They were not fabricated although it may have been challenging to secure a conviction and in any event Ross was going to be sentenced to many decades in prison.
Do you have a reference which shows they weren't fabricated or is this just your opinion? Because I feel if we know for sure they weren't fabricated they'd have at least proceeded to trial with it. Particularly considering they claimed they posed as hit-men to entrap him, which would be solid evidence. But later they dropped that claim entirely.
Part of my parents neighborhood burned down in a similar (but much smaller) firestorm a number of years ago. Similar situation to the Palisades fire, where the homes were destroyed but the landscaping mostly survived. Most of the homes were built in the 70s, and almost all of those burned down. One block in the middle of the development was built in the mid-2000’s, and none of these homes were lost.
The problem is that this only works if your spouse used an apple application to tell you this information. If she used messenger/IG chat/whatsapp or gmail or her work email there’s no way for Siri to know about it.
In context of a thread about Finland? Anyway, it is true that interbank lending is a primary method of controlling interest rates and this is not limited to the US. The commenter who mentioned it above, probably was talking about the Fed specifically maybe just because that's what they are familiar with.
Was he really that wrong? Isn't a bond just another debt instrument? It's not obvious to me, that there is any fundamental difference between the operations that both comments describe.
While the effects may be similar, they are fundamentally different mechanisms.
Also, this statement is incorrect:
> Simplified: the central bank decide on an interest rate that they want to see. By itself that decision doesn't do anything.
The Fed does in fact set interest rates and that decision directly impacts rates all down the line to mortgages and local loans. Intervening in the bond market is another tool that the Fed can use.
A central bank doesn't directly set interest rates for your mortgage.
It can set rates at which it will lend to other banks, which in turn influences the rates banks will offer to mortgage borrowers, but this isn't necessarily so, see for example 2008.
Of course there are more contracts directly tied to the central bank rates, but thats just formalising the thing thats supposed to happen anyway.
Yes. Btw, I'm not sure how many contracts are directly tied to whatever rate the central bank announces these days? It used to be more common to tie contracts to eg LIBOR, which is or was a reported interbank lending rate, not a decreed one.
Gotta keep the Ponzi scheme of the stock market inflated. Without people pouring their earnings into it in the form of 401ks, the record highs can’t be guaranteed - whole thing will collapse.
Yes - the housing crisis is a chicken and egg problem. How do we get people to create opportunities in places where there are few workers? How do we get workers to move into places where there are few opportunities? I am not educated on this, and it's not a problem intrinsic to modernity, so how has this problem been solved historically? Does it really just boil down to "it happened slowly"?
As far as I know, historically it wasn't fixed. People didn't live just anywhere they wanted, they lived where there were exploitable resources, be it farmland, mines, or what have you. If the resources dried up the city simply ceased to be. The idea of creating opportunities where people live can only exist within tertiary and quaternary economies, possibly in secondary. Until about two or three hundred years ago nearly all economy was primary, with a small secondary sector right next to where the resources were extracted (because logistics also wasn't as advanced as what we have today; it didn't make sense to move raw materials very far).
Definitely. And if I had to take a guess, yes, it happens slowly. I guess we could use Detroit perhaps as an example. Booming, industry sorta crumbled there, made it no longer desirable. Because of that, Detroit for a city has become cheap and to my understanding it is now experiencing a boom? So it maybe it just takes awhile because a correction needs to take place to make it cheap enough for people to move back in? Then I would guess there is also a, enough time needs to pass for a particular perception to fade.
There are towns in rural Italy where you can buy a house for €1 if you promise the fix it up and live there. Still there are few takers. It’s a tough problem to solve.
