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Throwing Good Money After Bad

A report from WPTV in Florida. “A condo owner from Stuart is turning to WPTV to help her efforts to bring condo associations together from the Treasure Coast to Palm Beach County. Darlene VanRiper is a resident at Harborage Condos and on the board of the building’s condominium association. VanRiper said an engineer came out and recommended $6,480,000 worth of repairs to the buildings to meet SIRS needs. She said that’d average an extra $3,000 more per resident every month. ‘If those fees keep going up like that, I’m not sure if I can do it,’ resident Candy Raulerson said. ‘I would have to budget and rethink everything. You think about seniors too. … It’s going to impact them greatly. I can’t imagine them being able to afford it, somebody living on Social Security.'”

From USA Today. “Getting pummeled again and again by hurricanes has left many in Florida’s Taylor County tired, alarmed and apprehensive after the latest forecast showing a possible Category 3 storm might hit the area this week. There was so much damage in Perry that locals joked their slogan had become ‘Blue Tarp City.’ Those blue tarps were still on roofs in neighborhoods across town when Hurricane Debby, a Category 1, hit the county in August. Michelle Curtis has worked in the forestry industry for more than 50 years, and said the region is still reeling from the one – two punch Idalia and Debby delivered. ‘They didn’t have insurance to repair them,’ Curtis said.”

The Portsmouth Herald in New Hampshire. “Condo owners at Dunvegan Woods are reeling after learning the late president of their association allegedly embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars, leaving the complex with only a few thousand dollars in the bank. The community features 110 two-bedroom condos, currently priced between $400,000 and $500,000. ‘It appears,’ the letter states, ‘that Mr. Simard misappropriated Association funds for personal benefit, and Mr. Simard’s actions have seriously depleted the capital reserve fund.’ ‘The board understands this is a very difficult situation,’ the letter stated. ‘The unit owners have a right to be angry and upset.’ Many attendees at the meeting voiced their frustration over years of neglected maintenance on the units, stating Simard repeatedly postponed their repair requests. Although embezzling from an employer is a criminal act, since Simard is dead, he can’t be charged or brought to justice to be made to reimburse the association.”

The Nantucket Current in Massachusetts. “Fugitive Aspen investor Daniel Burrell was arrested on Nantucket late Friday morning on a warrant out of Las Vegas, where he is alleged to have written a bad check to a casino for $1.5 million, just one day after his island mansion was sold at a foreclosure auction. Wanted by law enforcement authorities in Colorado and Nevada, the law finally caught up with the Yale-educated businessman on Nantucket. Burrell previously had warrants out for his arrest in Pitkin County Colorado for allegedly defaulting on over $75 million in bank loans he used to pay off divorce payments, buy a yacht, and purchase luxury homes. One of those homes was located at 3 Brewster Road on Nantucket, a property that was sold at a foreclosure auction on Thursday for $12,525,000.”

“Burrell has been facing lawsuits from several banks over the past two years, including First Western Trust Bank, which filed a complaint in November of 2023 alleging that Burrell owes more than $50 million in business and construction loans. Bank of America also filed a lawsuit against him for just under $4.5 million. Earlier this summer, Burrell had a mechanic’s lien placed on his 3 Brewster Road home for withholding over $26,000 from an island contractor for work done on the property.”

The Gothamist. “The indictment of South Jersey political boss George Norcross provides new evidence of how he wielded political power in Camden, creating a patronage pipeline that placed his allies in well-paying, influential jobs. George Norcross, his brother Philip, former Camden Mayor Dana Redd, and three others are charged with running a criminal enterprise that used political power to steal property and development rights along the Camden waterfront from the rightful owners. At the center of the indictment is Cooper’s Ferry Partnership, a nonprofit economic development organization that works closely with Camden city officials to recruit new businesses and fund improvement projects. ‘This is for our friends,’ George Norcross allegedly declared in a private meeting, referring to tax incentives tied to the project.”

Hawaii News Now. “Two medical doctors who helped secure funding for a methadone clinic and treatment center in downtown Honolulu accused a partner in the business of taking that money to buy luxury items for herself instead. Dr. William Forsythe, who lives in Washington state but is licensed to practice in Hawaii, and Dr. Ronald Baird, a family physician in Utah, were able to open more than 40 successful drug rehab clinics in 20 different states. The doctors were introduced to Phyllis Rooney, a licensed mental health counselor based in Honolulu. The doctors co-signed a loan using their homes as collateral, and that allowed Rooney to secure a bank loan, about $250,000.”

“Forsythe said he started getting letters from the bank and then the landlord from the clinic location. Baird said he feared losing his home when ‘the lender started threatening foreclosure.’ The detective found that Rooney’s application for the loan ‘showed signs of possible alteration or misrepresentation.’ Also in the police report, Rooney was accused of using the money not for the addiction center but for ‘the purchase of motor vehicles, luxury housing, luxury vacations, and services such as private chefs and child-care services’ instead of the center. ‘We’re like, holy cow, we just got taken to the cleaners, and we’re on the hook for it,’ Forsythe said.”

The Real Deal on California. “Hawkins Way Capital has paid $46.25 million to buy a 159-unit student-oriented apartment building in Berkeley. The Beverly Hills-based investor bought the six-story Varsity Berkeley complex at 2024 Durant Avenue, just south of Downtown, the San Francisco Business Times reported. The seller was Cornerstone Real Estate Advisers, based in Connecticut. The deal at Durant, between Milvia Street and Shattuck Avenue, works out to $290,881 per unit. Cornerstone, a unit of North Carolina-based Barings, bought the newly built complex in 2015 for $51 million, or $320,754 per unit.”

The San Francisco Chronicle in California. “Spurred by June’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling allowing governments to sweep out homeless encampments without having to first offer shelter, Central Valley jurisdictions from tiny Turlock to the wide San Joaquin County are passing and enforcing stringent bans on any type of camping or loitering on public land. The biggest city in the valley, Fresno, has embraced perhaps the most aggressive actions of all — well beyond measures taken by its counterparts to the northwest like San Francisco and San Jose. On Monday, Fresno Mayor Jerry Dyer said he plans to add more teeth to the ban by ordering the police department to arrest the most troublesome, continuously service-resistant homeless people in Fresno. It could mean scores of people tossed in jail.”

“‘They’re the ones who are defiant,’ Dyer told the Chronicle. ‘They’re the ones that continually show up at public places and set up their tents after they’ve been asked not to. They’re the ones that are continually lying in front of businesses, defecating on the sidewalks or in front of the business or urinating on the walls of the businesses, breaking out windows of businesses, stealing copper wire from businesses.'”

“For Robert Lopez, owner of the Something Extra gift shop, anything is better than what has been tried. In the past 20 years, he said, the homeless population has mushroomed so much ‘it’s out of control.’ ‘At least they’re trying to do something other than just accommodate the homeless,’ he said. ‘You can’t help someone who doesn’t want to help themselves, and most of what I see is young people on drugs. I’m not rude, and I hand out a dollar now and then, but it’s very sad. The best thing to do, I guess, is to kick the pile and have them run in different directions. And then say, ‘if you want the help, take the help.’ They need counseling. Maybe this will force them to make the right choices.'”

The Wall Street Journal. “Commercial-real-estate owners are cheering as interest rates finally start to fall. Yet relief is coming too late for many highly indebted property investors like the owners of 145 South Wells, an office tower in downtown Chicago. Daniel Moceri, a building-security entrepreneur turned developer, and his partners completed the 20-story tower in January 2020. By the end of 2023, the co-working company had left the building. The interest rate for the loan backing the property shot up to more than 10%. Moceri, who didn’t respond to requests for comment, lost the property to lenders in July.”

