus has been very difficult to reach. And many people want to talk to him – customers, employees, contractors, and several hard money lenders to whom he owes money.”

“After more than 20 years of teaching, Margot Simpson is planning for retirement. She told the I-Team’s Dan Noyes, ‘I’m deaf with cochlear implants and a teacher of the deaf in Hayward.’ To make some extra money, she thought she had a perfect spot for an ADU or ‘accessory dwelling unit.’ Simpson hired Anchored Tiny Homes to build the ADU and gave them $28,000 to start, but it’s all gone. She cried, ‘Well, it’s my retirement.’ Their offices in Fair Oaks closed before she could even break ground.”

“Left in the lurch are retired Teamster truck driver, Steve Boldway, and his wife, Pina. They wanted to rent a tiny home to traveling nurses in Napa but Anchored stopped paying the subcontractors in the middle of the project. They lost $65,000 and are using their own money to finish it. ‘How do you feel about what happened?’ Steve Boldway: ‘Hurt, angry. Went through all the emotional roller coaster.’ Jessica Cathey tells us Paulhus owes her $79,000, what amounts to her life savings. ‘There are hundreds of clients left with either a hole in the ground or a wall half built or no permit at all and they’ve paid in full,’ Cathey said.”

The Sahan Journal in Minnesota. “The federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said in an opinion released Tuesday that contract for deed sales fall under the Truth in Lending Act, which also applies to conventional mortgages obtained through a bank. Contract for deed sales are struck directly between the seller and the homebuyer without the intervention of a bank. They often involve inflated home prices that must be paid to the seller in a shorter amount of time than allotted in a conventional bank mortgage. The opinion comes after the agency looked into contract for deed sales, said Rohit Chopra, the bureau’s director. Chopra said such sales are especially prevalent in the Twin Cities metro area, and are on the rise elsewhere in the country.”

“Many contracts for deed ‘set people up to fail,’ because sellers can kick out homebuyers once they are no longer able to afford monthly payments, he said, adding that sellers then “repeat the whole thing over again with a new family. The Sahan Journal/ProPublica investigation found a rising market in Minnesota contract for deed sales, particularly in the Somali community. Among them was Abdinoor Igal, who purchased a newly built, five-bedroom Lakeville home in 2022 for more than $727,000 for himself, his wife and their six children. It wasn’t long before Abdinoor, a trucker, couldn’t afford the $4,000-plus monthly payments on his home. He walked away from his home last fall, losing an estimated $170,000.”

The East Valley Tribune in Arizona. “During the ceremonial groundbreaking of The Grid over four years ago, Mesa elected officials crowed about the wave of re-investment dollars coming to downtown. But after hitting financial road bumps that’s stalled the project a number of times The Grid at Main Street and Pomeroy is officially kaput. Mesa on Feb. 20 canceled the development agreement and ground lease on The Grid and the developer filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on March 30 to stave off contractors owed millions for their work. The highly anticipated development included 196 luxury apartments to be built above Pomeroy Garage, 75 urban flats and 15 three-level walk-up row homes that would eventually wrap around the under-utilized city garage. The project also called for 14,000 square feet of office space as well as first-floor retail and dining.”

“Midland States Bank says it loaned The Grid at Mesa $35 million in December 2021. Citing a number of breaches and defaults, it demanded that The Grid repay what it spent plus interest and late fees, court records show. As of March, the developer owed it $28.4 million. ‘The developer has no funds to pay anything, including expenses to protect and preserve the incomplete project,’ the bank said in its filing in bankruptcy court. ‘What tenants had been obtained are now gone. The developer has no discernable plan to complete the project, no budget for time or expense, and no funds to execute the plan.'”

From 7 News. “The capital region’s unprecedented office vacancy rate is having growing impacts across the local economy. Nearly a quarter of Washington, D.C.’s office space now sits empty—the highest vacancy rate ever recorded, according to CBRE and JLL. The office exodus’ impact has long been apparent to restaurant operators and retailers. But the biggest financial blow may be yet to come. In D.C., commercial foreclosures are up, while property values are down. Just three blocks from the White House, 1750 H Street Northwest, is a renovated office building originally bought for $65 million and sold for less than $18 million in July, public property records show. A property near Dupont Circle, 1776 Massachusetts Avenue Northwest, was purchased for $45 million in 2012 and sold for $10 million in June. These property value drops are not isolated.”

The Oregonian. “The Montgomery Park office complex in Northwest Portland has sold for $33 million to a company tied to the Menashe real estate family, according to property records filed on Friday. On Friday, property records filed in Multnomah County disclosed that Montgomery Park PDX LLC had purchased the building for $33 million, representing an 87% decline in value from its 2019 sale price when a company tied to Seattle-based Unico Properties bought it for $255 million. After those owners defaulted on debt, the building went through a foreclosure auction in February but failed to attract any bidders then, so the lender brought on real estate brokerage Newmark to find buyers. According to data from real estate brokerage CBRE, more than 31% of city center office space is vacant.”

The Globe and Mail in Canada. “When Arash Missaghi was shot and killed in his Toronto office in June, the 54-year-old’s death exposed two decades of serial frauds, victimizing dozens of people and receiving no sanction from the civil or criminal courts. Along the way, he was represented by at least seven real estate lawyers and found to have bullied and threatened some of them. Fraudulent mortgage investments were Mr. Missaghi’s trade, according to multiple civil suits filed against him, as well as two major criminal cases that collapsed. But no matter how many legal advisers he burned through – five were sanctioned by the Law Society of Ontario for roles in their client’s schemes – he was always able to find another lawyer to work with him.”

“Ali Alijanpour, an artist in Richmond Hill, Ont., alleges he was among those defrauded by Mr. Missaghi. He filed a complaint to the law society and today says that such bodies need to do more to protect people like him. ‘It’s like having a car without tires; the lawyers are the tires that enable this fraudulent vehicle to move forward,’ he says. ‘Without the help of lawyers, people like Arash Missaghi would not be able to conduct their crimes.'”

“In 2019, a fifth lawyer, Rasik Mehta, admitted wrongdoing and surrendered his law licence after several real estate deals he worked on crashed. Investors had funnelled more than $3-million into them. He told the tribunal he was then threatened into doing whatever was demanded. ‘If the lawyer had any detailed questions about specific transactions, he usually got answers from Missaghi such as ‘I have ways of quieting down those who ask me stupid questions,’ tribunal records say. Documents aired in those proceedings revealed text messages from Mr. Missaghi. ‘I’m a big man and people fear me. … i can ruin your lives overnight,’ one read. Another message to Mr. Mehta simply said: ‘People who disobey me end up missing.'”

ABC News in Australia. “Amit Miglani projects an image of success to the world. But some of his investors believe trusting him was their biggest mistake. The wordless, piercing disappointment from his elderly father crashed into Karthik Sivasubramanian like a physical blow, knocking the air from his lungs. Mr Sivasubramanian’s parents, visiting Melbourne from India, were sitting down to a meal when he broke the news that his plan to bring them to Australia for good was now in tatters. The $195,000 he had earmarked for two costly family reunion visas had vanished, along with the prospect of reuniting his family.”

