Re: Tema: PPCC - Pisitófilos Creditófagos - Primavera 2023

[Cadavre Exquis]

José Luis Cava | Colapso del crédito bancario en los EEUU. 10/4/23 10h 15m

Hola qué tal, muy buenos y primaverales días desde Madrid.

Ya de vuelta la primera pregunta que vamos a tratar de responder hoy es si se está produciendo un colapso en la concesión de préstamos inmobiliarios en los Estados Unidos. Ya sabíamos que incluso antes de la crisis del banco de Silicon Valley que los bancos estaban endureciendo los requisitos que exigían para la concesión de créditos después del 15 de marzo.

Tal y como pueden ver ustedes en este gráfico la situación se ha agravado:

Ahora bien, no nos importa tanto la concesión de nuevos créditos –que ya es importante, y veremos más adelante– sino que lo que realmente nos importa ahora es qué va a pasar con los préstamos inmobiliarios concedidos para la adquisición de inmuebles de uso comercial –como son: oficinas, almacenes, superficies comerciales– y que vencen entre 2023 y 2025. Entre 2023 y 2025 vencen aproximadamente 1,5 billones de dólares.

La pregunta que nos tenemos que hacer es: bueno, ¿y quién ha concedido estos préstamos?

Cuando vemos las estadísticas observamos que la mitad de estos préstamos han sido concedidos por entidades bancarias y, efectivamente, el 70% por los bancos regionales norteamericanos.

Efectivamente, los bancos regionales norteamericanos se enfrentan a una doble crisis: por un lado, la fuga de depósitos –tal y como pueden ver ustedes ha supuesto una salida enorme de recursos–, ahora parece ser que la sangría se ha frenado pero sigue produciéndose la fuga. Y, en segundo lugar, hacer frente al vencimiento de estos préstamos hipotecarios cobrarán los 120.000 millones que vencen.

Para contestar esta pregunta debemos de tener en cuenta en primer lugar que los tipos de interés han aumentado, con lo cual supone una dificultad añadida a la devolución de los intereses y del capital. En segundo lugar, el nivel de ocupación de estos inmuebles de uso comercial se ha reducido significativamente, por lo tanto el volumen de ingresos que ha obtenido el prestatario se ha reducido, por lo tanto, debemos concluir que el riesgo de impago se ha disparado y, en consecuencia, los bancos regionales norteamericanos tendrán que refinanciar gran parte de estos préstamos además de hacer frente a una insolvencia. Por dos motivos: insolvencia por impago y, en segundo lugar, porque al haber caído el precio del inmueble que actuaba como garantía del préstamo, se reduce el colateral y, por lo tanto, deberán exigir garantías complementarias, si no se aportan deberían llevar una parte de este préstamo aún como una insolvencia y, por lo tanto, llevarlo a la cuenta de resultados.

Lo más probable, por lo tanto, es que el Fed tenga que salir en ayuda de estos bancos, y a su vez inyectar una liquidez de al menos en el año 2023 de 120.000 millones, pero lo peor no es esto, lo peor es que esta este nivel de vencimientos va incrementándose paulatinamente hasta el año 2025 –e incluso hasta el año 2027– por lo tanto estos bancos seguirán necesitando el apoyo del Fed y por lo tanto el Fed deberá llevar a cabo nuevas inyecciones de liquidez.

[...]

Saludos.

[Cadavre Exquis]

[
url=
http://Real Estate to Gold Ratio
]Real Estate to Gold Ratio[/url

LINK gracias

https://www.longtermtrends.net/real-estate-gold-ratio/

P.D. Enlace corregido en el post original.

[JENOFONTE10]

[Duración vídeo: 3' 25"]

El sector inmobiliario a examen: burbuja e irracionalidad en el punto de mira
Dónde estamos en el sector inmobiliario: irracionalidad en la compra de la vivienda. El gráfico que muestra la irracionalidad en la compra de vivienda y dónde está el riesgo en el sector inmobiliario. Dónde está la burbuja.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbeq9ZwX-6g

Saludos.