“Many owners of apartment buildings, hotels and other real estate took advantage of rock-bottom rates a few years ago, loading up on debt when borrowing was cheap. After rates soared starting in early 2022, they missed payments and had to hope their creditors would extend deadlines. Tides Equities, a privately held company based in Los Angeles, is one of the biggest apartment landlords in the Southwest. Along roadways leading out of cities like Phoenix and Dallas, the Tides signs became a sight as common as Arby’s or Pizza Hut. Some of those signs are about to come down. Around a dozen Tides buildings have entered foreclosure or a similar process this year. A handful already have been turned over to lenders. Analysts have flagged other Tides buildings for income that is too low to cover debts.”

“Hotel owner Ashford Hospitality Trust viewed floating-rate debt as a safe option. When economic times were bad and hotel room rates fell, interest rates would also likely decline, the company reasoned. Lower rates alone wouldn’t have been enough to save the hotels, said Stephen Zsigray, Ashford’s chief executive. The company had to choose between defaulting or making payments on properties already underwater—’essentially ‘throwing good money after bad,’ he said.”

Money Canada. “A new report by McGill professor Dr. David Wachsmuth quantifies the role commercial short-term rental (STR) regulations have played in stabilizing rent prices across Ontario. It also reveals the growth of those same STRs has cost Ontarians $1.6 billion since 2017, thanks to significant rent increases. A staggering 41% of Airbnb listings in Ontario are operated by commercial hosts who convert residential properties into ‘ghost hotels,’ with the top 10% of commercial hosts generating 44% of total STR revenue in the province. ‘This report is groundbreaking because it’s the first study in Canada to demonstrate a causal link between commercial STR operations and rent increases across municipalities,’ said Thorben Wieditz, executive director of Fairbnb Canada Network. ‘It is based on peer-reviewed academic research, providing undeniable evidence that commercial STRs have driven up rents.Housing planned, approved, and built to accommodate Ontario residents should not be repurposed as ghost hotels.'”

Western Australia Today. “Families traumatised by decades of what they describe as ‘ticking time-bomb’ plumbing pipes are pleading for compassion after being excluded from a deal to remediate leaky newer homes. The state government industry deal with pipe manufacturer Iplex and several WA builders was announced in August after an allegedly bad batch of polybutylene pipes made with a faulty resin were installed in homes between 2017-2022. Since August, more than 20 homeowners outside the claim period contacted this masthead to share how catastrophic leaks had led to a living nightmare. One of those is Joan Wotton who bought her 2003-built Butler home in 2007. Since then, the family has seen half the house torn apart and put back together again after four separate leaks.”

“The family now turns the mains water off whenever they leave the house for more than a day. ‘It’s like living in a ticking time-bomb, wondering when the next one might be,’ Wotton said. ‘It’s the stress – when we had to have all the floors ripped up we had to have all the skirting boards taken off, trades in and out, dehumidifiers running, separate people to paint, it went on for months.’ Shane and Julie of Donnybrook – who asked their last names not be used – estimated insurance costs to fix 13 separate pipe failures in their 2005-built home have run into the hundreds of thousands, with the couple themselves footing about $10,000 over that time. ‘We are one of the thousands of WA homes that have Iplex polybutylene piping installed in their homes,’ Shane said. ‘We, and at least five other Donnybrook locals that I’m aware of, are stricken with this time bomb in our homes.'”

“WA builder BGC, which is not taking part in the industry deal despite building up to 65 per cent of the homes impacted, has highly criticised the industry response. BGC said the deal’s $180 million package to fix impacted homes was wildly underestimated – instead suggesting costs could blow out to more than $1.2 billion. Damian Batajtis, co-owner of Wizard Leak Detection, claims the pipes have a 10-year lifespan, with inherent flaws that leave them susceptible to cracking and splitting, particularly when exposed to certain chemicals and environmental factors. Batajtis said if the estimates included homes built before 2017, costs could escalate on an ‘economy ruining’ scale. ‘Our research shows more like $44 billion,’ he said. ‘It’s everywhere from Joondalup to Mandurah, to mansions to high-rise apartments – the only place I don’t think they’ve put it is in hospitals, veterinary clinics and places that sustain life, thank God.'”

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This Post Has 118 Comments

  1. ‘Around a dozen Tides buildings have entered foreclosure or a similar process this year. A handful already have been turned over to lenders. Analysts have flagged other Tides buildings for income that is too low to cover debts’

    These types of loans are usually interest only, meaning the rents don’t even cover the interest.

    1. I’m no economics major like AOC, but methinks there’s a fundamental flaw in this particular business model.

      1. There was not a flaw – there was a cynical calculation. Lease and short-term incomes would increase and things would work out —- or they were going to jingle mail back the keys. In the interim, they looked like successes.

        1. There was not a flaw – there was a cynical calculation.

          Inconceivable! The Fed’s oversight of the financial system would never allow for such systemic risks. In addition, such worthies as Senator Elizabeth Warren and the esteemed Maxine Waters, in their roles of providing financial oversight for the financial system, would surely bring the full weight of FedGov to bear against private equity bloodsuckers who recklessly expose the financial system to systemic risks while making housing unaffordable for millions of middle- and working-class Americans that the Democrat Party professes to love and cherish.

    2. Tides
      Can’t throw a rock here in Las Vegas without hitting a Tides. Looked quick, 23 properties with 5,857 units.

  2. ‘has paid $46.25 million to buy a 159-unit student-oriented apartment building in Berkeley. The Beverly Hills-based investor bought the six-story Varsity Berkeley complex at 2024 Durant Avenue, just south of Downtown, the San Francisco Business Times reported. The seller was Cornerstone Real Estate Advisers, based in Connecticut. The deal at Durant, between Milvia Street and Shattuck Avenue, works out to $290,881 per unit. Cornerstone, a unit of North Carolina-based Barings, bought the newly built complex in 2015 for $51 million, or $320,754 per unit’

    How do those 5% cap rates look now?

  3. I’ve never heard of this sh$thole called Perry:

    ‘Tropical Cyclone Nine in the Gulf of Mexico, soon-to-be Helene, shows Florida’s Big Bend as a likely destination for a Thursday landfall of a possible Category 3 hurricane, according to forecasters and models’

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bend_%28Florida%29

    The Big Bend of Florida, United States, is an informally named geographic region of North Florida where the Florida Panhandle transitions to the Florida Peninsula south and east of Tallahassee (the area’s principal city).[1] The region is known for its vast woodlands[2] and marshlands and its low population density relative to much of the state. The area is home to the largest single spring in the United States, the Alapaha Rise, and the longest surveyed underwater cave in the United States, the 32-mile (51 km) Wakulla-Leon Sinks cave system.

    The related Big Bend Coast region includes the marshy coast without barrier islands that extends along the Gulf of Mexico from the Ocklockonee River to Anclote Key. Florida’s Nature Coast region is included in the Big Bend Coast.

    1. Perry is truly a shithole. I believe the main business is Meth.

      I may make it another year or two in the Panhandle then it’s western North Carolina with or without the kids!

  4. “would have to budget and rethink everything. You think about seniors too. … It’s going to impact them greatly. I can’t imagine them being able to afford it, somebody living on Social Security”

    At least it was cheaper than renting.