“‘I saw a sense of losing the trust in their own son,’ Mr Sivasubramanian said. ‘They need support and they look for someone who’s their own son to support them … and I’m not able to satisfy that simple and basic need. I cried a lot on that day.'”

“His social media pages are littered with pictures of him holding wads of cash and rubbing shoulders with international cricketers. He is also a convicted criminal. It was only later that Mr Sivasubramanian realised he was not the only person chasing Mr Miglani for money. More than 20 investors allege they have lost their life savings to Mr Miglani and those in his orbit, claiming the investment opportunities offered by his ex-wife and staff members were nothing but a scam. Some of the people the ABC spoke to say they were taken in by the sheen of success.”

“‘He was a very good personality and talking very nicely and everything — we thought he had achieved this with his hard work,’ one investor said. ‘We saw his luxury car, we saw he has established his business as a property investor,’ she said. ‘That’s definitely not his hard-earned money, he’s cheating on people like me.’ One community leader, who lost a significant sum and did not want to be named because he was afraid of retaliation, said Mr Miglani knew how important financial security was to migrants. He engaged with the Miglanis in a deal similar to the one offered to Mr Sivasubramanian and alleged Mr Miglani later denied any knowledge of their deal, despite a trail of correspondence. ‘He said, ‘No, I don’t know anything about it,’ the community leader said. ‘He totally washed … his hands, he said I didn’t give you any promise.'”

“Another investor, who knew Mr Miglani from his days as a real estate agent, said Mr Miglani also denied ever taking her money. ‘He simply said, you didn’t invest with me,’ she said. ‘I don’t know any single person who is not from the Indian community. They are all Indians,’ she said. ‘We trust people very soon.’ For some investors like Lucky Singh Saini, who briefly worked with Mr Miglani but was never paid, legal action is a risk he is willing to take. The chauffeur driver, from Melbourne, invested $200,000 with Mr Miglani in the hopes of boosting his retirement.”

“He also loaned Mr Miglani’s business $50,000 after being told that another investor was due to be paid and was told to deposit the money straight into their account. ‘Amit said that they would pay me back within a week,’ Mr Saini said. ‘Each time I called, the duration of time he needed to return increased. Eventually Amit stopped picking up or returning my calls,’ he said. ‘It’s my life saving for last 25 years, it’s hard-earned money. I work mostly 12 hours a day to save that money for my retirement and that is gone into the drain now.'”

“Many of the investors the ABC spoke to are now struggling to make ends meet. Ravinder Singh Makkar, a bus driver from Penrith in New South Wales, invested $30,000. He has struggled to explain to his daughters why they’ve had to cut out the movies, holidays and even McDonald’s. ‘I work hard and that is my saving money and future money, my kids’ money,’ Mr Makkar said. ‘I have no money in my account now, I’m struggling. I’m doing extra work all the time, I need more money for surviving,’ he said.”

Related Posts
This Post Has 114 Comments

  1. ‘Many contracts for deed ‘set people up to fail,’ because sellers can kick out homebuyers once they are no longer able to afford monthly payments, he said, adding that sellers then “repeat the whole thing over again with a new family. The Sahan Journal/ProPublica investigation found a rising market in Minnesota contract for deed sales, particularly in the Somali community. Among them was Abdinoor Igal, who purchased a newly built, five-bedroom Lakeville home in 2022 for more than $727,000 for himself, his wife and their six children. It wasn’t long before Abdinoor, a trucker, couldn’t afford the $4,000-plus monthly payments on his home. He walked away from his home last fall, losing an estimated $170,000’

    Senator running deer heap angry Rohit!

    2. Trucker buys house for $700+K. Yeah, that’s the new strawberry picker story. But there’s a silver lining. I assume those six kids will grow up the be productive citizens.

  3. In Nantucket, there’s a growing sense that the roughly 50-square-mile island has become a casualty in the push for cleaner energy.

    Sow, reap, Bitchez!!

    1. Don’t rush back into the stock market as more pain is coming if the economy keeps slowing, Stifel chief strategist says
      Kelly Cloonan Aug 13, 2024, 12:36 PM MDT

      Stocks are up since last week’s sell-off but there’s still reason to be cautious, Stifel’s Barry Bannister said.
      Bannister said the Fed’s 2% inflation goal is “just a pipe dream” with housing expected to rebound.
      He reiterated his expectation for a 10% market correction to push the S&P 500 to 5,000 by October.
      …
      https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/stock-market-oulook-bear-market-economy-fed-rate-cuts-inflation-2024-8

    2. US 10-year Treasury yields down for the fourth day
      Yields near the August closing low
      Adam Button
      14/08/2024 | 15:24 GMT

      What’s the bond market saying here?

      The July-August plunge in Treasury yields was understandable enough as the carry trade unwound, AI worries hit and shorts were squeezed.

      That’s all faded away in other markets this week and yet yields are still falling. Yes, some of that is falling inflation as illustrated by today’s CPI report but that can’t be all.

      We’ve seen some big bounces in equity markets but bonds aren’t on board with that thinking. My fear is that bonds are focused on slowing global growth indications. Even if the US economy isn’t as bad as feared, there is some real pain brewing globally as higher rates bite.
      …
      https://www.forexlive.com/news/us-10-year-treasury-yields-down-for-the-fourth-day-20240814/

    3. Markets
      Bear market is coming in 2025, warns David Roche, but the Fed will step in before it turns ‘draconian’
      Published Mon, Aug 12 2024 1:17 AM EDT
      Updated Mon, Aug 12 2024 3:34 AM EDT
      Dylan Butts

      KEY POINTS

      – Veteran investor David Roche expects a bear market in 2025, caused by smaller-than-expected rate cuts, a slowing U.S. economy and an AI bubble.

      – Those factors could cause a bear market of minus 20% in 2025, maybe starting at the end of this year, but the Fed will have room to adjust, he added.
      The bear, a symbol of falling stock market prices, stands as a bronze sculpture in front of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange building on 06 August 2024.
      Picture Alliance | Picture Alliance | Getty Images

      Veteran investor David Roche expects a bear market in 2025 caused by smaller-than-expected rate cuts, a slowing U.S. economy and an artificial intelligence bubble.

      “I think [a bear market] is probably coming, but probably in 2025. We now know what will cause it,” the strategist at Quantum Strategy told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” on Monday.
      …
      https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2024/08/12/bear-market-is-likely-coming-in-2025-warns-veteran-investor-david-roche.html

    4. Consumer Confidence
      Consumer sentiment tumbles as ‘recession-like’ symptoms spread among Americans
      Published Wed, Aug 14 2024 11:38 AM EDT
      Juhohn Lee

      KEY POINTS

      – Consumer sentiment in the U.S. dropped to an eight-month low in July, according to the Consumer Sentiment Index from the University of Michigan.

      – In a 2024 poll, Gallup found that one-third of Americans mentioned economic issues as the nation’s most important problem.

