CRE - Commercial Real Estate Market

60 Spear St. San Francisco, California

Story on Zerohedge:

Downtown San Fran Office Tower Sells At 66% Off As CRE Crisis Claims Another Victim

If you want to get into the commercial real estate market now might be the time. Unless this is just a waypoint on the way to the bottom.

From three years ago, here's one of those rare occasions when I can say I told you so.

Archbishop Viganeò versus The Empire of Lies

Archbishop Viganeò

I'm not a big fan of the Catholic Church, but Archbishop Viganeò hits it out of the park with this long, explicit, detailed take down of the morons in charge:

 Abp. Viganò: Globalists have fomented war in Ukraine to establish the tyranny of the New World Order

Via JMSmith

Where is the Ambassador Bridge?

Ambassador Bridge

Apparently Google doesn't know either, witness the big red question mark plopped right on top of it.  Actually, I think red question mark just means Google doesn't know whether the bridge is open and the big pink circle indicates the area where traffic is impacted. The Detroit News reports that the bridge reopened over a week ago. In case you missed it, the bridge was blocked by the Canadian truckers protesting that idiot Trudeau's draconian rules.

Ambassador Bridge

Got started on this by a link on FlightAware to a story about how air freighters are picking up the slack by delivering auto parts to automobile manufacturers. Well, that's kind of expected. Once a giant factory gets geared up for production they aren't going to want to stop because they run out of widgets.

Airborne Virus Basics

Artist's Concept of a Viruses Contained in Water Droplets
Cute picture, but it is very inaccurate. Water droplets are actually about a zillion times bigger than a virus particle. The link goes to a cute article that doesn't really clarify anything.

The Scratching Post has a post about airborne viruses, which prompted me to comment, and since I made so much sense I thought I better post it here as well. 

I think the idea about the masks is that virions often travel in water droplets, water droplets that are expelled when you talk or blow your nose or maybe even breath. So while a mask won't stop a free floating virion, it will stop a water droplet. Anyway, I think that's the theory.

The other rumor I've heard is that these virions won't survive in places with a temperature different than human body temperature for very long, which is why you don't really need to worry about free floating virions. Should any escape from you, by the time they travel 6 feet in 72 degree air, they will have expired.

But all that's irrelevant. The masks are stupid and the lockdowns are ridiculous and awful. If Congress wanted to give Pfizer a zillion dollars, they should have just given it to them and not bothered the rest of us with this panic driven stupidity.

 

COVID Funnies

 

If Congress wanted to give Pfizer a zillion dollars, why didn't they just give them the money? Why did they have to run us all through this rigamarole? Okay, I'll tell you, because the people in Congress are prime examples of the pack animal mentality and they are easily panicked. Frigging morons is what they are.

United States Death Rates

The COVID-19 pandemic has been going on for a while and now we have some real numbers that show just how bad it has been. Looking at the graph we can see that the death rate has been increasing, but it is still not as high as it was in the 1950s and 1960s.

The lowest rate in this period of time was 8.124 deaths per one thousand people in 2008. The highest rate was 9.649 in 1950, the first year in this record.

A difference of one or two deaths in a group of a thousand people does not seem to be much, so how do we get hundreds of thousands of COVID deaths? Simply multiply take that one or two and multiply by 330,000 and all of sudden you've got hundreds of thousands. (You get 330,000 by taking the population of the United States (331,893,745) and divide it by 1,000.)

While we may have found some ways to help people live longer and so decreased the death rate over the last 50 years, we may also have created a more fragile elderly population who are more susceptible to new agents of destruction.

Data from Macrotrends

Ivermectin

Plaque Commemorating the Discovery of Ivermectin

Plaque text:

The synthesis and development of ivermectin by Merck in the 1970s and 1980s provided a breakthrough treatment against infectious diseases transmitted by parasites. This discovery resulted from an international collaboration that screened hundreds of natural products to identify a promising lead compound. Merck scientists synthesized thousands of analogs of this lead and tested them. The result, ivermectin, offered a highly effective treatment for several parasitic diseases affecting a variety of animals. Following its approval for human use in 1987, Merck established a worldwide program to donate ivermectin as Mectizan® to treat onchocerciasis (river blindness), greatly reducing the prevalence of this debilitating disease. In 2015, Merck scientist William Campbell shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his role in developing ivermectin.

The development of this drug could be a fascinating story, but unless someone investigates and writes a book we'll probably never hear just how big a project it was. Drug companies are notoriously inscrutable.

