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THE DAILY DOOM IS BACK!
The Real-Estate Boom Doom and Mega-Mogul Mayhem
Time to get reacquainted. For the rest of this week, I am reintroducing The Daily Doom on Substack as a free publication for the week to all who already signed up. Sometime next week, I anticipate changing it to a paid subscription at $10/mo. I plan to continue to offer the Monday edition for free even for non-subscribers, as well as to create infrequent extra editions when big headlines hit that will also be sent to those who, at least, subscribe for free, just to encourage people to start getting acquainted at some level. That way people coming across this treasure-trove of doom for the first time have something to whet their appetite for more in hope they will eventually say, “I don’t want to miss any of these eye-opening news stories and coffee-cup editorials!” Become a paid subscriber and get it every weekday but holidays in your AM email.
If you signed up on Substack since I parked The Daily Doom in semi-hibernation on my own site a few months ago, this will give you a chance to get used to it coming in your email to see if you want to switch to a paid subscription next week. (I encourage you to switch to a “pledged” subscription below now, if you have not already, just to make that change to paid automatic so you don’t miss anything when it changes over.)
Each edition now contains my own introductory editorial about the headlines I find most interesting for the day. I hope to frequently add some irreverent bipartisan humor (as an equal-opportunity critic of both parties) or creative expressions to those introductions because there is no reason for doom to cause gloom. So, I try to lighten it up a little. Each introductory article will be followed by the morning’s headlines (including some headlines from late in the day before) with the headlines that are related to my introductory editorial highlighted in boldface. You can see an example of how all of that works in this morning’s edition below.
Your feedback in the comments section at the end is welcomed.
—David Haggith
And now, with no further adoom …
As we paraded through the doom boom that has been hitting the headlines this week, today's cavalcade of headlines appears to be in commercial real estate, from apartment complexes to office space, particularly in the biggest places with the priciest spaces, affecting the largest companies on the face of the earth.
Blackstone, a spinoff from BlackRock, is again in the news for its major losses. Having defaulted on a major commercial debt only weeks ago, its automatic braking system (like a Tesla in auto drive) is powering down on the brakes to slow the rapid rate of withdrawals from its REIT in order to save itself from an all-out collision. In a time of bank runs, REITs are facing their own fund runs, and we're not talking fun marathons through a spring park. The braking system has allowed only an amusingly numbered $666-million to slide out of the fund on $4.5-billion worth of withdrawal orders.
Vacancies in major commercial spaces in two of the nation's largest commercial regions -- New York and San Francisco -- have hit record highs, sending prices plunging. Seems no one wants to be in the nation's most liberal cesspools anymore. One big Manhattan tower just sold at a 50% loss. Sales are down a whopping 38%. Apartment sales volume, nationwide, is down 76%. It's a cliff-dive in commercial spaces.
Speaking of Manhattan and mega real-estate MAGA-moguls, the center of commerce and high-rollers in real estate in New York City is almost surprisingly quiet. Trump begged for "protest, protest, protest," yet almost no one showed up in all the days that followed his request, which came with a warning that it would surely get violent. Maybe that is because the whole trial would be a non-event if not for the fact that it has the "Trump" name on it.
We haven't seen the actual charges yet, but they certainly seem "Trumped-up" on DA Bragg's part from what we've heard out of Bragg so far. Seriously? Criminal charges for paying a porn star to keep her mouth shut? Nothing illegal about that at all, not even a misdemeanor. Wrongfully making it a business expense? A case can be made that, if it LEGALLY protects the reputation of the CEO or a pseudonymously named company, it protects the company's image. Not the best case to have to make, but probably doable. Wrongly claiming it as a "legal expense" on his business ledger? Well, it was paid to a lawyer to cover his lawyer's "expenses," so an argument can be made that it is a "legal expense." Like all things Trump, that might be walking the edge of legal argument; but, even if you lose that argument, that still only leaves it a minor misdemeanor that would be a paragraph of back-page news in the NYT, if any news at all, if it didn't have "Trump" writ large across it.