      – The major reason is stubborn inflation cutting into people’s paychecks.
      …
      https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2024/08/14/heres-why-the-economy-feels-recession-like-for-many-americans.htm

    5. Financial Times
      Pinned Post
      7 hours ago
      Eric Platt in New York
      Berkshire Hathaway cut stakes in Capital One, Chevron and Snowflake

      Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway cut its stake in several of its blue-chip holdings at the same time it halved its position in Apple, reflecting the fact that the billionaire investor saw few appealing investments in the US stock market in the second quarter.

      The company on Wednesday disclosed it had sold a fifth of its stake in Capital One, a position worth nearly $2bn just a quarter prior, and had completely exited its $1bn wager on cloud computing company Snowflake.

      It reduced its positions in oil major Chevron, mobile carrier T-Mobile and building materials maker Louisiana-Pacific. It also exited media company Paramount Global, a disastrous bet Buffett acknowledged was his own earlier this year.

      The sales were part of a stock-selling spree that saw Berkshire dump more than $77bn of shares in the quarter — including roughly $50bn of Apple stock — as Buffett shifted to cash and short-term Treasuries. Berkshire bought less than $2bn of stock in the quarter, purchases that included small new positions in make-up retailer Ulta Beauty and aerospace parts maker Heico.
      …

      1. “The sales were part of a stock-selling spree that saw Berkshire dump more than $77bn of shares in the quarter…Berkshire bought less than $2bn of stock in the quarter, …”

        I wonder how often Berkshire Hathaway dumps that much stock in a quarter? My guess: Not very often.

  7. The Sahan Journal/ProPublica investigation found a rising market in Minnesota contract for deed sales, particularly in the Somali community.

    I am shocked, shocked! to discover endemic fraud occurring in Mogadishu on the Mississippi.

  8. A property near Dupont Circle, 1776 Massachusetts Avenue Northwest, was purchased for $45 million in 2012 and sold for $10 million in June. These property value drops are not isolated.”

    I ask my fellow HBBers to join me in a crowdsourcing effort to fund a memorial to all those trillions in dear departed Yellen Bux that have grown wings and flown off to debauched currency heaven as CRE melts down in our urban centers.

    1. Today’s headline is that inflation is down to 2.9%

      I did some grocery shopping on Saturday. Prices are noticeably higher vs. a few months ago. Am I to believe the Deep State or my lying eyes?

      1. What my checkbook tells me that here in the real world of SoCal/Orange County grocery prices have more than doubled [on average] since start of pandemic. (Some of my favorite specific items have tripled or even quadrupled)

        Maybe somewhere else in an alternate reality universe grocery prices are stable or even declining.

      2. I noticed same thing. After stabilizing somewhat in the spring, they are up noticeably in the last month or two.

      3. I’m seeing price rises here too.

        Ironically, it’s the single-ingredient foods like chicken breast, ground beef, bags of frozen vegetables, and store-brand eggs which still relatively cheap. The so-called “healthy” junk food like cereal and frozen dinners and potato chips have gone sky-high.

        And never mind the stupid “fresh fruits and vegetables.” You don’t need them. Frozen are much better, faster, and cheaper.

      4. Pound of baby carrots from Soopers is now $1.39, up from $1.25, up from $1.00 before that.

        1. Produce that is normally cheaper in the summer now isn’t. An ear of corn? About 50 cents each. What happened to ten for a dollar?

  10. Home Depot issues a warning about the economy.

    https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/13/investing/home-depot-earnings-housing/index.html

    Home Depot says consumers are feeling crummy about the economy, and they’re dishing out less on major home renovation projects.

    The home improvement giant, a bellwether of consumer spending and the housing market, lowered its sales expectations for the year. It said customers were spending less on home improvement projects, pressured by higher interest rates and concerns that the economy is getting worse.

    Home Depot’s business is closely tied to the housing market, and high interest rates are putting a brake on housing turnover and consumers financing larger projects.

    “During the quarter, higher interest rates and greater macro-economic uncertainty pressured consumer demand more broadly, resulting in weaker spend across home improvement projects,” Ted Decker, Home Depot’s CEO, said in a news release.

    In the months since the settlement was announced, real estate agents across the country have been attending trainings and poring over the details of new contracts they must sign with prospective homebuyers.

    Home Depot’s sales at stores open at least a year dropped 3.6% last quarter, the company said Tuesday. It expects sales at stores open at least 12 months to fall between 3% and 4% this year compared to last year. That’s down from its earlier estimate that sales would fall about 1% by that measure.

    Consumer demand for home improvement has been slumping for about a year, and the company said the story hasn’t changed much. Still, Decker remained optimistic, saying “The underlying long-term fundamentals supporting home improvement demand are strong.”

    1. Back in early 2020 I could buy one sheet of 96″x48″x3/4″ MDF at HD or Lowes for $15 and build two garage cabinets. Use a few 1/2″ x 3″ pine boards for back stiffeners. Some soft close hidden hinges and a nice decorative routed door. I would sell the pair for $100 and sometime install them. It was easy. Not a big profit but a profit none the less. Side hobby. Today that same sheet of MDF is $60. Had I known I would have bought out the stock of sheets as I have plenty of storage space. MDF makes for fantastic jigs for all kinds of woodworking. Heavy and terrible dust when fabricating but when done and painted. Great stuff

      1. Curious I went back through some past orders with Rockler. Dates around 2017, 2018, 2019. Random price checks of today show 30%+ price increases with some actually doubling.

  11. NY Times Claims Vanilla Is ‘Disappearing’ Due to Climate Change – As Production Doubles.

    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/08/13/ny-times-claims-vanilla-is-disappearing-due-to-climate-change-as-production-doubles/

    The New York Times is attempting to stoke climate alarm this week with an article claiming the world’s favorite scent – vanilla – is about to disappear because climate change is eradicating vanilla plants. In reality, objective data show vanilla production has doubled since the year 2000 and the current market is saturated with oversupply.

    The Times article, “This Is How the World’s Favorite Scent Disappears,” notes vanilla is the world’s favorite scent and is used in a wide variety of perfumes and other products. Citing anecdotal events like a cyclone that hit Madagascar several years ago during its annual cyclone season, the Times claims supersized cyclones are putting vanilla on the verge of extinction.

    Interestingly, although the Times published its article just yesterday, the best anecdotal “evidence” for the asserted vanilla extinction was a cyclone that his Madagascar way back in 2017 during its cyclone season. According to the Times, Madagascar produces 80 percent of the world’s vanilla – actually, it produces significantly less than 80 percent – and “As a result [of the 2017 cyclone], the price of vanilla bean pods surged to nearly $300 a pound. The increasingly erratic weather, along with pressure to cut the forests that harbor the orchids, is particularly worrisome for farmers….”

    So, why does the Times provide just anecdotal ‘evidence’ of climate change ravaging vanilla crops, and why does the Times have to go all the way back to 2017 to find any such anecdotal evidence? The answer is because objective facts expose the Times’ claim as false.

    The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization provides detailed information on global crop production, including vanilla. According to the UN data, global vanilla production has doubled from 3.9 million kg of vanilla in 2000 to 7.7 million kg in 2022.

    There is so much vanilla being produced that farmers are complaining about low vanilla prices caused by overproduction.

