If it gets so bad that I need to have gold and silver, then I’m sure I’ll be glad that I actually invested in lead.
![coolgleam :coolgleamA:](./images/smilies/coolgleamA.gif)
Moderators: carlson1, Charles L. Cotton
If it gets so bad that I need to have gold and silver, then I’m sure I’ll be glad that I actually invested in lead.
A leaked document by Business Insider reveals that Amazon is trying to save $1.3 billion over the next three to five years. A person familiar with the new strategy said the company plans to "let certain leases naturally expire, stop the use of some office floors, and negotiate early lease terminations for some buildings."
Amazon is one of many companies that have been shrinking its corporate footprint. Many other big tech firms have been slashing square footage as office space floods the market, pressuring tower values lower and leaving owners with a difficult decision to either refinance (if they can) or default.
This is a bit deeper analysis:There are more dormant office towers in the United States than at any point since 1979, according to a new report from Moody's Analytics, which began tracking office leasing vacancies that year.
There’s no great solution. Most cities are floating quixotic proposals to turn empty offices into apartments to “fix” the crisis, but this is often too expensive to be practical and requires navigating lots of bureaucratic red tape, like changes to zoning laws.
office loan delinquencies were up a shocking four times compared to the previous year. In under two years, commercial real estate loans totaling $1.5 trillion are due to expire, portending disaster for the economy when the bill comes due and office owners can’t pay it. According to data from the St. Louis Fed, delinquency rates on commercial real estate loans have already ticked above their Covid peak:
No worries, they will just print more.So how did the Fed lose so much money?
Some of it comes from their paying Wall Street to park money at the Fed, which it does to hide inflation and because it likes handing money to Wall Street.
But the bulk of the Fed’s losses are because they printed trillions to finance Covid lockdowns, and used those trillions to buy bonds — mainly government debt. Then when they panic-hiked rates to try and choke off inflation, bond prices collapsed.
Meaning the Fed’s pile of $9 trillion worth of bonds started losing money hand over fist. In fact, estimates of unrealized losses — meaning money the Fed has lost but hasn’t yet fessed up to — could be well over a trillion dollars at this point.