Trump's former capital of commerce might be giving him a legal headache, but these guys are also giving him buckets full of free publicity under the old advertising adage that "all press is good press" or "all news is good news," which was said like a mantra back in the days of "Ad men" on the basis that it all keeps your name current and in the papers so everyone is thinking about you. Trump has always thrived under that old-school publicity philosophy, which he has played adroitly for decades; so, unless today reveals some much more serious charges, he's likely to walk out of the courtroom two years from now as a vindicated martyr with two years of additional endless free publicity in all of the nation's major news outlets, which all remain addicted to him. DA Bragg may have little to brag about, unless it is his wish to go down as Trump's best Democrat publicity agent for providing him a path to martyrdom.
Economica (stocks in bondage, bonds in the stockade, market madness, etc.)
Jamie Dimon says the banking crisis is not over and will cause ‘repercussions for years to come’
JPMorgan Warns Stocks Are in ‘Calm Before the Storm’
ISM Manufacturing Tumbles To Post-COVID Lows, Employment Slumps
Credit Suisse chair pleads with angry shareholders at heavily policed annual meeting
Housing Bubble Bust 2.0 (including commercial & global real estate)
Blackstone Redemption Requests Surge To $4.5 Billion, but Only $666 Million Granted
Office Vacancies Imperil San Francisco – Highest Ever
Manhattan Office Vacancy Also Hits Record As Marquee LA Office Tower Sells At 50% Loss
Manhattan real estate sales plunge 38%, but cash deals hit all-time record
Apartment complex sales volume fell 76% YOY in February
Money Matters (monetary policy, gold, silver, cryptos & currency wars)
Fed's Bullard Admits OPEC Cuts May "Make [Fed's] Job A little More Difficult"
Fed's Making Worst "Policy Mistake In Several Decades", El-Erian Warns
Famished & Enflamed (sanctions, shortages, famines & fires)
China seethes as US chip controls threaten tech ambitions
EU Exits the Heating Season with Bumper Gas Storage!
Surplus of US NatGas Begging for Supply Cuts
Overinflated (too much money chasing too few goods)
Morgan Stanley CUTS Oil Price Forecast After OPEC+ Decision
War, Cyberattacks, Civil Conflicts & Unrest
Investigators Believe Yacht Was Not Only Vessel Involved In Nord Stream Attack
Chinese Spy Balloon Did Gain Intel On US Military Sites, and Transmitted To Beijing In Real Time
EU lashes out at China for support of Russia in Ukraine war
US Army deploys first hypersonic weapon capability
The U.S. Military’s Great Relearning
Politics & Social Decay
Hours from arraignment, Trump fails to get the protests he wanted
Trump Attorney Announces Plans To File Motions To Dismiss, Alleging Prosecutorial Misconduct
The “Extraordinary Measures” that the Government Uses in the Debt-Ceiling Farce to Delay a Default
Winds of Change (extreme weather, climate change & green energy)
CA snowpack among deepest ever
Will EVs Really Crush All Oil and Gas Demand?
New Longer-Lasting, Enviro-Safe Ceramic Battery Could Replace Lithium-Ion Batteries
Hydrogen Pipeline System Is Starting To Take Shape In Europe
A Pox Upon Us (the plagues & pandemic policing of the 2020’s)
Dr. Peter McCullough: 3 Things You Need to Know About Treating Spike & Post-COVID Syndrome
Off-the-Beat or Just Plain Offbeat News
Yet Another Derailment – This Time a Train Full of Beer in Montana River (Nearby small town will be delighted this time, fish, too.)
AI will be weirder than we can imagine
Creative Collapse (cartoons, humor & other creative expressions)
Russell Brand: Is Donald Trump’s Inditement and Arraignment a Distraction?
THE DAILY DOOM IS BACK!
It's so good to have so much doom! And it was a great video game in its day. Thanks for bringing back the Daily Doom. Now we have good things to share when we need to doomsplain.