    “The 2023 vanilla crop is expected to be one of the best harvests in the last two decades, forecasted at 2500 tons with exceptionally high quality,” observes the Nielsen-Massey 2023 Crop Report.

    The Crop Report observes that recent strong production has created market oversupply. “The oversupply has led to aggressive price reductions, posing economic challenges for vanilla farmers as they sell their 2022 crop at low prices to meet their daily living needs,” the Crop Report adds.

    Wow, talk about the New York Times getting the story completely backwards and wrong!

    The New York Times points to a cyclone that hit Madagascar seven years ago during its cyclone season and caused a very short-term spike in vanilla prices. That is its sole “evidence” of climate change making vanilla go extinct. In reality, vanilla production is so strong that the market is saturated with vanilla, with such market saturation making farmers complain about low prices.

    The New York Times and other “mainstream” media outlets have a long history of identifying popular foods, beverages, and luxury items that climate change is allegedly destroying. As is the case with all other such items that have come to Climate Realism’s attention, vanilla is becoming more abundant rather than less abundant as the planet modestly warms.

  12. Should Blackstone be prosecuted under the Sherman Antitrust Act for price fixing? Or does their immense wealth make them Too Big to Jail?

    2. The first one’s yard /exterior looks very high maintenance, something best left to a landscaper/gardener named Juan Manuel.

    3. For the first house, it looks like they tried to combine traditional SoCal style with modern, and it’s not quite meshing. But the place is still very pleasant. The second house might be a tear-down.

        2. Another home a stone’s throw away was recently put on hold because the seller died on the property.

    4. Questionably fugly for $2.2M

      $200K price cut today. A good start but plenty more needed.

    1. Media
      Published June 12, 2024 8:49am EDT
      Real estate expert defines housing market doomsday: Something we ‘haven’t seen in our lifetime’
      US real estate to see ‘slight correction’ of home prices, says Kirsten Jordan
      By Kristen Altus FOXBusiness

      Former Bravo star and “Million Dollar Listing” agent Kirsten Jordan — and high-grossing brokers just like her — are wrestling with a pessimistic market that’s allegedly never been seen before.

      “This is something we actually haven’t seen in our lifetime that we can remember. If you think about the last time that we spent a decade with rates that were sub-5%, that was actually the 1950s,” Jordan said Tuesday on “Cavuto: Coast to Coast” in response to host Neil Cavuto asking how she would define a “housing doomsday.”

      “They’re probably going to be there a little bit longer than we think,” she continued, “and we’re just going to have to metabolize them.”
      …
      https://www.foxbusiness.com/media/real-estate-expert-defines-housing-market-doomsday-something-we-havent-seen-our-lifetime

  16. I have been watching this Military Industrial complex development my whole life.

    When I was young people were healthy overall and people didn’t engage in the medical system, unless it was a emergency.
    They got people involved in Medical system by offering cheap employer paid medical Insurance.At the same time the insurance Companies didn’t want to insure people over 65, which eventually resulted in Medicare.
    I saw this gradual development of a Medical industry, the pharmaceutical development, and of course the marketing of vaccines.
    Along with this development of a Medical Industry, they started promoting that meats, eggs and other good foods were bad because of fats , and statins drugs were needed to prevent heart attacks.
    The food industry would promote and market bad seed oils and processed foods, etc.
    Government finally gave Big Pharmacy immunity on vaccines damage. Than the forced children’s schedule of vaccines skyrocketed to over 70 shots required to go to public school, unless you had a exemption.
    Even if for over a decade the facts show that Big Pharmacy/Med system is listed as third or forth cause of death, that red flag is ignored.
    I have seen drugs come and go and taken off the market only after giant profits were made by Big Pharmacy.
    But fast forward to Commie Obama care, and your forced to pay based on your income.
    While I only paid 7 bucks a month for good employer health insurance, you had for example a family of 4 forced to pay over 35 thousand a year. It was just wealth extraction from people, based on income, and forcing people to buy medical insurance, or you will suffer a big tax penalty.
    Basically the med system wanted to extract over 4 trillion a year in this forced med system.
    Than fast forward to Covid 19, and this bizarre Vaccine campaign and mandating expiermental fake vaccines , along with the lockdowns, masks and other useless counter measures.

    Medical system evolved into extreme medical tyranny, and it looks like they aren’t going to stop.

    The evidence shows that they are producing gain of function bio weapons, and they want to forced their EUA vaccine counter measures, that aren’t safe or effective. They also want to enforce enslavement, you will own nothing and eat bugs , over the fraudulent Climate Change Counter measure of zero carbon policy. in next 20 years.
    Invasion of borders , and wars are all part of the plan.

    They have infiltrated global governments to partner in this implementation of this One World Order dictorship.

    And the worse part is that all the systems they want to implement are weapons of mass destruction to civilization, life and the earth terrain.

    Who is the enemy that has lunched this attack on billions of people that threatens sustainable existence. The military industrial complex figures in as a big culprit no doubt. The monopoly model of destroying your competition. Rigged economic systems designed to collapse. Looting of tax coffers
    and extraction of wealth by the culprits. Money corrupting all systems, including governments.
    So, they are promoting that Banks will control your consumption. Big Pharmacy will force mandated vaccines.The food supply will be controlled by monopolies. Energy will be controlled . Meat and crops will be reduced for a forced bug diet replacement. AI and robots will replace 50% of jobs in next 10 years rendering billions in need of welfare to survive. Rights and freedoms will be non existence because contrived and fraudulent global emergencies will override all rights and constitutional protections.

    And its evident that mass depopulation or genocide is part of the overall plan because there isn’t anything sustainable about what they are doing. And , they don’t care at this point if you know what their agenda is. They control the fake news, so they will brainwash you into compliance, or they will arrest you if you object, which is what is happening in UK and Ireland as I write.
    And they aren’t going to take lethal vaccine technology off the market, in spite of overwhelming evidence they aren’t safe or effective. If anything they are going to put this poison in more products.
    And don’t be surprised that Big Pharmacy is putting venom in a lot of pharmaceuticals, that has hideous side effects such as cancer, paralyzed, etc.

    Just saying.

  17. It Became Necessary To Destroy The Global Economy To Save It.

    https://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2024/08/it-became-necessary-to-destroy-global.html

    As the high generated by the previous iteration of financial repression wears off, the dose increases, as do the stakes when that high wears off.

    You’ve no doubt heard “We had to destroy the village in order to save it.” The original quote noted by reporter Peter Arnett in 1968 was “It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.” The phrase (whether an exact transcript or not) became emblematic of America’s war in Vietnam, encapsulating the impossibility of fighting an unconventional war without front lines for “the hearts and minds” of the citizens with massive firepower.

    We find ourselves in a similar situation today as all the immense firepower of central bank stimulus and intervention will be unwound in a chaotically destructive fashion in what I term The Great Unwinding of all the excesses of leverage, debt, stimulus and feverish speculation that now dominate the global financial system and economy.

    As in Vietnam, the policies were launched with good intentions: Saving South Vietnam from Communism, the Domino Theory, etc. were the stated goals at the start, just as the goal of all the “emergency measures” pursued by central banks and Treasury departments in 2008-09 was “saving the system from collapse,” a possibility succinctly expressed by President Bush at the time: “This sucker’s going down.”