I vaguely remember hearing about river blindness. It's one of those things that makes Africa less than attractive. 

There's been a great deal of noise about this drug circulating on the Internet. I have no opinion, though it doesn't seem like a drug developed to fight parasites would be a good choice to combat a viral infection (like COVID-19). Biology is complex, so it might work. On the other hand, biology is complex, so it might kill you. Wikipedia doesn't advise using it:

During the COVID-19 pandemic, misinformation has been widely spread claiming that ivermectin is beneficial for treating and preventing COVID-19. Such claims are not backed by credible scientific evidence. Research into its use is ongoing, and multiple major health organizations, including the Food and Drug Administration, U.S. Centers for Disease Control, the European Medicines Agency, and the World Health Organization have stated that ivermectin is not authorized or approved to treat COVID-19.

Note that they don't say that it doesn't work, they just say the-powers-that-be have not given anyone permission to use it.

Via Dad's Deadpool Blog

Fauk Fauci

 

Jim Jones (left) Anthony Fauci (right)

alt fin next level has a post up about the damage COVID-19 policies are doing to people, civilization and society world wide:

Fauci’s Policies Bringing On Pandemics of Depression, Suicide, Child Abuse, Drug Overdose, and Non-Covid Mortality

COVID-19 might be killing people, but we have just started to see the damage being done to society as a whole. Suck it up cupcake, nobody gets out of here alive.

Cockroaches

Goldstein Versus Big Brother*

Yard Sale of the Mind has a post up about just how easily people can be induced to be horrible. It's a little disturbing. His post probably isn't going to help because hardly anyone reads anything anymore, but you have to keep trying. Not sure what else I can do. I don't much care for arguing with idiots, or with anybody for that matter. Money seems to be the only language that has any persuasive power. The pharmaceutical companies are raking in zillions of dollars for producing vaccines that are supposed to combat the COVID-19 virus, and you can bet they have a propaganda budget the size of Mt. Everest to ensure that the gravy train keeps running. 

* Emmanuel Goldstein is a fictional character in George Orwell's 1949 dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. He is the principal enemy of the state according to the Party of the totalitarian Oceania. Wikipedia

Who is that masked man?

Gas Mask

I think the corona virus scare is overblown. I might be wrong. We might get a million deaths next year from some new strain, but I doubt it. I don't think we are even going to see a blip on the population graph. On the other hand, the side effects are going to fuck us over but good.

The lockdowns are having an adverse effect on the economy. That and the psychological effects of people being isolated, or even worse, locked up with their 'loved ones', is killing more people than the virus could ever hope to kill. But that doesn't matter, but because we are not operating in the real world, we are operating in a dream world where everyone is wonderful and we all have the same set of pristine values and nobody hates anybody. The parameters of this dream world are all that you can get a majority to agree on, and this agreement is going to have us marching straight off the cliff that is getting closer every day.

People are resilient, so we should be able to adjust to this 'new normal' of never going anywhere and never seeing anybody.  We should be able to find some way to hobble along, but I am afraid of what it's going to look like. 

Homeless camps have started showing up in Hillsboro. We're 30 minutes by car from downtown Portland.

Will the Biden Presidency implode? Given our history, he or his cohorts will blunder along till the next election. Will anything change with the next election? I doubt it, the President is, after all, simply the figurehead on our ship of state, a ship that has considerable momentum. Changing the President isn't going to change our course. No, I suspect things will deteriorate until we have 50% unemployment. Of course, those will be the official numbers. Most of those people will have joined up with criminal gangs who are going to be engaged in all the traditional forms of crime and probably some new ones that haven't been invented yet. At some point some demagogue will capture people's attention and we'll get an entirely new form governmental bullshit. Let's just hope it doesn't include death camps.

Now might be a good time to reread The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson.

India April Fools

Prime Minister Modi comes across a singing bowl….[PT]

According to this story India’s Experiments with COVID-19 by Jayant Bhandari, India is a freaking disaster. The story sounds legit, but unfortunately it is dated April 1st, so I dunno. Of course, large parts of India are a disaster even during the best of times, so it's a little hard to tell if the situation has really gotten that much worse. I tried to post a comment, but I couldn't.

