I guess Cabrini Green failed because it didn’t have a cafe.
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I think it is merely a pigment of someone’s invagination.
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“… apologized to the transgender community for using the word “cervix” instead of "front hole.”
Wow! Biology really has changed since I was a lad. Back in those days, when one saw a pretty lady in a bikini walking along a beach, her navel was at her front.
Tolkien somewhere wrote about one of the marks of a degenerate society being that language became diminished and crude. If Far Lefties want to rename parts of the body, don’t they have enough creativity to come up with names that are not just plain silly as well as inaccurate?
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From SaaS to CaaS (Cartel as a Service):
Shelley Schmidig, a Modesto renter who represents the renters who paid allegedly artificially high rates, accuses RealPage of “cartelization,” stating that “since approximately 2016, this cartel has substantially increased rents (over and beyond what the fair market would support) and inflated profits for the apartment owners while positioning RealPage as the hub of the apartment leasing industry, an indispensable and necessary player in one of the largest industries in the country.”
The YieldStar software allegedly gathered data from landlords and recommended price adjustments based on that input, rather than responding to supply and demand.
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The question is did vacancy rates go up?
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Why does this matter? What does it change? Serious question.
Semiconductor executives had gone to jail for things like this:
https://www.justice.gov/archive/atr/public/press_releases/2004/206631.htm
https://www.justice.gov/archive/atr/public/press_releases/2006/218462.htm
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If vacancy rate is high or goes up then we would expect rents to come down
Regarding Real Page software, landlords ultimately make the decision to set prices for renters. In my experience the rental market is driven by the floor: how many cheaper options are available.
Most landlords want tenants to stay at least 2 years. It’s too expensive to replace a tenant every 13 months regardless of what your pricing algorithm recommends
My perspective is from a small business landlord. Large property managers have different incentives: they can usually hold out for higher rents longer but they can’t wait forever.
Cortland, a management company based in Atlanta, was raided by FBI not Real Page software.
It’s almost impossible for landlords in the same neighborhood to collude because they are competing with each other. I guess one way is if every apartment unit or building was managed by the same company in the same neighborhood. Even zip code is too broad because of income diversity in the same zip
There is no reason for DOJ or any federal agency to investigate. This is local domain.
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Per the article: “Since 2016, rents in the city have grown by 80%— and higher vacancy rates have not driven prices down.”
Of course, the lady writing the article (presumably college educated) did not quantify what was meant by “higher vacancy rates”.
Also, she failed to mention other factors which might be in play – such as government restrictions on building/increasing supply of rental units, or government/Big Law obstacles to getting rid of problem/deadbeat tenants which might bias landlords towards preferring more reliable renters with higher incomes, even if that means living with the loss from having some unrented apartments.
Add to that, the corporate bureaucracy factor: the property manager who uses his discretion and negotiates a rent below what the software recommends may find himself jobless – and probably accused by Big Law of racism or ageism or some such. There are many actors seeking rents in an economy, not just landlords.
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https://thezman.com/wordpress/?p=32167
End of petrodollar with Saudi Arabia
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The reason for the lack of coverage of this historic event is two-fold. One is the mass media is now populated by zombies with no agency of their own, so until the regime hands them copy, they have nothing to say. The other is the financial world has no idea where this is going.
I have to wonder if the average US citizen would understand or care. We are pretty dumbed down. To the point where people actually think “the news” is news.
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This is a significant development that no one is talking about
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It’s (i.e. bad for dollar holders in the extreme) significance may be the very reason no one is talking about it.
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The author of the zman post which Citizen Bitcoin linked above sees the Saudi decision as bad for the US, but thinks the effects will be slow in coming. Time will tell.
He has this wonderful synopsis of the international situation in a world in which the financialized US (and the West) have deliberately de-industrialized:
"… What we are seeing is the slow decline of the American financial order. The countries that make things, fix things, dig things from the ground and invent things are starting to see that they do not need the countries that merely count things. This is especially true when the people doing the counting have a history of stealing from their customers.
What comes next is the slow decline in the demand for dollars and euros, which will make inflation a feature of Western economies. …"
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Europe and USA have tried to punish Russia financially and economically with little success.
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The petrodollar system originated from a secret agreement between the United States and Saudi Arabia in the early 1970s, following the end of the Bretton Woods system and the US dollar’s decoupling from the gold standard.[1][2]
In 1973, President Nixon’s Secretary of State Henry Kissinger negotiated a deal with Saudi Arabia whereby the US would provide military aid and protection to the Saudi regime in exchange for an agreement that all oil exports from Saudi Arabia and OPEC nations would be priced and traded exclusively in US dollars.[1][2] This agreement, formalized in 1974-1975, gave birth to the “petrodollar” system.
The key points of the petrodollar deal were:
- OPEC oil would be priced and traded only in US dollars[1][2]
- Saudi Arabia would invest its surplus oil revenues in US Treasury bonds and securities[2]
- The US would provide military protection and aid to Saudi Arabia[1][2]
This system created an immense global demand for US dollars to purchase oil, thereby underpinning the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency.[1][2] It also allowed the US to run consistent trade deficits by recycling petrodollars back into the US economy through Saudi investment in US debt securities.[2]
So in essence, the 1973-1975 petrodollar agreement between the US and Saudi Arabia, brokered by Kissinger, marked the birth of the modern petrodollar system that persists to this day.[1][2]
Sources
[1] Petrodollar - Meaning, System, Agreement, End, Collapse https://www.wallstreetmojo.com/petrodollar/
[2] Birth of petrodollar - Great power relations Birth of petrodollar - Great power relations
[3] Petrocurrency - Wikipedia Petrocurrency - Wikipedia
[4] What is the petrodollar? Benefits and drawbacks | TonyRobbins What is the petrodollar? Benefits and drawbacks | TonyRobbins
[5] Petrodollars: Definition, History, Uses - Investopedia Petrodollars: Definition, History, Uses
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The end of the petro-dollar agreement with Saudi Arabia is one less reason to be entangled in the Middle East.
USA is one of the few countries that can be energy independent and self sufficient but we choose not to be.
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