[sudden and sharp]

[SVÁSTICA BUENA.— Hay dos svásticas, la buena (dextrógira) y la mala (levógira). La buena es el punto de génesis de la creación, creador incluido, que gira en espiral para la derecha (dextrógira), es decir, en el sentido de las agujas del reloj o de enrosque; si, para que se vea cómo gira el punto, le superponemos unos palitos en cruz, la estela dibujará eles (L). El conjunto se suele representar en vertical, no medio girado:

El sonido asociado a este movimiento es el primigenio, la sílaba 'om' del mantra de las seis sílabas, del bodhisattva (se pronuncia bodisato) Avalokiteshvara:
   OM MANI-PADME HUM
      Literalmente (Om y Hum son sonidos):
   OM / JOYA-LOTO / HUM
      Significado (imaginaos una hamburguesa):
   Cuerpo & Mente / Compasión-Sabiduría / Espíritu

om

En toda caracola, el sentido de su espiral siempre es el mismo y, también, la proporción ('ratio aurea'). Da igual el hemisferio terrestre del que provengan. Vistas desde fuera son dextrógiras, como la svástica tántrica, omote manji, la deambulación en los templos de Oriente... y en los cristianos, porque el Cristianismo es una religión de oriente medio, de Jerusalem, de Antioquía, de Damasco, de Armenia. Vistas desde dentro, las caracolas son levógiras, ura manji, como los extraterrestres ven el giro del planeta Tierra, como la svástica de la Schutzstaffel, como el lauburu; sentido contrario a las agujas del reloj, como los fieles alrededor de la Kaaba, como los circuitos musulmanes de F1.

Caracola - Visión exterior ('ratio aurea') - Visión interior (sección)

Este asunto tiene más enjundia de lo que parece: el modelito popularcapitalista es levógiro. (Continuará).]

Bueno... esto del giro de la cruz solar no está nada claro:

https://laindiaincreible.com/esvastica-en-la-india/





Estos lauburos giran un poco como les da la gana... (O eso me parece a mí.)








--------------
[ Esperar y ver... otras explicaciones. ]

[saturno]

https://www.longtermtrends.net/real-estate-gold-ratio/

P.D. Enlace corregido en el post original.

GRacias (ya he borrado mi post). La imagen sería ésta

[Cadavre Exquis]

Credit Crunch Arrives: Bank Lending Crashes By Most On Record In Last Two Weeks Of March

by Tyler Durden Saturday, Apr 08, 2023 - 06:00 PM

   
Earlier this week, when looking at a critical real-time indicator of US loan activity - the Dallas Fed's latest Banking Conditions Survey - which provides an early glimpse into loan supply and demand at least until the next SLOOS is released in early May, we warned that loan demand had collapsed, while credit standards had tightened to the point where there was virtually no new credit supply for broad swaths of the economy. Here is the key quote from the survey:

Loan demand declined for the fifth period in a row as bankers in the March survey reported worsening business activity. Loan volumes fell, driven largely by a sharp contraction in consumer loans.... Credit standards and terms continued to tighten sharply, and marked rises in loan pricing were also noted over the reporting period. Banking outlooks continued to deteriorate, with contacts expecting a contraction in loan demand and business activity and an increase in nonperforming loans over the next six months. Some contacts cited waning consumer confidence from recent financial instability as a concern.

It goes without saying that a loan moratorium is a big problem for the US economy where 70% of growth comes from mostly credit-funded spending. But it's an even bigger problem for those small banks that had gotten hit especially hard during the recent bank crisis, and their customers: as we also discussed previously, banks with less than $250bn in assets are responsible for roughly 50% of US commercial and industrial lending, 60% of residential real estate lending, 80% of commercial real estate lending, and 45% of consumer lending. And with key segments of the economy locked out of critical lines of funding, GDP will crater and the US will spiral into a recession, just as the "inflation-fighting" Fed ordered.

So fast forward to Friday afternoon when the latest closely watched H.8 commercial bank asset and liability update (which in the immediate aftermath of the SVB failure, we said would soon become more popular than even the Fed's weekly balance sheet update, i.e., H.4.1)..

https://twitter.com/zerohedge/status/1634964584766541830

... showed something remarkable: the two weeks since the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (those ending March 22 and March 29) showed the biggest two-week drop of US commercial bank loans and leases on record, indicating the sharpest tightening of credit conditions in history in the wake of several high-profile bank collapses that risks damaging the economy.

Zooming in to the post-covid era shows that while there have been many weeks of far greater spikes in loan creation, particularly the "summer of PPP" when there were two weeks that saw a massive 200BN+ in loan increases, the past three years had not seen any period of greater weekly loan declines.

Broken down between large and small banks, not surprisingly the bulk of loan destruction came from the small bank sector (shown in red) below which amounted to $73.6BN in the past two weeks, although even the largest 25 domestically chartered banks (i.e., the group known as Large Banks in the H. saw a sizable $23.6BN decline over the latest fortnight. Lending at foreign institutions over the same period dipped by a more modest $7.5BN.

In a note on the report, the Fed said domestically chartered banks made divestments to nonbank institutions that affected $60 billion in loans in the week ended March 22, meaning those loans are no longer held by commercial lenders.
Digging even deeper into the type of loans that made up the weekly change, we first look at large banks where the biggest contributor by far was the sharp drop in Commercial and Industrial (C&I) loans, amounting $26.5BN.