Via ZeroHedge

The Death of Common Sense

Mental Lightning

The death of Common Sense begins with the words initiated by the morass of Bureaucracy couched in safety and security. Indeed, and according to past President Ronald Reagan, the most frightening words to hear in the English language are para ‘We’re here from the government and we’re here to help you!’ The underpinnings of such beginnings appear benign and with benign neglect the malignancy storms through, metastasizing arboreally through the veins of the entire system. The world is seeing such a death these days. -  CDC vs. Common Sense

The authors go on at length about the government's ham handed, foolish, clumsy, inept handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Just in case you have any doubts about where I stand on this subject, let me just summarize: I firmly believe this COVID-19 pandemic is unadulterated, pure bullshit and government's actions have been directed by fools and idiots. Do not bother trying to change my mind, I will simply classify you as another idiot.

New Career Opportunities

Colorful protestor at US Capital Building on January 6

I've tried to avoid reading about the protests at the US Capital earlier this week, but some of the blather gets through anyway. This guy was the cream of the crop. What a fine get-up! Reminds me of the way some sports fans bedeck themselves for important games. That, and a post by Brian Micklethwait got me to ruminating.

So I'm mulling over all this noise, trying to make some sense of it, and I think what's going on is we are seeing the emergence of a new occupation: a career protestor. Since the lockdowns started earlier this year, we have a bunch of people out of work, and we have a bunch of sports fans frustrated by the lack of events. Some of these people very much enjoy being in large crowds, all pumped up with emotion. Since there are no sporting events to attend, they look around for another big crowd they can join, and oh, look, there's a protest going on. Let's go down and join the protest! The purpose of the protest is irrelevant. All that matters is that there is a big crowd all pumped up for some cause. They go to the protest and they enjoy it so much that they look around for more protests and they find one scheduled in another town, so they drive or fly to the next city and join that protest, and hey now, it's turned into a riot. Great! Let's break some windows!

Next thing you know they're stealing TV's and selling them. Hey, this is working out pretty well, we get to go a big party, raise a little hell and make some money. This is a lot better than sitting at home going broke and arguing with the wife.

Big crowds, pumped up with emotion, are the way we used to fight wars, and we fought wars like that for tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of years. We did it for so long that it has become part of our DNA. Not everyone has the full-blown warrior complex, but a sizable proportion of the population does. Sporting events provide an outlet for these impulses. Canceling those events does not cancel the impulse and those impulses are going to find a way to express themselves.

You can argue that protestors who step over the line and start rioting are bad people, and maybe they are, but you can't argue with emotion and emotion is the driving force in these protests / riots.

Did the people who mandated the lockdowns consider the implications? I mean, did they foresee that the lockdowns would lead to widespread protests and riots? I think that would be giving them too much credit. I think they were operating in their political bubble and had no idea what kind of havoc they were unleashing. That does not mean there are not plenty of people taking advantage of the situation, though I am not sure what kind of advantage it could give you. Other than a free TV.

Houses

This graph shows the total active listings over the past three calendar years in the greater Portland, Oregon metropolitan area. RMLS

The number of houses for sale in Portland is the lowest it's been in 30 years (there is only about one month's inventory of houses for sale, not six months worth like you would have in 'normal' times). Not suprisingly, prices keep going up. The median price is now $457,000. The article on Oregon Live rambles on for a while but at the end they finally get around to talking about what factors might be contributing to this situation:

Compounding shortages in homes for sale is a growing population, owners unwilling to sell during the coronavirus pandemic and September wildfires that destroyed more than 4,000 Oregon dwellings.

The biggest factor of not selling, according to national real estate database analysis, is concern of not finding another home.

Many home shoppers have widened their search and are moving out of metro areas.

Interest in suburban living, with homes on larger lots, has been growing for a few years, say real estate professionals, but the coronavirus amplified the desire for more square footage as well as a relaxing backyard to replace weekend getaways.

“The suburbs have clearly benefited this year from urban flight and the general implications from the pandemic related to work-from-home opportunities,” says Jim Arnal of Living Room Realty. - Janet Eastman

No mention of rental properties, but maybe those who've become unemployed because of the COVID-19 lockdown weren't renting houses.

Via Keller Williams Real Estate 

The Lockdowns are Bullshit

Catastrophe

Here's a couple of articles to read if you have any doubt:

• Epidemiologist Says Influenza Cases Are Being Counted as COVID-19 (short)
• Catastrophe Is All Around Us (longer)

I was going to say that the people in charge must be incredibly stupid, but that's not quite right. It's their people skills that got them elected. Logical thinking is not necessary, the people in charge are sadly lacking in that department and that's why we are headed for disaster.

