This should absolutely terrify you. Looked at in the most cynical light (which is generally how I look at things), the very same people who engineered the housing bubble and then got bailed out in the inevitable subsequent crash are now taking advantage of the rock bottom prices to buy everything and become the world's landlords. Serfdom 2.0.
By nature I am far from a socialist/communist/populist, but Jesus H Christ kids - this is fucked up. Unadulterated gangsterism. Big money, through will, willful stupidity, or just plain stupid greed, facilitated/engineered the housing bubble and bust. Now they're the only ones with money to buy in these places whose admittedly artificial (and I call the economy of a service industry selling to people whose pockets are full only thanks - directly or indirectly - to unsustainable housing valuation runups and the home "equity" cash available therefrom) economies were decimated. Some jackass in the article lauds this as the thing that "puts a floor" under the housing freefall. Bullshit squared. It's price elevation so that whatever legacy ties they have to the old shit sandwich can be cost averaged into a better looking balance sheet, with the kicker that they get the cash flow of being the world's landlord. This is seriously fucked up.
I haven't talked about the markets and housing in years. If you read this blog back then, well, I don't like to blow my own trumpet too much but I was right as shit then.
You can either be built for endurance or built for speed. Sometimes things built for endurance can go fast, sometimes things built for speed can last a long time. The things that are built for one but also excel at the other are generally on EPO, especially if they wear fluorescent yellow cycling costumes. By nature, I'm built for endurance. Rarely, I can go fast. One race I have always loved to try and go fast at is Clarendon. Unfortunately, I am enduring some things that make Clarendon a wildly inappropriate choice for me this year. I'd be a danger to myself and others. So instead I am going to get my endurance freak on at the 12 Hours of Granogue. Despite some unusual stuff that happened and being generally totally unprepared for it, I actually had a ball at the Baker's Dozen doing it 3 person, so of course now I will give racing 12 hours solo a try. Look for me in a Delaware recycling bin sometime soon!
2 comments:
"Financial services companies exist almost entirely for one purpose: the extraction of fees and commissions from the investing public... To transfer as much of your wealth as possible to their ledger books. Furthermore, the industry operates at a level of educational, moral, and ethical imperatives that would be inconceivable in any other industry."
-William Bernstein
Wow. Excellent. Thank you.
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