But, as noted above, it was the Small Bank segment where the bulk of the credit crunch took place: as shown in the chart below, C&I loans shrank by $31.8BN over the 2-week period, but surprisingly it was Real Estate loans that saw the biggest decline at $37.8BN in the latest fortnight; and with Consumer loans effectively flat over this period, the All Other Loans and Leases category also dipped by $4.0BN over the same period.

The collapse in loans - a bank assets - meant that the matching liability, deposits, also continued its collapse if at a slightly slower pace, and as we noted on Thursday, commercial bank deposits continued their decline, dropping by $64.7 billion. Or rather, it was the drain of deposits that forced banks (both solvent and insolvent) to liquidate and monetize loans so they could face the soaring redemption requests. For those who missed our breakdown, in the latest week small banks saw outflows again, with large banks seeing $48 billion in outflows (to the lowest since March 2021) and small banks seeing a modest $7.2 billion in outflows (to the lowest since June 2021).

Meanwhile, so-called “other” deposits, which exclude large time deposits, have fallen $260.8 billion at commercial banks since the week ended March 15. At domestically chartered banks, they declined $236 billion, mostly reflecting a drop at the 25 largest institutions. Deposits at small banks fell $58.1 billion.

To be sure, the collapse in commercial bank loans in the aftermath of the bank crisis - which we discussed here - was expected, and on Thursday, the American Bankers Association index of credit conditions fell to the lowest level since the onset of the pandemic, indicating bank economists see credit conditions weakening sharply over the next six months. As a result, banks are likely to become even more cautious about extending credit, and the total number of loans is set to drop even further.

This has implications for monetary policy: as the chart below shows, virtually all reserves created by the Fed since 2020 have ended up in deposits (which makes sense since QE and debt monetization is effectively a transfer of wealth to those who sell TSYs and MBS to the Fed, and in return collect cash). And while deposits were shrinking modestly int he past year, coinciding with the Fed's period of QT, i.e., balance sheet shrinkage, what happened in the past 3 weeks has been unprecedented, and the sharp collapse in bank deposits as cash fled to the higher-yielding safety of money markets (something we discussed on Friday in "QE Via The Back Door": JPM Asks If The Fed Will Restrict Reverse Repo Use To Short Circuit $1.5 Trillion Bank Run"), meant that the Fed would need to step up with various emergency measures such as Discount Window borrowings, and the new bank bailout program, the BTFP, to offset the sudden drain in deposits and avoid a broader bank sector crisis. It also means that unless some $400BN in bank deposits return from Money Markets, the Fed's "temporary" emergency measures to boost market liquidity will soon become permanent.

Incidentally, it was the ongoing slide in deposits courtesy of the Fed's QT, that prompted us to warn all the way back last November that the US commercial banking system had reached a dangerous level of liquidity known as "reserve constraint"...

https://twitter.com/zerohedge/status/1598030008869654533

... and as the next chart shows, this is precisely the trigger behind the bank crisis, as cash at small banks hit the reserve-constraining level that both in 2019 and now sparked both a bank crisis and a Fed Intervention.

Incidentally, the chart above shows how much time the Fed's emergency reserve/liquidity injections have bought: once the spike in the red line reverses and is back to the support of the "reserve constraint" level, small banks will suffer another crisis and the Fed will be dragged into inject hundreds of billions more in liquidity.

Saludos.

[sudden and sharp]

Alemania anuncia un incremento notable del salario mínimo para 2024
https://www.20minutos.es/noticia/5117059/0/alemania-anuncia-un-incremento-notable-del-salario-minimo-para-2024/
 - Desde los sindicatos se pide un aumento que la patronal considera "no realista".
 - Alemania busca trabajadores españoles y ofrece sueldos de hasta 2.800 euros.

[Derby]

https://www.entrepreneur.com/business-news/single-family-homes-cost-less-than-condos-in-20-us-cities/449291

In 20 U.S. Cities, Buying a Single Family Home Is Cheaper Than a Condo

While home prices decreased by 0.7% in February, condos went up by 2.5%.

The housing market has experienced a series of changes over the past couple of years — from record-high prices to ruthless competition. But now, with some signs signaling a cooling market (in certain places, at least), other areas are seeing shifts, notably a rise in demand for condominiums.

In February, the average cost of a single-family home went down by 0.7% from the same period last year, while a median-priced condo experienced a 2.5% increase, per data from the National Association of Realtors.