From watching far too many crime shows, I know that any time you have a puzzling crime, the thing to do is to follow the money. Commercial real estate has been the king of the hill for a long time. Could it be that our new crop of West Coast billionaires organized this lockdown panic to destroy the commercial real estate market? Most all retail businesses and landlords are going to be destroyed. Those guys who own stock are going to see the value of their holdings go up just because of inflation due to the trillions of dollars being pulled out of thin air and dumped in the economy. When the real estate market crashes, they will be able to buy Manhattan for pennies on the dollar.

Yes, it's a far fetched conspiracy theory, but it's the only explanation I can come up with that makes any sense. Well, this or pervasive stupidity.

Why aren't the commercial landlords putting up a bigger fight?

Airplane of the Day

Virgin Australia Airbus A300

The sky makes this picture, but the caption got my attention:

VAs widebody fleet in storage at Brisbane, now relocated to Toowoomba Wellcamp awaiting hand back to leasors. Another COVID tragedy as all VA widebody services have ceased.

Toowoomba Wellcamp is about 75 miles west of Brisbane. Google's satellite view doesn't show any airplanes parked there. The BBC has some photos of airliners parked in Australia.

Then there was an inflammatory article I came across the other day that claimed 300 million people are going to die of famine in 2021, all due to the COVID-19 lockdowns. I didn't pursue it because (1) 'OMG we're all gonna die' isn't very helpful,  and (2) zillions of people die of famine every year anyway. Still, it makes me a little nervous.

Counterpart

Counterpart Season 1 Trailer | Rotten Tomatoes TV
Rotten Tomatoes TV
We started watching this series the other night based on Roberta's recommendation. It's set in Berlin, which is a good start as Babylon Berlin was set there, and Berlin is is Germany, which won WW2 in the The Man in the High Castle. Both of those shows were great, so we'll give it a shot.

It is pretty great. The best part is the actor J. K. Simmons. He plays two characters, one from this world and one from the alternate world, a world almost identical to this one but just slightly different. In this world he is a mild mannered, inoffensive office drone. In the other world he is a man-to-be-dealt-with. The difference is striking, all the more so because the differences are so subtle. I think it must be because of the way he carries himself and the way he moves. It is just phenomenal.

One aspect of the show involves a flu pandemic that killed five hundred million people in the other world. Naturally, people on that side of the divide are very conscientious about preventing infection. It looks a lot like the USA does now with everyone wearing masks.

The atmosphere on the other side looks a lot like East Berlin during the Cold War: big guys in heavy coats and soldiers with machine guns everywhere you go. I can kind of understand it in both cases. During WW2, Russia suffered horrific losses and when they finally defeated the Germans they were not going to let that happen again, hence their iron rule. Likewise, the other world has been devastated by disease and they are taking all possible precautions to prevent it happening again.

Update August 2022 replaced missing video

Update March 2023 replaced missing video

Restaurant Biz

Fly Fishing for juvenile Tarpon

A young man I know got started in the restaurant business several years ago as a dishwasher. He advanced rapidly until he was the head chef at one of the premier restaurants in Portland. (Didn't know such a thing was possible. Must be a talented guy.) His wife was working as a sommelier. Things were going great, and then COVID-19 hit and they both got laid off.  They tried starting up a catering business doing lunches for wineries, but it wasn't enough, so they have packed their bags are going to Campeche, Mexico, to cook at a fly-fishing camp.

Juvenile Tarpon seem be the hot fish in this area. I've heard of Tarpon before, but it's been a very long time. Possibly because they are not popular as food.

A Biggish Picture

 

In boom times, kids fly the coop sooner. In lean times, they hang around longer. I was in my 20's during the 1970's and I was mostly on my own. My folks and younger brothers were on the farm up in Ohio and I was getting along down in Texas. Now my daughter and son-in-law are living with us. Before they moved in I was thinking our house was too big, my wife and I were only using two or three rooms, but now with four adults living here we still have enough room that we aren't stepping on each other.

Via Tyler Durden on ZeroHedge

Fight Club was the bestest movie.

City Camping

 

PMG PHOTO: JAIME VALDEZ - Tents pitched in a parking lot at Westside Commons, formerly know as the Washington County Fair Complex, where the county has opened a camping facility for unhoused people to reduce the risk of COVID-19 spreading in unofficial camps.

Hillsboro now has an official campground for homeless, er, unhoused, people. Seems like camping in a parking lot would be uncomfortably hot, but what do I know? The story in the HillsboroNewsTimes mentions COVID-19 ten times, like it is somehow more important than having a place to sleep, but what do I know? Not very much apparently.

Previous post on the subject.