    Just as America’s intervention in Vietnam was an “emergency measure” that started out limited and then ballooned into all-out war, the Federal Reserve and other central banks unleashed the financial equivalent of Operation Rolling Thunder while governments cranked up deficit spending, i.e. borrowing and spending trillions to prop up the economy.

    The policies that were announced as “emergency measures” quickly became permanent and were expanded as ending the programs would have torpedoed the fragile debt-based asset bubbles being inflated to boost the wealth effect, a metric eerily similar to the Vietnam War’s infamous body count, where “winning” morphed into counting the casualties of the “emergency measures.”

    That the bottom 90% lost ground as the Fed boosted the wealth of the top 10% was another case of destroying the town to save it. Collateral damage is the antiseptic phrase of choice in such cases, and so as the Fed’s bubble inflation enriched the already-wealthy–the wealth effect sounds so bubbly and positive, doesn’t it?–the real economy became addicted to near-zero-interest debt, extreme leverage and gaming the Fed’s expanding interventions: buy the dip, because the Fed will always leap into action to “save” the market.

    The problem with interventions and addictions is that it takes ever larger doses to maintain the high. There is no consequence-free intervention or addiction, and so with each new round of stimulus, the economy’s dependence on Fed / central bank manipulation–oops, I meant intervention–also expanded.

    How the housing sector survived without trillions of dollars in Fed manipulation is a mystery, as the Fed buying trillions of dollars of mortgage-backed securities (MBS) is now the permanent policy, and reversing that “support” would unleash frighteningly uncontrollable market forces.

    That’s where all this has taken us: the unmanipulated market is now Nemesis. Should the Fed and Treasury loosen their grip and the market wrenches free, then the global financial system and the global economy that now depends on it will both unwind in non-linear, unpredictable ways that will wipe out much of the debt, leverage and phantom wealth of The Everything Bubble.

    Lost in all the speculative babble of how to game the Fed’s next round of Rolling Thunder is the catastrophic unfairness of the Fed’s 15 years of propping up zombies and enriching the already-rich. The bottom 90% who live off their labor have seen their earnings lose purchasing power and assets such as houses soar out of reach, while the Fed and the other central banks have institutionalized moral hazard for the super-wealthy, who can count on the Fed bailing them out while the not-wealthy pay 22% interest on credit cards.

    Equally catastrophic is the incentivizing of speculation over productive investment of capital. Yes, we’re all fans of reusable rockets and battery factories, but the $100 trillion in “wealth” added since 2009 isn’t the result of incredible leaps in productivity; the vast majority of that “wealth” is the result of credit-asset bubbles inflated by the Fed and other central banks.

    As the high generated by the previous iterations of financial repression wears off, the dose increases, as do the stakes when that high wears off. This is how we get to the body count phase, where statistics are issued to “prove we’re winning,” when in fact the financial sector is increasingly fragile and the economy is increasingly dependent on the next dose of Fed fentanyl.

    We’re now so high on Fed fentanyl–rate cuts incoming!–that we don’t even notice that speculation has replaced productivity growth as the source of “wealth”:

    Financial Repression is generous with collateral damage. Trillions in Fed fentanyl and federal deficits, and the bottom 50% received a staggeringly large 0.2% boost in their signal-noise share of the nation’s financial wealth, all the way up to 2.6%, yowza.

    We got your wealth effect right here: lucky you don’t actually need wages to live, right? Oh, you do? Well, sorry about that…

    Too bad you weren’t already wealthy, then the Fed would have made you a lot wealthier.

    The unwinding will be uneven, of course, with a great many towns destroyed to save them, and eventually the dominoes falling will reach us, wherever we are. The financial system is tightly bound globally, so as it unwinds it will take down the equally tightly bound global economy.

    And so here we are: it became necessary to destroy the global economy to save it. We hope you enjoy the fireworks.

    1. Too bad you weren’t already wealthy, then the Fed would have made you a lot wealthier.

      I saw a meme where a dude is thinking “I should have bought a house when they were still affordable. Unfortunately I was in the 2nd grade.”

  18. But, the insurance factor will now be used to effect home ownership, just as medical insurance was part of the corruption of the medical system.
    And people have no clue how much medical insurance companies control what treatment you are going to get .
    In other words, these corrupt systems are designed to loot as much wealth possible, with the least amount of benefit to the patient. Just put people on more and more pharmacy drugs , until you kill them. They call it “managed care”.
    And while people get sicker and sicker by the food supply, toxins everywhere, they cram more toxic chemical pharmacy down their throats .
    Not trying to take away any life saving measures or good drugs the med system has or some stuff that is beneficial.

    1. On the rare occasions when I watch broadcast TeeVee, I see big pharma ads for pills for ailments I’ve never heard of. Without them and automotive ads I think most stations would become insolvent.

      1. I saw 4 pharmacy commercials in a row yesterday.
        All 4 said death was a possible side effect that they said quickly, while music and dancing was going on
        in the commercial.
        And the other statement they said often is, “Tell your Doctor if your allergic to this medication.” To that I say, how would someone know if they are allergic to the med if they have never taken it?

        I suspect that a lot of allergic reactions and inflammation is a common side effect with these meds.
        They also said in 2 of the commercials that infection was a side effect, that they said so fast I almost missed it.

    1. To be fair, gold doesn’t really “close” at the end of the day. The precious metal futures market trades continuously from Sunday night at 6 pm to Friday at 5 pm (Chicago time), because metals are traded around the world.

      However, pm traders still use the daily 4 pm Wall Street trading close as a marker for trending and technical analysis. At 4 pm yesterday, the gold price hit $2511, which is considered a “close.” The price held overnight before dropping again.

        1. You are conflating the continuous contract price which represent the nearest expiration month futures contract with the spot price. Spot gold did not close over 2500$. But thank you once again for your expert insights…this time on the gold markets.

      2. And, I didn’t look. For some reason Kitco doesn’t show gold breaking $2500, but Marketwatch and Apple Stocks both show it.

  21. 11-year-old migrant boy arrested as ‘aggressor’ in violent NYC phone robbery on subway: sources (8/14/2024):

    “An 11-year-old migrant boy was arrested after a Big Apple straphanger was punched in the head and had his phone stolen in a violent subway robbery, the NYPD and police sources said Wednesday.

    The baby-faced perp and a 17-year-old boy were both taken into custody after they allegedly attacked the victim onboard a Manhattan-bound 7 train at about 8:40 p.m. Tuesday near the Vernon Boulevard-Jackson Avenue stop in Queens, law enforcement sources said.

    The victim described the younger boy to cops as the “primary aggressor” in the incident, police said.

    He was issued a juvenile report and later released to a guardian, police said.

    Sources said the younger suspect is a migrant from Venezuela, though it wasn’t immediately clear if he was staying at the Roosevelt Hotel shelter.”

    https://nypost.com/2024/08/14/us-news/11-year-old-migrant-boy-arrested-over-violent-nyc-phone-robbery-sources/

    Jonathan Greenblatt hand rubbing intensifies…

    1. My grade school principal had a way of dealing with us troubled youths. Hard wood Paddle and three good smacks. Kept me from acting up on the playground ever again

      1. Why not just smack his sorry @ss so hard he flies across the Caribbean and lands back in Venezuela, where he belongs.

        Nobody want these people here, except the Southern Poverty Law Center and Anti Defamation League.