    2. ‘I would have to budget and rethink everything. You think about seniors too. … It’s going to impact them greatly. I can’t imagine them being able to afford it, somebody living on Social Security.’”
      I know not everyone owned the condo for 20+ years but someone owned it and we have some winners (those that sold during kicking the can down the road period) and losers, those owning now.

  5. New York Post (9/24/2024):

    “Border Patrol agents are warning that kids as young as 8 are being drugged and smuggled into the US by traffickers posing as their parents or family members — and nobody knows how common the horrifying practice is.

    Authorities have rescued children caught up in two different instances of such smuggling in recent weeks — including one instance in which the alleged traffickers had birth certificates for multiple kids to whom they weren’t related, according to the Border Patrol.

    Border Patrol sources have told The Post they’ve observed increasing numbers of smugglers posing as family units in order to “recycle” children.

    As of May 2024, there are 291,000 unaccompanied migrant children who were released to sponsors, but never told to appear in court — meaning federal authorities have lost contact with them.”

    https://nypost.com/2024/09/24/us-news/kids-are-being-drugged-and-trafficked-into-the-us-border-patrol/

    291,000 is that a lot?

  6. Dr. William Forsythe, who lives in Washington state but is licensed to practice in Hawaii, and Dr. Ronald Baird, a family physician in Utah, were able to open more than 40 successful drug rehab clinics in 20 different states.

    “Rehab centers” are scams of the highest order. Most have abysmally low “success” rates in getting alcoholics or drug addicts to give up their addictions, and their costs (and profits) are exorbitant.

    2. The doctors were introduced to Phyllis Rooney, a licensed mental health counselor based in Honolulu. The doctors co-signed a loan using their homes as collateral, and that allowed Rooney to secure a bank loan, about $250,000.

      Who cosigns a loan for an acquaintance? And if they own 40 rehab centers, why would they have to put up their homes a collateral? Surely they would have the cash flow to come up with $250K. Something doesn’t add up.

      1. “….Something doesn’t add up…”

        Smoke test thinks it could be some kind of a Phyllis Rooney-I am really a hooker-I want-$250K-please-don’t-tell-the-wife(s) kind of thing.

    3. “Rehab centers” are scams of the highest order.”

      I honestly believe this has been the case since Obama Care was introduced. Something in there about any broke person having their rehab paid. Scam artists opened rehabs all over the country, took anyone in and kicked their @ss out on the street as soon as the government cheese ran out. There is no incentive to get people sober so others would want to go there because there is an endless stream of troubled people that will fill there bank accounts.

      As far as “Rehab centers” are scams of the highest order.” I landed in one January 31, 1988 at the age of 28. I have been clean and sober ever since. Wasn’t always like this.

      1. Does Obamacare Cover Rehab?

        Updated: Feb 24, 2023

        New healthcare reforms emerged in the United States in the early 2010s. These reforms aimed to provide affordable and accessible health care insurance coverage to previously uninsured Americans. According to the Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, often referred to as Obamacare, was expected to provide insurance coverage to more than 5 million people with addiction and mental health disorders who were previously without coverage.

        https://recoveryfirst.org/addiction-treatment-florida/payment-options/insurance/affordable-care-act/

      2. Good on you for staying clean and sober. You seem to have been a rare success story. A friend’s mom did 3 stints in rehab before deciding on her own to stop drinking. Another couple we know sent their daughter through rehab 4 times for a heroin addiction, costing them their house in the process. They ended up washing their hands of her after she refused to give up the habit, and now she’s living out on the streets, doing God knows what to feed her addictions.

        1. “and now she’s living out on the streets, doing God knows what to feed her addictions.”

          I’ll say a prayer for that couple and their daughter tonight.

          What I was saying was back when I went although it was still a business the people who worked there and even the owner where I went who was also a physiatrist, genuinely cared and wanted to help the people. Even with that being said, the long term success rate was still low.

          Many years ago I heard an old dude at an AA meeting say… These meetings are for people who want to be here, if they were for people who needed to be here you wouldn’t get within 5 miles of the door.

    1. “…Big 3 ratings agencies gave AAA ratings to toxic-waste MBS bundles that Goldman Sachs was foisting on its “clients”?…”

      $$$ for maintenance on all those yachts and beachfront homes in the Hamptons has got to come from somewhere..

  9. Around a dozen Tides buildings have entered foreclosure or a similar process this year.

    Die, private equity bloodsuckers. And take your Fed accomplices with you.

  11. The nightmare scenario for the Fed and its bullion bank market manipulators is 1.4 billion Chinese embracing the wisdom of their ancestors and stacking the shiny to protect their wealth from “Emperors” who have lost the Mandate of Heaven and are leading the country to ruin. The bullion banks have dumped massive quantities of paper (non-existent) silver in particular in a failed price-suppression scheme, but it’s Game Over for these fraudsters if they have to start panic-buying physical metal to cover their estimated 580 million ozs in naked shorts.

    https://www.kitco.com/price/precious-metals

  12. It also reveals the growth of those same STRs has cost Ontarians $1.6 billion since 2017, thanks to significant rent increases.

    Communities need to mobilize to drive out the STR speculator scum who have been prime contributors to pricing housing out of reach of workers whose wages are being outstripped by the “cost of living crisis.”

  15. ” VanRiper said an engineer came out and recommended $6,480,000 worth of repairs to the buildings to meet SIRS needs. She said that’d average an extra $3,000 more per resident every month.”

    Of course you could always choose to wake up dying or dead in a pile of rubble that used to be your condo.

    I was at a condo unit remodel yesterday on Jupiter Island where they are repairing the structure of the entire building, had they not my example above eventually would have been the case.

      1. If it were me I’d walk, but then again I would never buy a condo especially one with an ocean view for this very reason.

        Some who have been on this blog long enough when I was renting form DBLLs from late 2005 – 2012 when I purchased a house the check list I had.

        Target area Palm Beach Gardens or Jupiter Fl. in a decent hood

        1 – No HOA
        2 – Single family home with fenced yard (Dozzer)
        3 – city water, city sewer
        4 – CBS construction
        5 – Hip roof

        Finally got it in Jupiter and it was and remains very rare.

  16. Janet Jackson made a statement about VP Harris not being black.
    I looked up what is suppose to be her background.

    So they say mother was Indian.
    FATHER was a Jamician.They say great grandfather was mixed decent of Irish and Jamician, and was a slave owner on a sugar plantation that had Irish and Jamacian slaves.
    So mother is India decent, and father mixed jamician decent.
    Both parents came to America as Imigrants.
    Mother ended up working in cancer Industry, and father became a Commie Professor.

    So, the parents divorced when Kamala was 7.
    So , Harris certainly didn’t have a American Black ancestry, and her Jamician father came from mixed heritage that engaged in slavery on a suger plantation.
    But, this is the nonsensical state of affairs these day that you can parlay some black ancestry of partial Jamiciam, and claim your black, with the same identity as a American black going back to USA slavery.
    It has been outrageous to begin with regarding this racial identity that has become a divide and conquer campaign of racism. So, Harris is a women and she is black, and that is suppose to qualify her for the highest poison of President of US
    She is suppose to represent all ethic groups, including Whites, and act in the interest of the USA, be Commander in Chief of Military, and protect our borders. AND, she would preside over weapons of mass destruction.
    So, the evidence shows that Biden/Harris allowed a massive invasion of the US borders in the last 31/2 years.
    Harris promoted the burning and destruction of American Cities, saying she was proud of the culprits.
    Of course she promotes
    Commie BS of making everyone equal. Reparations by Government for blacks, never mind if they immigrated way after the Civil War.
    Abortion rights is a high issue for Harris, even if voting on the matter has been returned to the States by the High Court.
    But to sum it up, the evidence shows that Harris is a Commie radical, who is probably just a shill puppet for the One World Order power grab, as Biden was.
    She was placed as the canadiate, not by a democracy process. Her VP pick is frightening.
    The remarketing of Harris is a joke.
    The One Word Order Entities just want to get their Harris/Walz stooges in, to continue with their planned agenda against humanity. ITS AS SIMPLE AS THAT.

