by Wolf Richter, Wolf Street:
Union Bank made a deal to sell its tower at 75% off original listing price, setting the first new benchmark. Other towers waiting in the wings.
We have been tracking what older office towers, many of them from the 1980s and 1990s, are worth when they finally do sell, either in a foreclosure auction or in a regular transaction. Two towers in Houston sold at a foreclosure auction at a price where the lenders – holders of Commercial Mortgage-Backed Securities (CMB) – lost 80% and 88% respectively. In the foreclosure sale of the vacant 46-story 1980s “One AT&T Center” in downtown St. Louis, CMBS holders took a 100% loss.
GOLD CLOSED UP $8.70 TO $2025.60 AS INVESTORS DEMAND PHYSICAL DELIVERY FROM THE MASSIVE SHORTS ON FRIDAY//SILVER WAS DOWN 7 CENTS TO $25.57//PLATINUM CLOSED UP $17.10 TO $1079.30//PALLADIUM CLOSED UP $51.10 TO $1555.50//ANDREW MAGUIRE: A MUST VIEW TAPE//ALSO DR DANIEL LACALLE: A MUST READ!//UKRAINE VS RUSSIA: THE CRAZY UKRANIANS ARE FIRING ON THEIR NUCLEAR FACILITY//COVID UPDATES//DR PAUL ALEXANDER/VACCINE IMPACT/SLAY NEWS/EVOLE NEWS//IN USA: HUGE RUN ON THE BANKS WITH 360 BILLION DOLLARS LEAVING BANK DEPOSITS FOR MONEY MARKETS//CREDIT CARD USE INCREASE AGAIN IN DRAMATIC FASHION AS MANY AS MAXED OUT//CALIFORNIA DEFAULTS ON PANDEMIC FUNDS ISSUED BY THE FEDS//TYSON FOODS, LARGEST FOOD PRODUCER IN THE USA SHOWS A LOSS IN LASTEST QUARTER/
Another huge story of yet another country shunning the US dollar. This story is going totally underreported by the Lying Legacy Media (LLM): United Arab Emirates (UAE) has announced it is no longer using the dollar for oil trade. This is a monster shift that inches the US dollar to losing reserve currency status. The UAE recently joined the so-called BRICS economic alliance, and all the BRICS countries are either depending on the dollar less or doing away with it altogether in trade. If the trend continues, this could spell disaster for trillions of dollars in debt that need to be sold in the Treasury market to finance America.
The time the FDA came after me for helping people
Analyst and financial writer John Rubino says this time, the so-called debt ceiling fight could end in a systemic failure. Rubino points out, “In a well-run society, the debt limit would be zero. Governments should not borrow money in the first place. The amount of money we are borrowing is catastrophic. Historians are going to look back at this era, and they are just going to wonder why we allowed it to happen and what were we thinking. We are destroying the global financial system by allowing governments to borrow this much money. The debt limit thing is being called a crisis, and if they let it go too far, it will be a crisis. . . . I think this game of chicken will end in the not-too-distant future, and if it doesn’t, they have an ulterior motive. They want to crash the economy because that achieves something for them. We can speculate about this. The party in power wants to crash the economy, and that is a very dark scenario. . . . They are willing to burn down the world around them to get what they want. Look at Russia-gate and the contents of the Durham Report.
Financial writer, market analyst and precious metals expert Craig Hemke says the variables are so numerous it is nearly impossible to predict exactly what is going to happen in 2024. One thing is for sure, the variables are all bad. There is the exploding federal debt, now at $34 trillion. The federal government is on track to increase the debt by a whopping $2 trillion in one year!!! There are growing global war possibilities in the Middle East, Tiawan and Ukraine. Low unemployment numbers coming out of the BLS are lies hiding a sick economy. Commercial real estate is a tanking mess. Unrealized losses are in the hundreds of billions of dollars sitting at the banks. There is a growing liquidity crisis brewing. CV19 deaths and injuries are exploding with no end in sight. The Southern border is wide open to terrorists wanting to harm America, according to the FBI. This is just the short list of very real potential disasters that could easily strike. Keep in mind, every single one of these could all happen during 2024. Hemke says, “It’s not fixable. It’s just not fixable. It’s such a joke to hear from the politicians that you are going to get this election year. They will say, ‘We have to have a balanced budget. . . . We have to get the federal budget deficit back to pre-Covid levels.’ Yeah, right. Good luck. That’s not going to happen.”