  22. Britain considers tougher internet safety laws after riots, Musk comments (8/14/2024):

    “Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour government is considering ways to toughen up internet safety regulations in the U.K. after misinformation sparked a spate of anti-immigration protests and X owner Elon Musk made incendiary comments in posts that were viewed by millions of people.

    Two industry sources with knowledge of the matter told CNBC that following the events of the past two weeks, Labour is considering a review of the Online Safety Act — legislation that requires tech giants to prevent the spread of illegal and harmful content on their platforms.

    Top officials have made comments in recent days saying that the government may review the Online Safety Act to make it tougher on disinformation, hate speech and incitement to violence.”

    https://www.cnbc.com/2024/08/14/uk-considers-tougher-online-safety-act-after-uk-riots-musk-comments.html

    You gave up your guns, and now you’re being replaced.

  23. A reader sent these in:

    Just spoke to an economic developer for a tourist town in New England

    Stores are saying sales, tourism, traffic way down. Noticeably.

    Pockets are tightening.

    https://x.com/NipseyHoussle/status/1823396438375575882

    Another multibillion dollar bankruptcy

    This one is Avon Beauty

    https://x.com/DonMiami3/status/1823176834554659229

    Buckle up, here comes the inventory.

    https://x.com/VladTheInflator/status/1823103777966293066

    Never forget everything they do to gaslight you

    https://x.com/LibertyCappy/status/1823199654365860216

    20% of US are canceling their summer vacations due to inflation, and nearly 50% are making other budget cuts to make ends meet, per FORTUNE.

    https://x.com/unusual_whales/status/1823370675228160434

    The housing market in the Northern Suburbs and exurbs of Dallas is far worse than any official data or headline is capturing right now

    • Homes sitting unsold for 6+ months

    • New inventory keeps piling in

    • No one is attending open houses

    • Builder incentives AND slashing prices

    • Showings are few and far between

    There is no price discovery when sellers won’t cut their prices and buyers won’t pay their prices

    As the underlying economy continues to weaken, it will be sellers who blink first

    The media is portraying this as a “balanced housing market”

    Sure. It’s balanced in the same sense that a roller coaster is balanced during the slight pause at the top of the drop

    https://x.com/texasrunnerDFW/status/1823349357774573918

    People are leaving New Zealand in record numbers as unemployment rises, interest rates remain high and economic growth is anemic, government statistics show.

    Data released by Statistics New Zealand showed that 131,200 people departed New Zealand in the year ended June 2024, provisionally the highest on record for an annual period.

    The data showed of those departing 80,174 were citizens, which was almost double the numbers seen leaving prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.

    New Zealand’s economy is struggling after the central bank hiked cash rates by 521 basis points in its most aggressive tightening since the official cash rate was introduced in 1999.

    https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/1823262663691882586

    Just be aware – we are currently enduring “extreme fear,” with the $SPX 5% off all-time highs.

    https://x.com/RudyHavenstein/status/1823367586085482869

    “Growing up in the ‘70’s & early ’80’s was a much more independent time. We we were left to fend for ourselves…There was a resiliency, and a habit of making decisions. There wasn’t anyone on a daily basis to run them by – you had to make decisions, and live and die by them.”

    https://x.com/RudyHavenstein/status/1823449105210733010

    Nothing in the NFIB survey suggests that there is an acute slowing of either growth or inflation.

    While wall street data may suggest the inflation problem is nearly beat, for these main street biz it’s still clearly the biggest concern.

    https://x.com/BobEUnlimited/status/1823318232276594886

    📦 The U.S. Postal Service’s expedited package shipping services have seen a steep drop in demand. The agency weathered a 40.7% decline in Priority Mail Services volume year over year for the third quarter of fiscal year 2024

    https://x.com/dailyjobcuts/status/1823354529821110320

    UN Report Condemns 🇨🇦 Temporary Foreign Worker Program as ‘Breeding Ground for Modern Slavery.’

    https://x.com/ShaziGoalie/status/1823424249379324019

    To borrow to send young people here for garbage online education that was effectively a rip off

    Temporary Workers: what was once a gold standard program suddenly morphed to wage slavery assistance for employers in fast food & other industries to further suppress wages

    https://x.com/ronmortgageguy/status/1822992175015117075

    🇳🇿 The Reserve Bank of New Zealand surprisingly lowered its policy rate to 5.25% amid rising unemployment, says it anticipates recession as unemployment rises sharply

    https://x.com/MacroEdgeRes/status/1823541055930736984

    1. So maybe true price discovery will be in new homes as the builders dont want to keep the development loans on books and need to sell.

      I keep seeing that sellers in the used market (other than speculators … errr investors) might stay in for another year or 2 as they cannot emotionally handle a loss

      • New inventory keeps piling in
      • No one is attending open houses
      • Builder incentives AND slashing prices
      • Showings are few and far between

    2. People are leaving New Zealand in record numbers as unemployment rises, interest rates remain high and economic growth is anemic, government statistics show.

      Is there a country that is not facing those same problems? My understanding is that most go to Oz. Perhaps things svck less in Oz?

  24. General Motors has been sued by the state of Texas, which accused the automaker of installing technology on more than 14 million vehicles to collect data about drivers, which it then sold to insurers and other companies without drivers’ consent.

    Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said Tuesday’s lawsuit arose from a probe announced in June into whether several automakers collected and sold mass amounts of data without drivers’ knowledge.

    Paxton said GM’s data were used to compile “Driving Scores” assessing whether more than 1.8 million Texas drivers had “bad” habits such as speeding, braking too fast, steering too sharply into turns, not using seatbelts and driving late at night.

    Insurers could then use the data when deciding whether to raise premiums, cancel policies or deny coverage, Paxton said.

    The technology was allegedly installed on most GM vehicles starting with the 2015 model year.

    Paxton said GM’s practice was for dealers to subject unwitting consumers who had just completed the stressful buying and leasing process into believing that enrolling in its OnStar diagnostic products, which collected the data, was mandatory.

    “Companies are using invasive technology to violate the rights of our citizens in unthinkable ways,” Paxton said in a statement. “Our investigation revealed that General Motors has engaged in egregious business practices that violated Texans’ privacy and broke the law. We will hold them accountable.”

    https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-texas-sues-gm-for-allegedly-violating-drivers-privacy/

  25. LAFAYETTE PARISH — After reaching all-time high prices in 2021, the cost of lumber has dropped significantly—but it’s still not cheap. According to Trading Economics, lumber hit a record $1,711 per thousand board feet in May 2021. As of 2024, the average price has fallen to $524.50 per thousand board feet, though local woodwork companies say that’s still high.

    The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) reports that the average single-family home requires more than 2,200 square feet of softwood plywood and about 15,000 board feet of framing lumber. John Breaux, general manager at Doug Ashy Building Materials, has seen firsthand how these prices have affected the industry.