    1. Kamala’s ethnicity is irrelevant. Just like Obama & Biden, she is a cardboard cutout who simply conveys the orders dictated by our unelected rulers at BlackRock & Vanguard.

      1. our unelected rulers at BlackRock & Vanguard

        They’re not the rulers. The Rothschilds are. They also created Israel.

    3. Now do her IQ. Seriously. Sources are saying that she not only appears dumb, she is actually really low IQ and no one can point to any actual accomplishments she has done. Yes, she has had some fancy titles but she hasn’t accomplished anything with them because she’s a complete dullard. When she talks unscripted she seems extremely dull like borderline retarded. This is idiocracy in action. Affirmative action is installing all kinds of retards in positions they have no business being in.

  17. A reader sent these in:

    China announces the ‘Silver Age Action Initiative’ to get the elderly back in the workforce as it grapples with looming population collapse.

    https://x.com/DonMiami3/status/1838047247717593459

    BoC has cut rates 3 times already, yet UR kept going higher and is now at 6.6% nationwide and at/above 7% in important urban centers…

    https://x.com/INArteCarloDoss/status/1838296330038579245

    The California grape market is experiencing its worst down cycle since the Great Recession, said Jeff Bitter, president of Allied Grape Growers, a cooperative that represents around 400 growers in California.

    https://x.com/MacroEdgeRes/status/1838266589080080732

    Meanwhile at the Bank of Canada

    https://x.com/DonMiami3/status/1838312276522103059

    These are the emails I’m getting.

    https://x.com/DonMiami3/status/1838296288175009816

    ECO Roof and Solar Inc. has filed Chapter 11 in the District of Colorado

    https://x.com/_RKConsultants/status/1838356060798673168

    *CHINA’S CENTRAL BANK REDUCES BANKS RESERVE REQUIREMENT RATIO BY 50 BPS

    *WILL LAUNCH NEW MONETARY POLICY TOOLS TO SUPPORT STOCK MARKET

    https://x.com/Geiger_Capital/status/1838400816564101401

    The Chinese banking sector is already on the precipice. They did such a good job of making bad loans, they’re letting them double down. By weakening their reserve requirements, they are making them even more vulnerable.

    https://x.com/MauiBoyMacro/status/1838411207189106943

    How do you fix a Ponzi real estate system where homes cost 45x income in major cities when the population is set to halve due to 30 years of a one child policy?

    https://x.com/cherrygarciafan/status/1838411736459731235

    “Amid record valuation extremes, amid the extended peak of the third great speculative bubble in U.S. history, and amid the greatest concentration of market capitalization in speculative glamour stocks since the peaks of the other two bubbles in 1929 and 2000, one thing seems certain. Market conditions will change.”

    https://x.com/MauiBoyMacro/status/1838231445636313364

    Most in the US no longer trust any institution, from organized religion to Congress to the presidency, per Bloomberg:

    https://x.com/unusual_whales/status/1838241161154277872

    Every time I ever talk to anyone in the mortgage industry, it’s ALWAYS the best time to buy. Either I need to act now because rates have never been lower and they’re only going up, or because rates were just cut, and I should act now before everybody else jumps on the bandwagon.

    https://x.com/ronstauffer/status/1838352475411353818

    The Sahm recession indicator above 0.55 has always coincided with a recession.

    Additionally, the Fed is already cutting rates “aggressively”.

    Why would this time be any different?

    https://x.com/i3_invest/status/1838307349938753955

    The US home price to median household income ratio is now at 7.2x, a new all-time high.

    In other words, the average single-family home in the US now costs more than 7 times the median annual household income.

    This ratio is officially above the 7.1x recorded in 2022 and 6.8x seen during the 2008 Housing Bubble.

    By comparison, a few years before the 2020 pandemic the ratio was around 5.5x.

    In just 5 years, home prices have soared ~50%, materially outpacing the 17% growth in household income.

    US housing affordability is still getting worse.

    https://x.com/KobeissiLetter/status/1838193781528502481

    Is the Irvine PD’s new Tesla Cybertruck a cutting-edge investment in public safety or just an expensive, shiny toy?

    https://x.com/KTLA/status/1838353266993713266

    It’s incredible we went from The Great Resignation to tech jobs are gone and not coming back in just over two years.

    This is truly the worst tech job market in a generation.

    https://x.com/Carnage4Life/status/1838384511727603916

    Markets now see an 80% chance of a “soft landing.”

    Since 1980, the Fed has only seen ONE soft landing and it was described as “one of the Fed’s proudest accomplishments”

    ONLY 17% of rate cut cycles have ended in a soft landing.

    Can the Fed really pull it off now?

    https://x.com/KobeissiLetter/status/1837868847409295625

    US PENDING HOME SALES CRASHED TO A NEW LOW

    Pending Home Sales a leading indicator for the housing sector fell by 5% in July from June to 70.2 points, lowest on RECORD.

    Contract signings are now below the 2020 Pandemic and the Financial Crisis levels.👇

    https://x.com/GlobalMktObserv/status/1838194328964833713

    I’ve said many times (and pissed off a lot of people in the industry saying so), but no industry needs regulatory oversight and a serious fire-hose enema more than real estate.

    https://x.com/his_eminence_j/status/1838207993516577170

    The Bank of Canada is literally telling you housing is going to crash.

    https://x.com/igetredpilled/status/1838300519061950592

    1. Most in the US no longer trust any institution, from organized religion to Congress to the presidency, per Bloomberg:

      All of our institutions have been captured and subverted by the globalists and their stooges. The sooner the people who pay the bills and perform society’s essential functions figure out that “Our Democracy” serves only a corrupt and venal .1% in the financier oligarchy, the faster they can withdraw the “consent of the governed.”

    2. X is a hellhole. The libs are taking it over with propaganda. I won’t call it “lies,” because to them they aren’t telling lies. They 100% believe that it’s all true. Nothing will shake them. Nothing.

      Notice how quick they went from Joe to Special K without skipping a beat. As if they shifted from fighting Eurasia to Eastasia.

    3. The Sahm recession indicator above 0.55 has always coincided with a recession.

      By design. What do people not understand about using historical data to create a forward-looking indicator?

  18. The worthless Establishment GOP controlled opposition is feigning “outrage” at IEDs and RPGs turning up in cartel hands along the U.S.-Mexico border. This calls for more sternly worded letters, sham “hearings,” and bloviating for the cameras, to be followed by craven capitulation to whatever directives Chuck Schumer and The Cabal issue to Speaker Johnson & his fellow GOP globalist hirelings.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13886435/The-warning-Biden-Harris-terrifying-arsenal-weapons-including-rocket-propelled-grenade-launcher-south-Arizona.html

  19. ‘The Bank of Canada is literally telling you housing is going to crash’

    Puddle watchers read that today while I chronicled the actual crashing of Toronto, Vancouver and the cottage/igloo market as it happened over the last 2 years. They are all down 20%+- since the peak. And it’s still going down. Keep looking down puddle watchers.

