There are compelling points on both sides of this...

In order for Black Rock to do this, there has to be willing sellers. If you prevent it from occuring, you are disenfranchising current homeowners.

Billionaires are doing this with farmland too.

I would think there can be antitrust legislation that could deal with this.

I would agree if not for the fact that we know that what they are doing is creating a short term bubble where they can control costs over their portfolio to artificially inflate it (bubble) and then when they eventually sell and pull out of the market and that bubble bursts, they will get government bailouts to socialize any losses while home owners AGAIN are left with wave of home forfeitures due to equity erosions an inability to finance.


I am absolutely convinced the lessons learned by these groups post 2008/9 is that on top of gov'ts lack of hesitation to jump in and save them from losses, they got a mostly unexpected huge bonus.

That bonus was the absolute forced wave of foreclosures leaving very few buyers in the market by contrast, resulting in being able to buy mass amounts of homes massively below market value simple due to lack of demand.

They look at this as a short term cost to gain a long term win, as eventual buying comes back and they mark up their properties and make huge profits.

If they did not realize that the first time I guarantee you they are banking on this, this time seeing it as a win/win. If the market only goes up they win. If it crashes, they win.

Steve Mnuchins firm did just this making massive profits and grossly the US gov't provided them downside risk guarantees to do so. Meaning if they lost money on the homes and mortgages they bought the gov't was protecting their losses.

The gov't justified this saying 'liquidity' was necessary so these properties could sell and turn over. But fact is if the gov't is going to de-risk the buying of these mortgages and properties for Mnuchin, they could instead just guarantee the mortgages and properties with the small local banks who held the mortgage to keep the people in their homes.

With a guarantee those local banks can easily raise extra liquidity.

The right really hates and opposes cancel culture, you guys:



lololol jk who could have possibly guessed that all their whining about it was totally insincere

1 This is fundamentally different from the housing crisis. What's going on here is the American consumers are getting shut out of the market. Where the housing crisis was focused on banks collecting the fees and interest rates from mortgages and mortgage securities, while free rolling subprime risk. In this circumstance it is about collecting the rent. The only way this investment fails is if there's massive unemployment and homelessness (massive increase in people who can't afford rent), to which the US government's never going to let happen, there will just print money to stabilize any sort of depression. The institutions aren't betting on property value or reselling mortgages, they're just going to collect rent for eternity. The value of these investments isn't tied to the property value but rather the rent they can collect. From a risk perspective, it is unlikely these investments will fail, and if they do you're going to have an institutional investors buy the portfolios for the rental income.

The problem these type of investments presents is, these homes being put in these portfolios will never enter the market to be purchased, or sold, or if they are, it's just going to go to another institutional investor who wants income. It reduces the supply of available homes that are available for purchase or to be sold to American consumers.

I don't disagree with the issues you see, I just think you are missing the one I am seeing.


Consider the parallel of the Meme Stocks. Limited buyers buying up a large percent of the stock in the market (the liquid assets) thus restricting supply and thus forcing prices way up as a result.

You can argue it is good for those selling into that wave and getting higher than market prices, but at some point these people buying and driving the price up and up and up realize there are now no longer any buyers (or a diminishing buying pool) and they all start to jettison their holdings trying to get out.

This jettison causes the bubble to burst and for home values to not only fall to normal but well below normal.

So while you get some shorter term players who make money the overall longs lose and can lose big if the devaluation forces them to sell due to mortgages 'below water'.

That then creates the next opportunity for the institutional buyer who sees things 'on sale' as a result of the cash when they can AGAIN buy but this time with a more long term view.

One of the biggest changes in Middle Class wealthy accrual over the last few decades was the equity value captured in Home asset growth. The 2008/9 crisis was like a tsunami blowing through that stripped a massive amount of that equity from the MC and gave it to the elite. They found their way to unlock and capture that pooled wealth.

This too can lead to that same effect. So while not structurally the same it can have the same outcome. Call it setting up round 2 of the great Middle Class home Asset wealth cull.

They are doing the short term squeeze on the front end, knowing they have the even bigger upside Cull on the back side, in what for society will be a failure and collapse and "tragedy" but them will be another boon.

That only holds true if the houses these hedge funds are buying up end up putting these houses back on the market, which I don't foresee happening. These things are just massively scaled REITs. If they have to bail they're going to sell the REIT, rather than piecemeal the properties. The impact of property values for the consumer is good, due to decreasing supply. I don't think there's a bubble here, but rather monopolization due to rent seeking behavior.

Again the the mortgage crisis was inflated by subprime lending, or artificial demand or demand that shouldn't have been there that inflated property values.

That is not accurate.

Sure flooding them back into the market can cause a bubble burst/crash but the other way is by holding tight and driving prices up artificially.

Artificially higher markets make it such that a smaller percent of the population can ALSO be buyers, and within that smaller percent many will have less of an equity cushion to rely on.

It is that 'equity cushion' that sustains many through ups and downs.

So if the funds get their fill of homes and hold tight and the buyers outside that have shrunk, a correction can happen for the remaining homes in the market who need to appeal to buyers OUTSIDE the the group who could afford to buy at the prior higher prices.

Thus you get price movement down. A correction. That correction can erode the equity of those who bought 'thin' prior putting their mortgages 'under water' and they start losing their homes thus compounding the already correcting market, into a downward spiral.

Legislating wrongthink and banning it from schools while whining about the left being a threat to free speech. Imagine still being a conservative in 2021 lololol

I love the "distort historical events" part.

He then laughed with his cabinet about it

Added for additional context:



And



Whole thread is worth a read.

My ancestors fought in the War of Northern Aggression to prevent this!.

Framing the shifting an offense from a felony to a misdemeanor as "decriminalization" is just the worst kind of dishonesty.

I think that's a stretch. Traffic tickets are misdemeanors. That's essentially what most low value shoplifting cases end up being. Except what's going on in San Francisco is they turned high value shoplifting cases into a traffic ticket, essentially.

With that said, I don't think you should be in jail for shoplifting. Burglary and robbery on the other hand...

Maybe it's different where you live but one can definitely get jail time here in Pennsylvania for misdemeanos.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...anors-n1271244

Sad outcome.

Cliffs:

- young man attempts world record distance motorcycle jump
- falls short hitting cliff face type area of landing zone
- dies




I am baffled by the lack of any foresight or risk mitigation put in to the landing zone for a stunt like this.

The demarcation point for where the record is basically at the point where success means World Record but failure means really bad accident.

If instead the front face of the demarcation point was extended out and flat, and the record setting point was any landing at the beginning of the down slope, failing to reach the Record setting point would be a lot less risky.

Imagine this picture is his landing area after taking off on another ramp to the right of it.




The grey zone is the failure zone where IF he falls short provides a much safer landing area then hitting the cliff face they have in that video.

Landing anywhere beyond the grey zone equals a new world record.

Same goal pursued (world record distance jump) but in this way the risk is massively reduced.

Yes much like the resultant Homeland Security department was expanded and abused post its creation, I absolutely expect these attempts to more broadly define and punish 'views' as criminal will result in some very abusive enforcement of the law in the future.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...ister-n1271376

Beyond cruel. Death penalty.