    “I’ve been in this business a long time. I’ve never seen it like that,” Breaux said. “Compared to today’s prices, we were selling OSB at the time for around $45 a sheet, and now we’re selling them about $12 a sheet, if that gives you any indication.”

    https://www.katc.com/lafayette-parish/lumber-prices-drop-but-remain-high-affecting-home-construction-costs

  26. Li Zaiyong, a former senior political adviser from Guizhou province, was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve by the Fifth Intermediate People’s Court of Chongqing Municipality on Tuesday for accepting bribes of over 432 million yuan ($60.27 million) and abuse of power.

    Li, a former vice-chairman of the Guizhou Provincial Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, was also deprived of his political rights for life and had all his personal property confiscated. The illicit gains from his corrupt activities and interest earned on them will be turned over to the State treasury, with any shortfall further pursued.

    From 1998 to last year, Li made use of his positions — including as mayor of Guiyang, the provincial capital, Party chief of Liupanshui and vice-governor of Guizhou — to provide assistance in project contracting, land acquisition and project planning approvals to people in exchange for illegal gains amounting to more than 432 million yuan, most of which was not actually obtained.

    From 2014 to 2017, while serving as Party chief of Liupanshui and director of the Liupanshui urban and rural planning and construction committee, Li unlawfully initiated the construction of tourism development projects that caused more than 86.45 million yuan in environmental damage.

    The court determined that Li’s actions constituted the crimes of accepting bribes and abuse of power. Given the large amount of bribes he received, the particularly severe nature of his offenses, the extremely negative societal impact and the significant losses inflicted upon the State and the public, the death penalty was deemed appropriate for the conviction for accepting bribes. His abuse of power had also resulted in substantial losses to public assets, national interests and the people, it said.

    https://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202408/14/WS66bc115aa3104e74fddb9e5e.html

  27. Gunfire startled residents of a Timmins residential area Monday night southwest of downtown. Timmins police are investigating why the incident took place.

    A multi-unit dwelling was the target of the shooting. A number of bullets hit an apartment building at the corner of Wende Avenue and Rae Street South.

    People who live near the scene said it was a frightening experience.

    “I was sitting in bed. I heard the shots,” said Spencer Nielson. “I was too scared to move at first. I came outside. The neighbours were outside. They said there was a drive-by shooting with a truck. I thought I couldn’t believe it.”

    “I live like, maybe, about seven or eight houses from here and this is way too close to home,” said Guy Charlebois. “We never had shootouts like this before in our neighborhood.”

    Detectives with Timmins police said they received reports of gunfire shortly after 11 p.m.

    “We got to keep the neighbours close, keep a watch on the neighbourhood and see who’s coming in and out,” Charlebois added. “And we got to eliminate the crime around here. There’s been a lot of thieves.”

    https://northernontario.ctvnews.ca/neighbours-react-with-shock-to-drive-by-shooting-in-timmins-1.6999044

  28. Two men across the Greater Toronto Area are speaking out after they said they lost thousands of dollars on vacation in Mexico.

    “They said it’s my word versus their word. So it’s my word versus a scammer’s word,” Adam Attard, of Mississauga, told CTV News Toronto. Attard was vacationing with his girlfriend near Cancun, Mexico, in early July.

    Attard recalled an individual telling him he was at the wrong terminal when they arrived at the airport for their flight home, so they took a short ride in a shuttle to reach the correct one.

    Before he left the shuttle, Attard said the driver locked the doors and demanded payment by credit card.

    “We couldn’t get out of the van. There were no visible latches or locks to open the door. The [shuttle] driver said, ‘You are not leaving until you pay the $3,'” said Attard.

    When Attard was told the payment didn’t go through, the driver then said he accepted cash. However, Attard said his credit card was immediately charged $3,142.

    Attard said he contacted the Royal Bank of Canada’s Visa customer care line and was initially told he would be refunded the money, but later, he was told he wouldn’t be.

    “After I was told I would be covered, I was told because I punched in my PIN and did not get a receipt, they would not refund me anything,” said Attard.

    Glenn Egan of Toronto also travelled to Mexico in March of this year. He was visiting Mexico City with his family when they decided to take a taxi back from a museum to his hotel.

    Egan said the taxi ride should have cost about $15, but he was charged $2,300 on his credit card.

    According to Egan, the driver also demanded he pay with a credit card and then claimed the charges didn’t go through, so he accepted cash. A minute later, Egan’s bank notified him he had been scammed.

    “I stepped out of the taxi and immediately got a text from RBC saying $2,300 had been charged to my Visa,” said Egan.

    Egan said he’d contacted Visa right away to dispute the charge, but after four months of trying, he was told he would not be given a refund.

    “At the end, they said I didn’t get a receipt and without one, I can’t dispute the charges,” said Egan. “They say with Visa you’re protected against fraud and the fact they won’t step up is infuriating. It’s not 20 bucks, it’s $2,300.”

    Not long after Egan reached out to CTV News, he was told he would receive a full refund of his $2,300. Attard was also refunded his $3,142.

    https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/ontario-man-s-3-shuttle-ride-in-mexico-sets-him-back-more-than-3k-here-s-what-happened-1.6999796

  29. Auckland City Mission said recipients had complained of ‘funny tasting’ lollies after eating a Rinna pineapple sweet, prompting an investigation.

    A charity working with homeless people has unknowingly distributed lollies which have been found to contain a “potentially lethal amount” of the drug methamphetamine. The sweets were reportedly distributed in New Zealand in food parcels, with eight families including a child, said to be affected so far.

    The Rinda brand pineapple lollies were in sealed, retail-sized packages, and had been donated to Auckland City Mission by a member of the public. In a statement, the charity said it received an “alert of concern” on Tuesday afternoon from a food parcel recipient who said they had “funny tasting” lollies, the publication reported.

    Auckland City Mission said it had been working with the NZ Drug Foundation and New Zealand Police in response to the “deeply concerning incident”. New Zealand’s police have reportedly opened a criminal investigation.

    According to the New Zealand Herald, at least three people have so far needed medical attention. “Police are also aware of two young people who have been taken to hospital after tasting the lolly and spitting it out,” Detective Inspector Glenn Baldwin said.

    Drug Foundation Executive Director Sarah Helm said the lolly contained approximately 3g of methamphetamine. The lollies allegedly have a high street value of NZ$1,000 (A$916) per lolly.

    “A common dose to swallow is between 10-25mg, so this contaminated lolly contained up to 300 doses,” she said. “Swallowing that much methamphetamine is extremely dangerous and could result in death.”

    “We don’t know how widespread these contaminated lollies are, so we recommend not eating any Rinda brand pineapple lollies if you have them”.

    https://au.news.yahoo.com/alarming-discovery-inside-funny-tasting-lollies-donated-to-charity-041229235.html

    1. Looks like you found the couch meme. Yeah, that one is pretty played out by now. Cat Ladies is starting to weaken, probably because it’s not moving any votes. The next contest is the “I got more people at my rally than you did” meme. Evidently there are a few cases where the Kamala kamp AI’d some images. But I think that this too will die VERY fast, given Trump’s massive reach with his Elon Musk interview.