  20. FARMERS and grain merchants across the globe are facing the daunting prospect of drastically reduced grain demand from China, the world’s biggest annual importer of agricultural produce, as the second-largest international economy struggles with an ageing population, a significant real estate downturn, slowing consumer spending, and growing geopolitical tensions.

    The housing bubble in China was the largest the world has ever seen. At its peak, housing represented 29 percent of the nation’s GDP, and it was primarily financed with borrowed money, as disposable incomes are meagre. In July, new home prices in 70 major Chinese cities shrank by an average of 4.9pc, worse than the 4.5pc fall in June. It was the 13th straight month of falls, and the fastest pace since June 2015, despite numerous attempts by Beijing to ease the impact of the protracted property weakness and fragile economic recovery.

    China’s population reportedly peaked at 1.4 billion in 2021, with just 45pc of those people considered working age. China’s National Bureau of Statistics reported earlier this year that births in 2023 totalled 9.02 million, around half the birth rate recorded in 2017. With deaths last year of 11.1M, up 500,000 from 2022, China’s population shrank by 2.08M in 2023. This follows a fall of 850,000 in 2022, and marks the first consecutive years of decline since the great famine of 1959-1961.

    China also has one of the fastest-growing ageing populations in the world due to longer life expectancy and falling fertility rates. The proportion of the populace exceeding the age of 60 is expected to reach 28pc by 2040, with the huge demographic shift presenting many challenges for Beijing.

    The impact of China’s demand contraction is already being felt. With this season’s harvest already under way, the US has yet to sell a full cargo of new-crop corn, French barley shipments to China have been tumbling, and Canadian exporters are on the nose. In Australia, grain farmers and exporters alike are getting very nervous, with the winter-crop harvest just around the corner and the country’s biggest grain buyer refusing to pick up the phone.

    https://www.graincentral.com/markets/chinas-grain-demand-is-waning/

      1. Central planning sort of worked when China was growing by leaps and bound, becoming “the world’s factory”. The massive growth papered over the central planning mistakes, but now the meteoric growth is over.

    2. he daunting prospect of drastically reduced grain demand from China

      Dead people might vote, but they don’t eat.

  21. Car dealerships across China are facing losses of almost $20 billion as consumers hold off on making major purchases and vehicles pile up in sales lots.

    The country’s car retailers are experiencing “extremely intense liquidity” and looking at losses of about 138 billion yuan ($19.6 billion) for the first eight months of 2024 alone, the China Automobile Dealers Association said in a statement Monday.

    The country’s best-selling automobile brand, BYD Co., started a fresh wave of discounting at the start of the year, the latest in a ferocious round of cost cutting that’s been going on since the beginning of 2023 in an effort to get consumers to buy more cars.

    The China Automobile Dealers Association noted that sluggish consumption is to blame for dealerships’ losses, adding that wholesale inventory levels are high, meaning showrooms are then forced to offload excess stock at rock bottom prices.

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/china-s-car-dealerships-facing-losses-of-almost-20-billion/ar-AA1r2wqD

  22. China’s failure to fire policy bazooka may keep markets in deep freeze: McGeever

    China’s political and economic leadership are thought to have a keen sense of history, but Beijing’s tepid response to the unfolding property crash that’s strangling the country’s growth and spreading deflation is baffling.

    The clear lesson from major housing crises that have occurred in recent decades is that cure and recovery only come following bold, decisive action in the form of massive monetary and fiscal stimulus.

    Beijing is providing neither and instead taking a scattergun approach.

    The People’s Bank of China on Friday chose not to cut benchmark borrowing rates, but on Monday injected two-week cash into the banking system for the first time in months and at a lower rate too.

    But in the words of the Institute of International Finance’s Gene Ma and Phoebe Feng, Beijing’s policy response has been “slow, timid, and sometimes very vague,” a far cry from the “big bazooka” that’s needed.

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/china-s-failure-to-fire-policy-bazooka-may-keep-markets-in-deep-freeze-mcgeever/ar-AA1r4U1E

    The groundswell is building for a massive Chinese stimulus, but today was not the real thing

    China urgently needs a stimulus of shock-and-awe proportions, backed by a deep cleansing of its broken banks along the lines of America’s “Tarp” (Troubled Asset Relief Program) rescue in 2008. The latest package announced today falls far short.

    The drumbeat for radical action is by now deafening. It dominated the weekend’s China Macroeconomy Forum in Hong Kong, where a chorus of influential voices called for a fiscal blast of up to $1.4 trillion (£1.1 trillion) to pull the country out of debt deflation and cosmic gloom.

    The authorities have been dribbling out stimulus for months, but it has been too half-hearted to arrest the slide into a Keynesian liquidity trap. Disappointing data over recent weeks have finally caused the dam to break. The PBOC cut the reserve requirement ratio by 50 points on Tuesday. There were targeted measures to prop up the crumbling housing market.

    Raymond Yeung, China strategist at Australia’s ANZ bank, said the measures will inject a trillion yuan into the banking system but do not add up to a genuine bazooka. “We question whether today’s package can lift China from the deflationary spiral. Massive easing and a complete change in mindset is required,” he said.

    “We won’t rush to upgrade our growth forecasts just yet,” said Capital Economics. “The big picture is that monetary policy has lost much of its effectiveness in China.”

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/the-groundswell-is-building-for-a-massive-chinese-stimulus-but-today-was-not-the-real-thing/ar-AA1r6GlF

  23. Canadian natural gas prices fall to two-year low as storage fills

    Canadian natural gas prices slumped to their lowest level in more than two years on Monday and are expected to remain under pressure for weeks, as storage levels in Alberta reach full capacity due to weak demand across North America.

    Next-day gas prices at the AECO hub in Alberta fell to 5 Canadian cents per million British thermal units (mmBtu), their lowest level since August 2022, according to data from financial firm LSEG.

    Now summer air conditioning demand is winding down and storage levels in Alberta are very close to being full, said RBN Energy analyst Martin King, who warned prices would struggle to meaningfully recover until colder weather starts to bite in late October.

    “It seems pretty clear we are going to stay weak until we get a demand pickup because we are running out of places to put the gas,” King said.

    https://www.msn.com/en-ca/money/other/canadian-natural-gas-prices-fall-to-two-year-low-as-storage-fills/ar-AA1r4FaT

  24. Thieves Hunting for Copper Are Vandalizing American EV Chargers

    Rick Wilmer spends most of his work days at the office. But every so often, the chief executive officer of ChargePoint Holdings Inc. will make his way to the company’s laboratory in San Jose, California, where he dons safety glasses and wields an array of saws and shears against EV chargers. The goal: to approximate the rash of vandalism sweeping the 65,000 US cords under ChargePoint’s care.

    “It’s all over the country,” Wilmer says. “The types of stuff we’ve seen happen is just horrifying in terms of the way they go about it and how frequently it happens.”

    ChargePoint isn’t alone. This year through June, nearly one in five US public charging attempts ended in failure, according to JD Power; roughly 10% of those aborted sessions were due to a damaged or missing cable. While some of the destruction is without agenda — the same spray-paint and baseball-bat havoc that affects vending machines and delivery robots — charging executives say much of the damage has a specific, profit-based motive: copper.