In some areas, condos are even more expensive for buyers than median-priced homes. According to real estate analysts at Point2, there are as many as 20 U.S. cities where this is happening, including Detroit, Michigan, which took the top spot, with the average home price of $58,000 versus the average condo price of $229,000 — a 75% difference.

Detroit led the rankings by a long shot. Second was Birmingham, Alabama, where the average home price is $174,000 versus $246,000 for condos — a gap of 29%.

While there are several reasons people are attracted to condos versus homeownership — less maintenance, upkeep and utility costs — condo living isn't for everyone. So if you're looking to make the move from a building to a home, one of these 20 cities may be worth looking into.

[Derby]

https://www.ft.com/content/733a24d7-056d-4f02-8b20-8ba9f566e9f7

European commercial real estate: the cracks are starting to show

The recent banking crisis has added to fears that credit will become less available and more expensive, just as prices are slumping

From Canary Wharf in London to La Défense in Paris and Frankfurt’s Bankenviertel, the logos of major banks adorn Europe’s grandest office buildings. But there is early evidence that these buildings could become liabilities for banks and investors as they are buffeted by rising costs and post-Covid workplace changes.

Offices are the largest component of a commercial property market which lenders and investors have backed with €1.5tn of debt in Europe alone. About €310bn of new or replacement borrowing is issued to keep the market moving in a typical year, according to Bayes Business School at City, University of London.

Developers and landlords were already having to adjust to life since the pandemic began. This has involved an increase in hybrid working among their professional services tenants such as banks, law firms and consultancies, some of whom are reducing their office space. Now, in a key difference from the last downturn, property owners are having to contend with a rapid increase in borrowing costs as central banks ratchet up interest rates to contain a sharp rise in inflation.

Leverage has always been a central feature of commercial real estate but recent bank failures in the US and the state-brokered rescue of Credit Suisse by its rival UBS have added to fears that credit will become less available and more expensive. Property prices have already fallen sharply in recent months while older buildings in peripheral locations are becoming much harder to sell.

Analysts at Citi warned clients late last month that European real estate values had still not fully factored in rising interest rates and could fall by up to 40 per cent by the end of 2024.

“You can definitely see the cracks starting to happen,” says Mark Bladon, head of real estate at Investec. In Frankfurt, the Korean owners of the 45-storey Trianon tower have hired advisers to begin restructuring the €375mn of debt secured against the building. Cheung Kei, a China-based investor, has put two buildings in London’s Canary Wharf business district up for sale to reduce its debt load, according to Bloomberg.

Blackstone, the world’s largest commercial real estate investor, defaulted on a loan secured against a Finnish office and retail portfolio last month, while loans against German apartment buildings backed by Brookfield were downgraded by the rating agency Moody’s in March.

The question worrying investors is whether what are fairly isolated cases of stressed assets will accelerate into a sector-wide crisis like that seen in 2008-2009, and inflict serious damage on Europe’s banks.

The European Central Bank has warned of “growing vulnerabilities” in property markets. “The commercial real estate sector is considered vulnerable to the impact of the pandemic, while medium-term risks of price corrections continue to grow in the residential real estate sector,” the central bank said in a supervisory report in February.

Most analysts think a rerun of the financial crisis, where souring loans against commercial property undermined banks’ capital, sometimes fatally, is unlikely. They predict a long period of painful adjustment rather than a short, sharp shock.

“This time around I am much more confident than I was in the global financial crisis, when I knew that something was going to go horribly wrong,” says Nicole Lux, senior research fellow at Bayes Business School. She does not expect problems in commercial real estate to infect the banking system, as they did in the global financial crisis.

But some investors worry it will be the other way around: the shock to commercial real estate may spare the banks but will be harder on asset owners. “I see losses hitting on the equity side and some distressed debt. The question is how long is it going to take?” says Raimondo Amabile, chief investment officer at PGIM real estate.

A different market

As anxiety hangs over European lenders after Credit Suisse’s travails, real estate executives have been quick to point out that commercial property borrowing has undergone a big shift since 2009.

“The danger with real estate is that people look at what happened in the [global financial crisis],” says Dan Riches, co-head of real estate finance at asset manager M&G. The market today has “more lenders, more equity, lower leverage in the system”, reducing the chance of large-scale stress.



In the run-up to 2008, lenders routinely offered loans of 80 or even 100 per cent of a building’s value, sometimes basing their lending on optimistic forecasts about rental income or capital values. Bayes’ research found that European lenders would now rarely go beyond 60 per cent of a property’s value, making it less likely that the outstanding debt would end up exceeding the value of the property.

German lenders are more liberal, the research found, with maximum LTVs of 80 per cent for good-quality assets. In the UK, the consultancy Capital Economics said that four-fifths of loans were below a 60 per cent loan-to-value ratio — and that overall UK bank exposure to commercial real estate was half what it was in the run-up to the financial crisis.