      The focus now is that Kamala hiding from the press, and the Walz stolen valor story. Those are more serious stories with legs. There’s another story that Trump’s campaign is withering in the face of Kamala’s sheer Joy! of campaigning and her improved poll numbers. I think the Trump camp is just waiting for the honeymoon to end at the convention next week. Then it’s going to be all debates and ground games.

      1. The next contest is the “I got more people at my rally than you did” meme.

        It was that meme that led me to the couch meme. Democrats are circulating pictures of audiences HOURS before a speech. People dumb enough to believe THAT shouldn’t be allowed to vote.

        1. I saw the picture of the huge crowd in front of an airplane. I laughed out loud. Ordinary people haven’t been allowed to just walk out onto the tarmac for decades.

    2. When their candidate is literally a whor

      The thought that an actual harlot could be installed as president is beyond worrisome.

      1. Her entire political “career” only exists because she was down on her knees, under Willie Brown’s (married at the time) desk s*cking him off.

        Democrat Party.

  33. Ok, the WHO director has declared Mpox a global panademic requiring international response.

    Just in time for elections or what? And what the he’ll does this mean in terms of International response? Lockdowns, forced vaccines, masks, what?

    I though monkey pox , or anything like it ,was confined to direct contact mostly found in the homosexual community.

    The article said it was spreading in Africa. I don’t get it , how can they blow this up to be a Global Panademic of International concern ?

    I just don’t get it.

    2. “I just don’t get it”

      The initial “wave” of it vanished from the globalist sc*m media immediately after children and dogs started getting infected with it.

      This is how that media owned and controlled by tiny hats reports the “news”.

  34. “After 20 years of teaching”…. ‘She relies solely on social security and social assistance.“

    No sympathy from me. I can’t take anyone that does what she does to her hair seriously, especially someone her age.

    Just glad she is not poisoning children’s minds anymore.

    Oh, and she should know that her worth to the left is diminishing.
    They can get fake votes.
    She costs the system money and does not produce anything, never did.
    But I am sure she will still believe the buckshot and still vote for the very lefties that despise her and lie to her.

  35. ‘She relies solely on social security and social assistance. She doesn’t have that kind of money. She just doesn’t…A person that has never owned anything in her life,’ he said. ‘She finally owns something, and now she doesn’t have it’…There basically was like a lack of maintenance…adding the city was left with no option. ‘The current reports will show you, there was a lot of unpermitted repairs made to the buildings,’ Stamm said, ‘They put stucco over rotted wood in some situations’

    Yer mom owns a defect ridden airbox in a crashing market Ed. She didn’t ‘have it’ cuz it’s junk.

  36. ‘In Nantucket, there’s a growing sense that the roughly 50-square-mile island has become a casualty in the push for cleaner energy. Although the company promised motion sensor lights for aircraft that would preserve Nantucket’s beloved night sky, locals say that hasn’t happened. ‘When we got here in June, it looked like a landing field out there’

    So yer probably out there a couple months a year Bonnie? It was cheaper than renting!

  37. ‘To make some extra money, she thought she had a perfect spot for an ADU or ‘accessory dwelling unit.’ Simpson hired Anchored Tiny Homes to build the ADU and gave them $28,000 to start, but it’s all gone. She cried, ‘Well, it’s my retirement.’ Their offices in Fair Oaks closed before she could even break ground’

    I always tell people I’m not going to pay anything until some work is done Margot. Maybe a 500 peso deposit, but nothing beyond that.

  38. ‘The highly anticipated development included 196 luxury apartments to be built above Pomeroy Garage, 75 urban flats and 15 three-level walk-up row homes…‘The developer has no funds to pay anything, including expenses to protect and preserve the incomplete project,’ the bank said in its filing in bankruptcy court. ‘What tenants had been obtained are now gone. The developer has no discernable plan to complete the project, no budget for time or expense, and no funds to execute the plan’

    Sounds like you got an a$$ pounding on yer hands bank. Shortage!

  39. ‘A property near Dupont Circle, 1776 Massachusetts Avenue Northwest, was purchased for $45 million in 2012 and sold for $10 million in June. These property value drops are not isolated…disclosed that Montgomery Park PDX LLC had purchased the building for $33 million, representing an 87% decline in value from its 2019 sale price when a company tied to Seattle-based Unico Properties bought it for $255 million’

    Good luck with yer property taxes, I warned you about turning yer sh$tholes into black holes with minor repository illness. That’s just what you did.

  40. ‘It’s like having a car without tires; the lawyers are the tires that enable this fraudulent vehicle to move forward,’ he says. ‘Without the help of lawyers, people like Arash Missaghi would not be able to conduct their crimes’…‘I have ways of quieting down those who ask me stupid questions,’ tribunal records say. Documents aired in those proceedings revealed text messages from Mr. Missaghi. ‘I’m a big man and people fear me. … i can ruin your lives overnight,’ one read. Another message to Mr. Mehta simply said: ‘People who disobey me end up missing’

    It was about 2010 when I realized K-da is full of crooks, real estate and otherwise.

  41. ‘invested $200,000 with Mr Miglani in the hopes of boosting his retirement…He also loaned Mr Miglani’s business $50,000 after being told that another investor was due to be paid and was told to deposit the money straight into their account. ‘Amit said that they would pay me back within a week,’ Mr Saini said. ‘Each time I called, the duration of time he needed to return increased. Eventually Amit stopped picking up or returning my calls,’ he said. ‘It’s my life saving for last 25 years, it’s hard-earned money. I work mostly 12 hours a day to save that money for my retirement and that is gone into the drain now’

    The vast majority of the time, it’s a no-brainer winnah! chauffeur driver. You just had bad timing.

  42. Buyer’s Scared To Get Stuck In These Buildings (GTA Condo Real Estate Market Update)

    Team Sessa Real Estate

    26 minutes ago TORONTO

    In this episode we take a look at the current GTA Condo Markets – Toronto, York Region & Peel Region for week ending Aug 7, 2024. We also discuss why buyer’s are becoming more and more wary of entering into a much older condo even though there are many pro’s that come with units in older buildings.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Wr07CYosUs

    14:29.

  43. Oversight Committee
    @GOPoversight

    Less than a week after Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race, the State Department finally released records showing Hunter Biden sought U.S. government help to land a Burisma deal when his father was VP.

    Coincidence? 🤔

    Kenneth P. Vogel @kenvogel Aug 13

    NEW: When @JoeBiden was VP, Hunter Biden asked the US Embassy in Italy to help Burisma, per new FOIA records.

    @nytimes had been seeking the records for years.

    They were released on 7/26 by @StateDept.

    The Department suggested the timing was coincidence. https://nytimes.com/2024/08/13/us/politics/hunter-biden-ukrainian-company.html
    Show more

    9:18 PM · Aug 13, 2024

    https://x.com/GOPoversight/status/1823529618932126129

  45. Via FauxNews, Andrew McCarthy: Prepare for Trump to be sentenced to prison on September 18

  46. Does it bum you out that a real estate investor likely owns the house you might have bought to live in?

Comments are closed.