    There have been similar reports of vandalism in Europe, and in May Instavolt Ltd. — a UK charger operator — warned of a crackdown on cord theft. But the mayhem comes at a particularly tough time in the US, where sales of electric cars are flagging. A reliable charging network is key to dousing drivers’ range anxiety, and charging companies are eager to disabuse EV-skeptical consumers of the notion that public stations are inconvenient, slow and often broken.

    https://finance.yahoo.com/news/thieves-hunting-copper-vandalizing-american-120027789.html

    3. Seems as if the most cost-effective measure to keep our infrastructure intact and clear the shoplifting is to tame money out of the eqaution and give out the drugs for free.

      1. I was watching a documentary on Ozempic last night and they calculated it costs around 87ish cents to manufacture with profit. However, a months supply in the US goes for $900-$1200 depending on your coverage. In other countries they sell it for significantly less. I’m sure fentanyl costs much less to make but this country is all about robbing people so permanently giving it away is out of the question. However, in Philly they do give it away first thing in the morning to get the junkies up and grinding. Once they are up they will spend the rest of the day lying, cheating, and stealing for their favorite dealer. It is commonplace to see a throng of zombies running down the street at 6am there when word gets out of the morning handout. This is the very essence of American Capitalism.

  26. Quebec says Northvolt battery project will go ahead as company cuts 20% of global staff

    Sweden’s Northvolt AB is cutting a fifth of its global work force as it reins in expansion plans in the face of a downturn in demand for electrical-vehicle batteries, raising new questions about the pace of construction of a battery factory under way in Quebec.

    Northvolt said on Monday it is laying off 1,600 employees at plants located in its home country to focus on boosting production at its main factory and serving its current roster of automotive customers. Earlier this month, the company announced it was putting off expansion in other parts of Europe as part of a strategic review.

    Northvolt said its latest announcement has no impact on plans to build the $7-billion battery factory near Montreal. However, the company noted it is proceeding with the review before making any decisions on the timing of construction. That is expected to be completed by the end of this autumn.

    Northvolt is ratcheting back its expansion strategy as automakers such as General Motors Co., Ford Motor Co., Volvo Car AB and Volkswagen AG temper their EV outlooks and spending to deal with high capital costs and some resistance among car buyers, who face sticker shock and still-spotty charging infrastructure. In June, BMW cancelled a US$2.15-billion order for Northvolt battery cells.

    “While overall momentum for electrification remains strong, we need to make sure that we take the right actions at the right time in response to headwinds in the automotive market, and wider industrial climate,” Northvolt chief executive officer Peter Carlsson said in a statement. “We now need to focus all energy and investments into our core business.”

    Mr. Carlsson called the company’s moves “challenging and painful.”

    “The decisions are, however, necessary to adjust for current realities and enable the long-term success of Northvolt,” he said.

    Northvolt is owned by several partners, including Volkswagen, BMW, Scania AB and Goldman Sachs Asset Management, as well as large Canadian pension plans. Among those, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System and Investment Management Corp. of Ontario have invested in a US$2.3-billion convertible debt program. Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec provided a $200-million debt financing last year.

    https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-quebec-says-northvolt-battery-project-will-go-ahead-as-company-cuts-20/

  27. Equifax Canada reports that while application fraud is down in some areas, automotive lenders are seeing a surge in fraud. According to new data from Equifax Canada, automotive fraud is up by 54 per cent year-over-year and is largely driven by falsified credit applications and the continued prevalence in identity theft. Ontario has experienced the most significant increase in auto fraud rates, doubling since Q2 2023.

    In addition, first party fraud (fraud in which the borrower knowingly uses their own personal information to commit fraud) continues to be the most prevalent type of misrepresentation in automotive. “Automotive fraud is a significant pain point for both businesses and consumers,” said Carl Davies, Head of Fraud and Identity at Equifax Canada. “Consumers choosing to falsify their income, employment, and financial information to secure credit are a growing concern for lenders. This deceit may provide short-term financial gains for the consumer, but certainly can lead to long-term consequences such as loan denials, damaged credit, and legal ramifications.”

    Overall, the proportion of identity theft in credit applications continues to grow with 48.3 per cent of all fraud applications flagged as identity fraud in Q2 2024, up from 42.9 per cent in Q2 2023, according to data from Equifax Canada. While the proportion of true identity fraud remained the same at 39.4 per cent, there has been a rise in synthetic identity fraud, where criminals combine real and fake data to create new identities. The incidence of synthetic identity fraud rose from 2.8 per cent in Q2 2023 to eight per cent in Q2 2024.

    “The rise in true identity fraud along with synthetic identity fraud, underscores the need for enhanced fraud detection across digital platforms where these crimes are increasingly being perpetrated,” added Davies. “The increase in digital transactions has made it easier for fraudsters to exploit weaknesses in current fraud prevention measures.”

    https://finance.yahoo.com/news/equifax-canada-reports-rise-automotive-093000619.html

  28. Greasing the wheels? How corruption hurts innovation and adds to Canada’s productivity problem

    Shoeb Mohammad, an assistant professor of strategy and entrepreneurship at Ontario Technical University, wrote his PhD thesis on corruption—but his interest in the field isn’t merely academic. In the early 1980s, before he was born, his parents left Pakistan for Canada because his father, an engineer and farm owner, faced relentless demands for bribes that made it impossible for the young couple to get ahead. “They talk about how difficult it was to get opportunities, to deal with the politics in the country, or regulation if you were starting a business. A lot of it boiled down to corruption,” he says. “That’s kind of what interested me.”

    Lately, Mohammad has turned his scholarly attention to a longstanding academic disagreement and the subject of hundreds of somewhat contradictory studies: Does corruption grease the wheels of corporate innovation by helping companies avoid bureaucratic red tape, or throw sand into those gears because only the largest players can afford to buy off officials, creating staid monopolies? In a study published earlier this year in the journal Research Policy, Mohammad and two colleagues—Jie Yang, an assistant professor at the University of Manitoba’s Asper School of Business, and Irfan Butt, an associate professor at Toronto Metropolitan University’s Ted Rogers School of Management—conclude it’s the latter.

    “The long-term impact of corruption on broader innovation in an economy will be unequivocally negative,” they argue, citing evidence that corruption tends to be bad for patents, R&D, citations and process improvements, especially in technologically intensive sectors and environmentally focused industries. “These findings affirm the question of whether privileged firms in corrupt environments are truly innovative, since monopolistic advantages can foster complacency by suppressing competition.”

    Lots of research backs up that connection. A 2020 international ranking compiled by Swiss consultancy Global Risk Profile, for example, found that firms exposed to excessive corruption tend to become more risk-averse and cautious in their investments (although it notes China is an outlier that scores highly for both corruption and patents and R&D). Another 2020 study, by a team of scholars from the state universities of Arizona and North Carolina, suggests that whenever government officials have power and discretion over operating licences, safety inspections, building permits or approvals, bribery and extortion could price out investment in innovation “especially if these interactions are particularly costly, frequent or both.”

    “Oftentimes what we define as corruption in another country, like Pakistan—similar sorts of activities may actually be happening within Europe or the United States, and we may call that legitimate,” says Mohammad.

    https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/rob-magazine/article-greasing-the-wheels-how-corruption-hurts-innovation-and-adds-to/

  29. As Canadians struggle with an economy still dealing the effects of inflation, an affordability crisis, a housing crisis and rising unemployment, fear not, Justin Trudeau is looking out for you by speaking to other global celebrities.

    Trudeau is in New York this week at the United Nations and, just to make sure everyone sees that he’s there, he’ll make an appearance on the Stephen Colbert show on Monday night.

    On Sunday, Trudeau gave a speech to the United Nations Summit of the Future symposium, and no one was there to hear. He spoke to a mostly empty room with scant applause.