But another vital difference between then and now is the trajectory of borrowing costs. As the world’s financial system threatened to seize up in 2008, central banks slashed interest rates and then flooded money markets with emergency cash. That made it relatively easy for even heavily indebted landlords to wait for the crisis to pass. Banks, keen to avoid crystallising losses that would further erode their own capital, were often happy to extend borrowing facilities.

This time, stubbornly high inflation has meant central banks have continued to push debt costs higher — despite the cracks in the banking sector and strains on commercial real estate. Bayes research suggests the cost of borrowing against prime real estate in Europe has doubled year on year. Some industry experts predict that, faced with steep increases in their own funding costs, banks will be less inclined to show forbearance towards struggling borrowers.

“You could describe a better story going into the global financial crisis than you could today,” says one senior executive at a large property investor. “There is no way out that will be fixed by the market.”

The first domino

First in line to take losses will be the owners of lower-grade office buildings. Amabile, of PGIM, says they face a “perfect storm” of weaker underlying demand for space, higher construction and maintenance costs, fewer potential buyers or lenders and higher interest charges.

“We are really talking about stranded assets I think. We haven’t really seen that emerge since the retail [property] crash in 2018 and 2019,” says Zac Gauge, a real estate strategist at UBS. “I can’t see anything changing on the upside that is going to create tonnes of demand for secondary offices.” 

In the US, a slower return to in-person work has left even some prime offices facing financial difficulty. The vacancy rate there at the end of 2022 was 19 per cent, according to the real estate adviser JLL. But while the headline European vacancy rate is half that, the market is split between robust appetite for attractive buildings that meet the latest environmental standards and little demand for other space.

One US investor in European real estate says that occupiers there “are taking smaller footprints and moving into better buildings”. Prices for less desirable offices could fall by more than 50 per cent, some investors predict, as developers will have to totally repurpose the buildings. Both the EU and the UK are phasing in new energy efficiency standards that will require heavy investment from the owners of old buildings.

“Your bigger problem is the guy who has to refinance in the next few years for five [years] and thinks the building is a security, [then] realises he has a $10mn bill to bring it up to [environmental standards],” says Andrew Coombs, chief executive of Sirius Real Estate.



All the headwinds and uncertainty are making it harder to find investors with the confidence to buy offices or lend to their owners. “The big question everyone is asking is: what is the value of an office?” says Isabelle Scemama, global head of alternatives at French insurance group AXA.

It is a question that will take some time to answer because the European market typically reflects pricing changes more slowly than the UK or the US. “Generally speaking, valuers in Europe look at comparative transactions. If you have periods of lower transaction volumes with less evidence, valuers take a bit longer,” says Oliver Moldenhauer, analyst at Moody’s. That slow pace of deals can become a vicious cycle, where fewer transactions result in fewer yardsticks for the true value of buildings and more difficulties pricing sales.

Who takes the hit?

When values do start to fall in earnest, borrowers will be pushed closer to lender-imposed conditions about loan-to-value ratio and interest cover. That could lead to painful conversations with creditors, especially as old loans near expiry and need to be refinanced with much more expensive borrowings.

“You have some companies that have not been savvy enough to fix their debt or refinance early,” says Colm Lauder, analyst at the brokerage Goodbody. Germany’s listed landlords have among the highest debt levels; UBS forecasts that major German landlords’ average loan-to-value ratio will rise to nearly 50 per cent this year, up from 44 per cent in 2021.

Some assets, and likely some companies, will need a fresh injection of equity to reduce the leverage in their capital structures. In more extreme scenarios, they may have to sell assets to pay down debt. Real estate executives will find themselves heading into these high-stakes talks just as banks have less room to be lenient because turmoil in the financial sector has damped their tolerance for risk.

“There were a lot of borrowers who were on borrowed time,” says Gauge. “That may accelerate, and they may find that they have even fewer options to refinance when the time comes, if any.”

Euan Gatfield, an analyst at rating agency Fitch, says it is “fair to say that commercial real estate is among the weaker of the range of assets that banks have exposure to”.

“In the very short term we may see banks navel gaze a bit and make sure that they go over what they have got on their balance sheet, at the expense of new origination.” 

Net lending to commercial property in the UK turned negative to the tune of £288mn in February, for the first time since August. Capital Economics analysts expect that pull back will accelerate given the banking turmoil, “which will constrain the eventual recovery in investment and construction”.

The chief concern is a wave of forced selling from over-extended asset owners or debt funds, which would further depress the value of assets and create a downward spiral.