Italy has a reputation for its slowly moving bureaucratic machine though, so the issue may be more complex than just looking at the price. This offer would be more attractive for me if it didn't potentially come with hidden strings attached (do you need to work with an institution tasked with preserving old buildings? what are the permitting requirements? will it take ages to get approval to do anything?). People in Italy probably know answers to those questions, but as a foreigner slowly thinking about a place in Europe to settle in, those would be things that'd made me think twice about taking up that offer.
the ratio is about the same in New York City proper, and if you include the entire country, the ratio skyrockets to >27 vacant units per homeless person https://www.self.inc/info/empty-homes/
If the ratio is 3:1 in major cities, and 27:1 nationally, wouldn't that logically mean that most of them are not in major cities, per-capita (and perhaps absolutely too, I don't know)? Of course that doesn't necessarily mean they are in areas of "declining population and scarce opportunity", but your premise appears to be that a majority of vacancies in cities would be a counter-example.
The very first sentence of this article is "There may be a massive housing crisis boiling up in the United States mostly centered around the unavailability of homes in the largest metros of the country."
Which, isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Modern residential (and small scale commercial) construction is designed for a 30-50 year useful life. The structure may be worth renovating if the location / design remain relevant, but it’s not like there’s a huge amount of wasted value. A larger waste would be encouraging labor to be under-utilized.
This comment only makes sense if you are assuming a significant majority of these places are "terrible", which is baffling to me, unless you are silently using your personal preferences to define "terrible" in the context of the larger conversation.
the people able to work from home are often incredibly well paid and are eating up real estate in expensive areas
there's no significant work from home initiative at the lower end of the pay scale
if anything wfh has exacerbated the problem, wealthier tech employees are living in desirable cities while people making less and have to go to the office don't have access to local-to-work real estate
Incredibly well paid and eating up real estate in expensive areas?
"How much does a Work From Home make? As of Oct 11, 2024, the average annual pay for a Work From Home in the United States is $61,178 a year. Just in case you need a simple salary calculator, that works out to be approximately $29.41 an hour."
again, believe who you want... but it's a little funny to blindly believe a company incentivized to lie to you more than any other random anecdote
we're on equal footing in terms of evidence (I can build a fake chart based on my own data if you'd be more likely to believe that) and I have less of a financial incentive to lie to you
Do you seriously think that you stating an claim (which doesn't even really make sense) is evidence?
Do you actually not know what evidence is? Evidence is actual information gathered up from where it was created.
Evidence is not you giving an opinion out of frustration because you want other people to agree that 'remote workers are inflating real estate prices'.
again, you're falling for the assumption that proprietary corporate data is fact — the CNBC article you cite also cites zip recruiter and you couldn't audit that data if you wanted to...
I'm doing the exact same thing zip recruiter is and you can't prove otherwise, you are providing me with 0 data that can be independently verified... you can't even look up their methodologies
You made the claims in the first place that "the people able to work from home are often incredibly well paid and are eating up real estate in expensive areas"
so lets see your "independently verified auditable data".
You made a claim without evidence, now you say all the links I gave you are bad and all the data is bad. Somehow not only ziprecruiter is wrong, but flexjobs and zippia are wrong.
These are just more claims without evidence. You saying something doesn't make it true.
I almost admire the confidence to blindly make a claim without any data or evidence and then to claim again without evidence that the actual data is somehow a lie. No explanation on anything, just a claim over and over.
You made the claim. Your claim had no evidence. You made a 'blind claim'.
with made up unverifiable data
Prove it.
you're being tricked
Tricked by data from multiple different sources? Prove it.
you could show me tabulation
Go ahead and show me that.
this is a major lack of media literacy on display
You literally don't understand the difference between information and you stating something you want people to agree with. That's not even just a 'media literacy' problem you're having, it's wishful religious thinking.
I'm always fascinated when someone refuses to even explain why they think what they are saying is true, and not only does actual data and evidence not change their mind, they refuse to believe it, but can't even explain why they don't believe it.
Just admit to yourself that what you are saying is not based on reality, it's just something you want other people to agree with.
That's the trick! no one can because they don't share the data or methodologies
What is your data and methodology?
Ziprecruiter is a site companies post jobs. You don't know where their data comes from?
What about the other links? Why do you ignore them?
What I'm saying is only based on my experience,
What experience?
the appeal to authority fallacy
Posting data from a company that collects that data is not "appeal to authority". You have this completely wrong. Appeal to authority would be someone claiming your boss is right about something they know nothing about because they're your boss.