    That’s probably a good thing because it was really a domestic political speech delivered at the UN complete with his slogans such as “fairness for every generation.”

    He went on to brag about $10-a-day child care, the school food program that he’s been promising for the last year but that has yet to feed a single child. He spoke about fighting climate change and middle-class jobs and his government’s “ambitious housing plan that will deliver good, abundant and affordable homes.”

    It’s a good thing he wasn’t taking questions or being fact-checked. Has anyone seen these “abundant and affordable homes?”

    Prior to Trudeau heading to New York, he was rubbing elbows with other members of the global left wing elite in Montreal at the Global Progress Action Summit. This is a summit hosted by Trudeau’s favourite think tank, Canada 2020, an organization started by his close friends and often funded by Canadian taxpayers.

    It acts as a sort of clearing house for “progressive” ideas for the Trudeau government.

    At this year’s summit were both of Trudeau’s finance ministers, Chrystia Freeland, his actual finance minister and Mark Carney, his unofficial finance minister and economic advisor to the Liberal Party and several very wealthy companies controlled by billionaires.

    Today’s socialists have a taste for the finer things in life, after all.

    Also at this Montreal summit was former New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern, a close ally of Trudeau’s on the world stage. When Ardern resigned as New Zealand’s PM in January 2023, she was deeply unpopular with voters and within her own party, much like Trudeau is now.

    Unfortunately, unlike Ardern, Trudeau can’t read the room and realize it is time to go.

    https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/trudeau-enjoys-summit-season-detached-from-canadian-reality

  30. The most honest thing Sean Combs may have ever done was name his record label “Bad Boy.”

    Although 54-year-old Combs – aka Puff Daddy, aka Puffy, aka P. Diddy, Diddy and Love – has been orchestrating a lot more than just braggadocious “bad” behavior during the intervening decades, according to a federal indictment unsealed Tuesday. Instead, it charges, he’s been the veritable architect and leader of a “criminal enterprise” engaged in alleged arson, kidnapping, forced labor, bribery, obstruction of justice and sex trafficking.

    It was that final accusation, laid out not in federal charging papers but in a series of damning lawsuits last year, that first revealed the growing cracks in the veneer of Combs’ carefully-curated reputation. He strenuously denied all wrongdoing. But the filings were quickly followed by a bicoastal raid on his properties amid a tight-lipped federal investigation, then the leaking of a violent video showing Diddy’s brutal beating at a hotel of then-girlfriend Cassie– the most high-profile victim to sue him.

    The footage was proof that his denials had been false all along. Combs tried a weak filmed mea culpa and apologized on Instagram, staying largely and uncharacteristically out of public view despite a few other presumed attempts at reputation rehab: two lukewarm family-centric posts on the same social media platform amid occasional statements from lawyers.

    Those efforts did nothing to stem the tide of public embarrassments. Howard University revoked the honorary degree of which he’d been so proud. The mayor of New York asked Combs to return the key to the city. Even Miami Beach canceled its annual Sean Diddy Combs Day.

    And now, exactly three years after Combs applauded the MeToo movement in a September 2021 magazine profile – and just one year after performing a medley of his hits to accept the Global Icon Award at the VMAs – he’s been arrested for a litany of jaw-dropping alleged offenses that include violent crimes against women. He was taken into custody in the lobby of a Manhattan hotel, a five-star setting in the city whose high society he presided over for years.

    Federal prosecutors on Tuesday were pushing in court for detainment until trial – the prospect of drab prison scrubs a world away from Diddy’s years of flashy fashion and his legendary Labor Day Hamptons White Parties.

    Now the courtroom sketches of Combs appearing before a New York judge are already usurping the more iconic images of his bedazzled rapper lifestyle. One of his raided homes, a 13-room mansion in Beverly Hills, is on the market for $61.5 million, put up for sale the week before his arrest.

    https://news.yahoo.com/news/saga-continues-authorities-name-sean-234510077.html

      1. Hopefully the Hollywood elites photographed at his parties will pay the price. Not that I’m confident of that happening.

      1. He’s got a ‘nepo baby’ lawyer, Teny Geragos. Mark Geragos is her father. Feel free to look up their former clients.

  31. Homebuilder Lennar Says Prices Dropped and Sales Rose Last Quarter

    Lennar, one of the country’s largest homebuilders, says that its average home sales price dropped 6% last quarter from a year ago, as it sought to offer more affordable options to homebuyers.

    In an earnings report on Thursday, Lennar said that the average sales price of homes it delivered was $422,000 for the three months ending Aug. 31, compared with $448,000 in the same period last year. The price drop was primarily due to an increase in buyer incentives and a shift to smaller floor plans, the builder said.

    In July, the most recent available month for comparison, the median sales price for new homes was $429,000, slightly more than the $421,400 median for existing homes that month.

    https://www.sfgate.com/realestate/article/homebuilder-lennar-says-prices-dropped-and-sales-19780081.php

  32. A former senior adviser to John Kerry’s presidential campaign was arrested Friday on Nantucket on a warrant out of Las Vegas following the sale of his foreclosed mansion on the island, multiple outlets reported.

    Daniel Burrell was arraigned in Nantucket District Court Friday on a fugitive from justice court warrant, according to court records. He was ordered to be committed to Barnstable County Correctional Facility after not posting bail, which was set at $10,000 cash.

    Burrell, a businessman in private equity and previous contributor at the Huffington Post, worked in the Domestic Policy Council in the Clinton Administration in 2000 to 2001, according to his HuffPost biography. He advised on Kerry’s 2002 Senate run and 2004 presidential campaign.

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/john-kerry-s-former-campaign-adviser-arrested-in-nantucket-on-fugitive-from-justice-warrant/ar-AA1r5A9c

  33. Whose fault is the California homelessness crisis?

    According to Gov. Gavin Newsom, cities and counties are to blame for failing to get people off the street – despite all the money he’s given them to do so.

    That was the message the governor pushed today as he signed a package of housing and homelessness bills at an event in San Francisco with legislators, carpenters’ union members, and members of the press.

    “There’s never been more support to address all of those concerns than in the last four or five years,” Newsom said. “So what gives? Time to do your job. Time to address the crisis of encampments on the streets in this state. And yes, I’m not going to back off from that. And you will see that reflected in my January budget. I’m going to fund success and I’m not going to fund the rhetoric of failure anymore.”

    https://www.ivpressonline.com/news/what-happens-to-homeless-people-after-encampment-sweeps-that-s-on-cities-gavin-newsom-says/article_d2e960a0-7770-11ef-a872-8b72cc2f03b4.html

        1. The 93 year-old in the post below.

          Maybe, but Newsom still has lots of years to catch and out do the 93 year old.

    2. Emperor Newsom needs to commission an Andersonville style detention center in Death Valley to corral these incorrigible drug addicts and thieves from the city sidewalks and streets.

  34. Under Joe Biden, billions has been spent to build out rural broadband networks but many in remote communities are still without coverage.
    AFP via Getty Images

    FCC delay to rollout of internet in rural communities slammed as ‘worst abuse’ by commissioner

    By Lydia Moynihan
    Published Sep. 23, 2024, 2:16 p.m. ET

    “I have never heard of the FCC granting relief like this with no process, no public input, and no heads up,” Carr told The Post.

    “The Democrats in FCC leadership cut a secret, backroom deal—one that kept the Republican FCC Commissioners and perhaps others completely in the dark—and then hustled it out the door on a Friday afternoon.”