The ECB this month urged regulators to develop policies that prevent liquidity mismatches in open-ended property funds, which own assets that take a long time to sell but promise to repay investors on demand. It fears that fire sales of assets to meet redemptions could amplify existing stresses.

Commercial real estate makes up 9 per cent of European banks’ loan book, on average, according to Goldman Sachs, and 15 per cent of non-performing loans. That is notably less than US banks, which have 25 per cent of their loan books in the sector, rising to 65 per cent for the smaller US lenders that have been the focus of recent stress.

But the European average hides a wide range. Nordic banks had the largest commercial property exposure, according to an S&P Global Market Intelligence report late last year, such as Sweden’s Svenska Handelsbanken, which had 40 per cent of its retail and corporate loans out to commercial property. HSBC, whose real estate lending has grown in recent years, still had only 11 per cent exposure, S&P said.

Banks are not the only lenders, however. “What concerns me is outside the banking sector, what is called ‘shadow banking’,” says Lux, of Bayes Business School. “Private debt funds are unregulated at this point.” 

Bladon, of Investec, says that alternative lenders now occupy the terrain that banks held during the financial crisis. “The debt funds that have stepped into that highly leveraged space have got to be in a worse position [than banks].”

But the growth of alternative sources of lending such as asset managers, sovereign wealth funds and private equity firms could also provide a key source of financing for the industry as banks draw in their horns, according to Ron Dickerman, president of investment group Madison International Realty.

Some of the demand for loans and fresh investment could be met by funds that raised large amounts of cash in recent years and have yet to deploy it, as well as overseas investors. But they may also choose to invest those funds outside the challenged office and retail markets. Citi analysts say that logistics, self-storage and some residential assets should fare better than traditional office space.

“A lot of funds and investors are very hungry for deals . . . The fundamentals are still strong and there are opportunities in certain key market sectors, unlike the past,” said Anthony Mongone, real estate partner at the law firm Ropes & Gray. “I think it may not be a total gloom and doom story. It may be more of an isolated doom and gloom story.”

[Derby]

Euforia...muy peligrosa

https://www.businessinsider.com/ftx-alameda-bankman-fried-joked-losing-millions-dollars-assets-2023-4

Sam Bankman-Fried reportedly joked about losing track of assets worth millions of dollars

Sam Bankman-Fried joked about Alameda Research losing track of assets worth millions of dollars, FTX debtors said in a report filed Sunday.

The report, filed in the US Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware, alleged that the failed crypto empire was "tightly controlled by a small group of individuals," who "joked internally about their tendency to lose track of millions of dollars in assets."

In an internal communication cited in the report, Bankman-Fried once said FTX's sister company Alameda Research was "hilariously beyond any threshold of any auditor being able to even get partially through an audit."

He said: "Alameda is unauditable. I don't mean this in the sense of 'a major accounting firm will have reservations about auditing it'; I mean this in the sense of 'we are only able to ballpark what its balances are, let alone something like a comprehensive transaction history'."We sometimes find $50m of assets lying around that we lost track of; such is life."(...)

[cujo]

Pues yo niego la mayor: la desigualdad no es por sí misma ningún problema, sino la pobreza. A mí que haya más o menos megarricos me da lo mismo; no tener lo básico, eso sí me preocupa.

Pero claro, queda mucho más pintón decir que se lucha contra la desigualdad que contra la pobreza.

Mis dos céntimos...

En España podemos poner el ejemplo de los autovictimados étnicos ... q antes si que podrían estar en la pobreza, pero desde hace decenas de años son autovictimados étnicos con paguita , paguita q les hace estar por encima de la clase social de muchos trabajadores.
Ya en el caso particular de Euskadi ... con la RGI , donde solo la clase media está por encima de ingresos de los no comedores de jamón y auto victimizados étnicos con paguita.
La pobreza hay q buscarla entre la gente q se rompe los cuernos mas de 8 horas en un trabajo.

[Derby]

Es cierto que el grado de homogeneidad del mundo post-globalización no contribuye al cambio que necesitamos.

https://www.planetcritical.com/p/why-societies-collapse

Why Societies Can't Avoid Collapse

A homogenous world is a weak world

Last week I interviewed economist Lisi Krall  about how our economic system overpowers our culture. Lisi traced the current system back to the agricultural revolution 10,000 years ago when homo sapiens began farming a grain surplus, leading to the creation of societal and cultural hierarchies which divorced our species from our long relationship with the natural world.

During the episode, we discussed the fragility of our global culture—and that global culture is capitalism. This homogenous culture has crept into every single corner of a world in which all citizens are plugged into the same financial system through the same technological infrastructure, bargaining and trading in the same market, and being acted upon by the same market forces.