Key parts of are lack of expertise and a lack of evidence. These two things don't apply.
Seriously try rethinking this all from the ground up. Go and find someone in your life and show them this conversation and see if they think someone linking you wage stats from a jobs site and two other places and you saying "no I don't think so" are the same thing.
Don't forget that you not only claimed remote workers were "incredibly well paid" but also that they are "eating up real estate in expensive areas". Are you ready to walk that back since you can't do anything but repeat that you believe it for no reason?
It's proven very difficult for any legacy ICE manufacturer to successfully compete in BEVs. BYD is really the only example. Whipping around the Titanic is already extremely difficult, and you're right, German culture makes it basically impossible.
While German rigidity and risk-aversion might have made it more difficult (I used to work for a German multinational so I have some experience with this), it's true that for any big company -- even American ones -- that it is hard to disrupt yourself.
Clay Christiansen wrote a book about this called the Innovator's Dilemma.
The Chinese have been catching up with German industrial equipment imports with local alternatives for 2 decades. Now, the Chinese manufacturers are globally competitive. The same has played out in accelerated fashion in the light vehicle industry. The Germans have lost in manufacturing, their technology industry is a joke, and their financial sector is a nepotistic fraud. The reliance on Russian energy imports is truly the cherry on top.
Germany will quickly fade in global relevance and their purchasing power will stagnate, exactly like the UK in the past 15 years and Italy before that.
Sadly a common story in Europe. Too much nostalgia for former days of glory and no ability or willingness to break any eggs at all to make the omelette. The place largely operates as a living museum, and change and innovation is mostly tolerated rather than embraced.
I do however see it as an important counter weight to the floppy ephemeral nature of America culture. America will flail around here and there, sometimes good sometimes bad, bit Europe basically stays right on the linear path they have been on for decades and decades.
Living in Germany you really feel it. Everything is in decline but what's worse is Germans are in some perverse way proud of it, every shitty system, every fucked up backwards process is unavoidable and The Best Way To Do It (and also it's worse everywhere else in the world and Germany does it the best! (apparently)). There's so much low hanging fruit that could immediately improve people's lives but there's no appetite among the population to actually shake things up and change anything.
The whole system is built to keep people in their lanes: the highest income taxes in the world, no tax efficient ways to save, huge costs associated with buying property, the huge cost of property... Everything is supposedly free but nothing is available.
Honestly, you'd have to be stupid to move to Germany unless you are a refugee. I am not a refugee so my only excuse is that I was just stupid.
Efficient high volume and even precision manufacturing are no longer moats for the German industrial export industry to protect against Chinese competition.
Chinese EV brands innovated vertically-integrated business models and, unencumbered by legacy infrastructure and large unionized workforces, built highly automated factories from scratch - their low cost structures and huge state subsidies have allowed them to profitably sell pretty nice vehicles below VW's cost.
What does Europe have to offer China now? The cache of "attainable luxury" imports (Gucci, LV, Nike, Starbucks) is fading fast as local brands gain in prestige...
I think the answer is basically nothing besides largescale consumption. The interesting thing to see is whether China turns inward or projects power outward.
What is quality control like on Chinese goods these days? I'm not presuming it's bad, I just don't know.
That said, my experience with VW specifically isn't great either. Plus, the 30bn losses due to scammy diesel gate is massive compared to their market cap of 50bn.
There are other brands I'd be more sad about. Still, very rough for their employees
German cars are notoriously unreliable (well, a common refrain among owners is -- they are reliable as long as you spends lots of money maintaining them, and invariably anecdotes of a BMW 19xx still running like a champ will be offered. But on average, this is not true. You can ask mechanics.)
German cars are designed to be fun to drive -- and they are!
But their reliability to a layman -- not a car enthusiast, but a layman who doesn't have the inclination to baby their cars -- is not the best. Italian cars like Fiats are even worse. But boy are they beautiful.
Different design goals.
p.s. also if you baby any car, it will be reliable. But your mechanic bills will be substantial.
Depends on the price point. Cheap Chinese stuff is poor quality. More expensive goods are just as good as those marketed by western brands (and are often made in the same factories)
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