    The move comes just two days after the FCC approved a controversial deal that fast-tracked left-leaning billionaire George Soros’ acquisition of radio stations that reach more than 165 million Americans, The Post has learned — a move that insiders have also slammed as political.

    On Wednesday, The FCC adopted an order to approve Soros’ purchase of more than 200 radio stations in 40 markets just weeks before the presidential election, sources told The Post.

    The FCC decision came after a partisan vote with the commission’s three democrats voting for the move while the two republicans voted against it, sources added.

    Under existing FCC rules, foreign company ownership of US radio stations is not supposed to exceed 25%. Soros took foreign investment to make his bid and then made a filing asking the commission to make an exception to the usual review process, according to public documents.

    The FCC decision to fast-track his deal is the first time in modern history such a deal has been approved by the full Commission without first running the national security review process—a process that could take up to a year or more.

    The Soros group says they will come back to the FCC at some point in the future to run that process.

    Soros, 93, pumped $400 million into Audacy in February to take control of the network, which includes a handful of conservative shows from hosts including Sean Hannity, Dana Loesch, Mark Levin, Glenn Beck and Erick Erickson.

    https://nypost.com/2024/09/23/business/fcc-delay-to-internet-in-rural-areas-worst-abuse-commissioner/

    2. In all of the “liberal Western democracies” with globalist Quisling regimes, free speech is under coordinated assault. If the globalists & Deep State succeed in installing Comrade Kamala as our next president, the Democrat-Bolsheviks and our subverted institutions of governance will go all-out to criminalize any and all forms of expression that are deemed non-Narrative Compliant.

      https://americanmind.org/salvo/the-coming-strangulation-of-free-speech/

    1. Leftists TRIGGERED After Trump Helps Mother-of-Three Pay for Groceries with $100 Bill

      by Adan Salazar
      September 24th, 2024 1:32 PM

      https://www.infowars.com/posts/leftists-triggered-after-trump-pays-for-mother-of-threes-groceries-with-100-bill

      “I’m reasonably sure that’s a federal crime,” falsely claimed longtime NPR Marketplace host Kai Ryssdal.

      ALX 🇺🇸
      @alx

      *Trump pays for someone’s groceries*

      Completely normal Democrat reaction: “That’s a federal crime!”
      7:59 AM · Sep 24, 2024

      https://x.com/alx/status/1838548787205218697

      File411
      @File411

      Pretty sure the FEC would like a word because you betcha there’s a federal law that prohibits this type of undue financial influence
      18 U.S. Code § 597 – Expenditures to influence voting
      “Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both; and if the vio-lation was willful, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.“
      Source: https://govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCODE-2011-title18/pdf/USCODE-2011-title18-partI-chap29-sec597.pdf

      6:56 PM · Sep 23, 2024

      https://x.com/File411/status/1838351885230612762

  37. Can’t a person make a gift of charity to someone?

    Trump didn’t say anything like I will give you 100 bucks if you vote for me to the lady at grocery store.

    But think of how Biden/Harris tried to buy votes by Fed gov paying student loans and calls for reparations for blacks for slavery.

    Harris is pushing for government paying for child care for women.
    Apparently this gift to people at the grocery store was not conditioned on their vote. I’m assuming it was out of Trumps personnel funds, but I don’t
    know.

      1. How about tax dollars being filtered to illegals, and the fact they are ready and willing to vote in US election for whatever candidate they are told to. The free shit army of illegals aren’t being bribed for their illegal vote, oh no.

        Trump gives some people 100 bucks for groceries and this is grounds for arrest and a jail sentence.

  39. ‘I would have to budget and rethink everything. You think about seniors too. … It’s going to impact them greatly. I can’t imagine them being able to afford it, somebody living on Social Security’

    Thanks for yer contribution to today’s HBB Pitfalls of Commie Urban Living™ Candy. The topic today is, you may be able to pay yer bills but if a group of broke a$$ losers can’t, yer fooked. I have another:

    ‘The board understands this is a very difficult situation,’ the letter stated. ‘The unit owners have a right to be angry and upset.’ Many attendees at the meeting voiced their frustration over years of neglected maintenance on the units, stating Simard repeatedly postponed their repair requests. Although embezzling from an employer is a criminal act, since Simard is dead’

    So you pool yer pesos like good little commies, and one of the bashtards steals it. Happens all the time.

  40. ‘previously had warrants out for his arrest in Pitkin County Colorado for allegedly defaulting on over $75 million in bank loans he used to pay off divorce payments, buy a yacht, and purchase luxury homes. One of those homes was located at 3 Brewster Road on Nantucket, a property that was sold at a foreclosure auction on Thursday for $12,525,000…Burrell has been facing lawsuits from several banks over the past two years, including First Western Trust Bank, which filed a complaint in November of 2023 alleging that Burrell owes more than $50 million in business and construction loans. Bank of America also filed a lawsuit against him for just under $4.5 million. Earlier this summer, Burrell had a mechanic’s lien placed on his 3 Brewster Road home for withholding over $26,000 from an island contractor for work done on the property’

    That’s some sound lending right there.

  41. ‘This is for our friends,’ George Norcross allegedly declared in a private meeting, referring to tax incentives tied to the project’

    New Jersey is another place that might challenge south Florida for crookedest real estate people. But K-da is in the lead hands down right now.

  42. ‘We’re like, holy cow, we just got taken to the cleaners, and we’re on the hook for it’

    I can’t say I’ve ever experienced that Bill. Sux to be you!

  43. ‘You can’t help someone who doesn’t want to help themselves, and most of what I see is young people on drugs’

    This disastrous experiment was all for nothing.

  44. ‘The company had to choose between defaulting or making payments on properties already underwater—’essentially ‘throwing good money after bad’

    Notice Steve didn’t mention anything about recourse loans. More sound lending.

  45. ‘Wotton who bought her 2003-built Butler home in 2007. Since then, the family has seen half the house torn apart and put back together again after four separate leaks…The family now turns the mains water off whenever they leave the house for more than a day. ‘It’s like living in a ticking time-bomb, wondering when the next one might be,’ Wotton said. ‘It’s the stress – when we had to have all the floors ripped up we had to have all the skirting boards taken off, trades in and out, dehumidifiers running, separate people to paint, it went on for months’

    It’s still way cheaper than renting Joan.

    ’who asked their last names not be used – estimated insurance costs to fix 13 separate pipe failures in their 2005-built home have run into the hundreds of thousands, with the couple themselves footing about $10,000 over that time. ‘We are one of the thousands of WA homes that have Iplex polybutylene piping installed in their homes,’ Shane said. ‘We, and at least five other Donnybrook locals that I’m aware of, are stricken with this time bomb in our homes’

    Those time bombs are going to make you rich beyond yer wildest dreams Shane and Julie. You’ll see.

    ‘Batajtis said if the estimates included homes built before 2017, costs could escalate on an ‘economy ruining’ scale. ‘Our research shows more like $44 billion,’ he said. ‘It’s everywhere from Joondalup to Mandurah, to mansions to high-rise apartments’

    Is that a lot?

  46. This Is Going To Hurt More Than It Helps (Toronto Real Estate Market Update)

    Team Sessa Real Estate

    40 minutes ago

    In this episode we take a look at the current Toronto Real Estate Market specifically the detached home prices and market trends for week ending Sept 18, 2024. We also discuss the issue with these new mortgage rules which don’t address the high price of homes, just allow borrowers to take on more debt for longer.

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

    17 minutes. At 1:45, “my client can now spend more.” Sound lending!

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