It's quite astonishing for our global population to number 8 billion people, and for the majority of those people to essentially share a single culture; Lisi evidences this homogeneity by highlighting the eradication of diverse languages around the world.

So even though our global system is increasingly complex thermodynamically and technologically—which is driving the climate crisis, making it increasingly difficult to navigate let alone change our system—the culture of that system is not. The increasingly complex infrastructure is simplifying culture around the world, and as we know from ecosystems, diversity is a form of resilience, and resilience is a form of strength.

Our global culture lacks diversity, rendering it frail and vulnerable to shock. Perhaps that’s what this imminent collapse is all about: we have run out of runway, the system can no longer self-propagate, and evolve, because our culture cannot evolve with it as it gradually simplifies.

Our culture is now a drag on the economic system, in a sense, because we've become so entrenched in the values that come along with it, so entrenched in the cultural ideas of profit maximization, of market forces of trade that we will drive even the system that is causing this problem into the ground by refusing to allow it to evolve.

Systems are increasingly complex. But if the global culture becomes enmeshed in this same culture, and cannot change by definition because it needs to be homogenised to manage the trillions of interactions which signal transactions on the market, then the culture gets to a point where it threatens the system.

Perhaps that’s what we’re seeing, perhaps that is why it seems like late stage capitalism is on the verge of collapse. It is not just the climate crisis. It is not just the fact of the planet now responding to the 1.1 degrees warming that we have thrust upon it with our human activity. It's the fact that the system itself has run out of wiggle room to become something else, because not only did we make the infrastructure so complex, we made the culture that drives it simple so that we could export it around the world and find people to trade with all around the world.

Our culture is impeding our capacity to respond to this system. But it may also be hindering the system in itself.

If our economy is like an economic superorganism—if it is a force in and of itself that is, for want of a better word, alive, that self propagates, reproduces itself, is dynamic in nature—then it equally is endangered by the culture thrust upon it. If you have a growth-obsessed system on a finite planet, that puts not only the culture at risk of the people, but puts itself at risk, too.

This perhaps sounds like anthropomorphising a system, but systems do tend towards self reproduction, and therefore the continuation of themselves. That’s why feedback loops and tipping points are so dangerous in a planet on the brink of collapse.

Culture is only one part of the system, but given it is the part that we identify with, it is the way we communicate, it is the way in which we interact with the system itself. Culture is the bridge between us and the system.

Therefore, if our simplified culture which exists within a complex infrastructure, cannot adapt quickly enough to the needs both of the system and of the people, then it will become a drag on the system and the people—and it will threaten us with collapse.

Now our culture is institutionalised, essentially—homogenised, globalised—making it very difficult to change. This one global culture exists only to interact with the economic system, essentially. A more resilient system would feature a collection of human cultures, an ecosystem of heterogenous cultures, interacting with one another. This would mean that if some part of the system decays then it doesn’t take the entire ecosystem down with it. That’s why diversity is a form of strength and critical to survival.

However, because we are all plugged into the same global financial system, interacting with one another in the same culture, we depend on that culture for survival—because we depend on that culture to communicate with the system, and it is the system which connects us all. But that very dependence on the system, and on the culture, is going to bring about the demise of the culture because we cannot change the culture that is threatening ourselves, and the system, even, which perhaps wants to evolve in order to continue self-propagating.

Perhaps.

Lisi says in the episode that localised resistant movements are critical—different forms of organisation, different nodes of culture, and re-imagining this problem, this crisis as “glocal”: global and localised. Our crisis is global, but can only be acted upon within local contexts. This allows us to free ourselves from the homogenous, globalised culture we're entrenched in, and act upon this system in different ways.

We can only act upon the system by removing ourselves from the global culture, in a sense. By removing the paradigm. Of course, we can't actually remove ourselves, but removing ourselves begins with understanding it, re-imagining it, and attempting to act upon it.

Again, it is the attempt that allows for the possibility of more, of different, of other. Everything begins with the attempt.

Our system is on the verge of collapse. Could it be that our culture is the reason.

Culture was an adaptive advantage and evolutionary trait, Lisi says. By refusing to adapt, we are inviting our own destruction, and the destruction of everything else which has evolved alongside us—including, perhaps, the economic superorganism.

[asustadísimos]

[Me dijo una tía carnal mía, ya fallecida, bicampeona de España de patinaje artístico —música de Gershwin—, con la que un servidor cazó jabalíes —una amiga suya, también fallecida, era una formidable tiradora, hija de 'Bunting', campeón del mundo de tiro de pichón—:

'Bunting' con su famosa chaquetilla

—«Hay un punto en la vida en el que empieza la vejez. Lo sabes porque tu salud se deteriora, pero no de forma continua, sino por escalones. Te mantienes bien una temporada y, de repente, das un bajón del que ya no te recuperas del todo».

La vejez de la burbuja popularcapitalista comenzó el 2.º de octubre de 2006, día del Turning Point. El 19.º de julio de 2022 fue el día del Catacrack o inflexión definitiva de la Transición Estructural. Y el 1.º de febrero de este año, el día del Recatacrack. Hoy, lunes de Pascua, día siguiente al domingo en que se festeja la Resurrección de Jesús como Cristo —y la nuestra propia, que está por venir—, es un día de esos de bajón, bajón para 'ellos', los babosos. Se han mantenido erguiditos gracias a la falsa inflación con una retórica impresentable de tenderos aplaudidos por idiotas (confesión de cómo el tendero explora el nivel máximo de precios que soportan sus clientes, aprovechándose de que estos ansían que suban sus ingresos, dada la insignificancia de su renta disponible individual —prueba de que la gente no tiene una gorda, pero, aún, muchas fantasías animadas de ayer y hoy en cuanto a valoraciones—):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9P3WdZnP1g

Pero las 'malvadas' (ja) autoridades les han dado la mala noticia, para ellos, de que la inflación en realidad es mera 'greedflation', es 'sellers' inflation' o 'de márgenes', y su causa última, el 'shelter'; que las hipotéticas nuevas inyecciones de liquidez que habrá para administrar la suelta del nuevo modelo de sustitución del impresentable 'todos capitalistitas' serán estériles monetariamente; y que, atención, controlar precios directamente es menos malo para la economía productiva que encarecer todo préstamo.

De repente se les han acumulado hechos malos, malos para ellos, y están atragantados. Han comido demasiadas torrijas. Están en el bajón con la bajona correspondiente.

Nosotros, a lo nuestro, concentrados en el gozo de la Resurrección del sistema en el nuevo modelo.]

[Derby]

Aquí va otra...

https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/commodities/us-housing-market-unaffordable-mortgage-rates-home-prices-inventory-demand-2023-4

Housing is so unaffordable that banks are losing money for each mortgage they finance for the first time ever

The housing environment is so unaffordable that banks lost money for each mortgage they financed last year — the first time that's ever happened, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

In 2022, mortgage banks and mortgage subsidiaries within banks lost an average $301 for every mortgage they financed, the MBA said in a recent report. That represents a 113% decrease from last year's average income of $2,339 per mortgage, and is the first time that banks posted negative profits for financing home loans since the MBA began recording profits in 2008.

That's largely due to the decrease in housing activity, MBA's vice president of industry analysis Marina Walsh said in a statement. Prospective buyers are holding back from the market as mortgage rates hover near a 20-year high and limited housing supply keeps home prices elevated.

Banks and other mortgage companies each financed an average $2.6 billion in loans in 2022, nearly half of the $2.9 billion loans each financed in 2021.

Meanwhile, the cost of financing a loan has gone up, as the decline in workers isn't fast enough to make up for the decline in business. Banks and mortgage companies spent an average $10,624 to finance each home loan in 2022, representing a 23% cost increase from 2021.

"The rapid rise in mortgage rates over a relatively short period of time, combined with extremely low housing inventory and affordability challenges, meant that both purchase and refinance volume plummeted," Walsh said. "The stellar profits of the previous two years dissipated because of the confluence of declining volume, lower revenues, and higher costs per loan."

Some experts warned last year that the US housing market could see a huge correction as the shrinking demand leads to a drop in home prices. Home prices could fall by 9% this year, one MBA board member previously said. Other experts have predicted a more mild correction, with one National Association of Realtors economist predicting that prices had already bottomed out, and the housing market could see a rebound.

https://www.mba.org/news-and-research/newsroom/news/2023/04/06/imb-production-profits-falls-to-series-low-in-2022

[Derby]

https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/us-inflation-expectations-rose-april-first-time-months-ny-fed-survey-shows

US inflation expectations jump for first time in months, NY Fed survey shows

New York Fed survey shows consumers worried about credit crunch, stubborn inflation

Americans are bracing for higher inflation over the next few years even as they worry about a potential credit crunch following a spate of bank failures, according to a key Federal Reserve Bank of New York survey published Monday.

The median expectation is that the inflation rate will be up 4.7% one year from now, according to the New York Federal Reserve's Survey of Consumer Expectations, up from 4.2% in February. That marks the first series increase since October and adds a perplexing twist to the Fed's campaign to crush price pressures with a series of aggressive rate hikes. (...)

https://www.newyorkfed.org/newsevents/news/research/2023/20230410