I'm in the CRE (Commercial Real Estate) finance tech world.

Most borrowers are currently electing to extend the maturities out another year, many getting IO (interest only) extensions from their lenders, rather than fall into special servicing. "Special Servicing" is the process to take deals like this and find the best outcome for the lowest lender on the capital stack waterfall. Fortunately, there are many processes in place to handle these kinds of things and not left for the taxpayers to bailout... typically.

Bailout? Why? Because it's not just these "rich" landlords/investors that lose their money. They are pension funds, retirement funds, Teachers retirement funds, public service funds, your neighbors' annuity, etc.

The whole thing is a big circle of money that becomes increasingly more complicated in each CRE cycle of boom/bust. The sentiment in the CRE world is definitely of uncertainty and caution right now. Many are optimistic about later this year and things turning around. It's not only Office either, many multifamily deals were done with a cap rate that could not be sustained, and now the deal is no longer "cash flowing", so the borrower cannot service the loan and they can't raise rents either as that side is also under pressure. With Office, companies are still not fully in office, combined with the layoffs, and the prospect of a down economy ahead has them cutting spending where they can. The leases don't renew, and the borrower has no ability to refinance with the rate hikes.

We're in a very delicate time period right now and one catalyst can send it in either direction, very quick.

> Bailout? Why? Because it's not just these "rich" landlords/investors that lose their money. They are pension funds, retirement funds, Teachers retirement funds, public service funds, your neighbors' annuity, etc.

And why did those socially vital funds invest in a boom/bust industry? Oh, because bailouts will protect them during the bust. Like free insurance. Whee.

What could go wrong with a feedback loop baked into the economy?

The biggest trick the rich pulled on the wider public is getting them financially invested in the same things they are. In a democracy, what better way is there to guarantee that your losses will be socialized than giving the masses a financial interest in your losses being socialized?

> And why did those socially vital funds invest in a boom/bust industry?

Because retirees like when their funds earn more than T-bills and actually beat inflation and that entails taking risks. Otherwise everyone can work a hell of a lot longer.

But that’s the point. They didn’t take a risk pursuant to their upside expectation. They exploited an implicit insurance policy that mitigates their downside with other people’s money through bailouts.

“Beat the market” on the upside, “take from everyone” on the downside. Win win!

Risk involves, well, risk. If commercial real estate is too big to fail, and provides better returns than bonds, then it seems like we've broken something.

Why are you guys talking about a bail-out? Is there any talk of that? Not as far is I know... As far as I've seen that only happens when there is a systemic/ high contagion risk...

Because real estate has a real component. Those houses exist, and will stay there, for much longer than the boom/bust cycle. Pension funds are long-term entities.

Compared to, say, shares or bonds issued by a consumer electronics company, or a cosmetics company, the real part of real estate is much bigger.

> And why did those socially vital funds invest in a boom/bust industry?

Presumably because that's the only way they could generate the returns needed to fund the pensions?

Put another way, they pretended to fund pensions by purchasing securities that were cheaper than actually funding pensions.

I'd be interested to see the breakdown of a pension fund; is it sustainable with "safer" investments, what sort of margin is the pension fund owner making, etc. I have no real idea.

We should buy the assets put them in a social wealth fund (like Norway's). https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/projects/social-wealth-...

It's a very good way to get out of this feedback loop, and I don't ever see anyone mention this very obvious solution.* The linked paper shows all of the different mechanisms that it could be accomplished. But when people go bust, it's even more straight forward.

* Obviously, the reason it isn't talked about in main stream circles is that it would work really well (as it does in Norway and Alaska) and dispossess the ultra wealthy (and the ultra wealthy own those outlets). But thought I'd share the idea here if case people haven't been exposed to it.

> Bailout? Why? Because it's not just these "rich" landlords/investors that lose their money. They are pension funds, retirement funds, Teachers retirement funds, public service funds, your neighbors' annuity, etc.

Moral hazard.

Force bankruptcy and use any “bail out” to help the investors named above.

If your pension fund can't handle an investment potentially becoming worthless you deserve to lose all your money. If you decide to take the risk on any investment, you get the rewards when things go right but face the consequences if the investment doesn't pan out. There's no need for taxpayers to be involved in this process even if the people losing money are teachers, orphans, veterans, or grandmas.

Nothing would please me more than those gamblers-anonymous pension funds going straight to zero. I would actually pay higher taxes just to watch that shithouse burn. Bailouts need to end.

I am pretty sure they weren't going to share their profits with me had the ball landed on black. Screw them.

This is a new one. What do you think pensions are?

So your hot take is that retired government employees, union laborers and other beneficiaries of pensions deserve to have their contribution to the pension and their retirement income zero'd out just because you don't get some of the money?

Some people do think like this yes. See: people who want SS and Medicare burned to the ground because they’re already rich and don’t need it.

CA purchase or lease buildings and pay for remodeling and additional plumbing required to make these permanent homeless shelters. Pack em in too. 10x10 per resident.

Yes, please.

My friend and I have been talking about this for a long time.

It would cost a lot less to buy these highrises and build them out for homeless, rather than the mess we pay for now.

Bailouts are only okay if the public ends up owning a huge chunk of it.

Bankruptcy and the ability to flush bad management out of the economic system is the single most redeeming feature of capitalism.

I also wouldn't mind if these potential dwelling spaces were priced on the open market rather than pegged to whatever imaginary number is needed to keep pension funds above water.

rarely seems to happen from my layperson's experience. bad if not straight up illegal management is given fines at worse and golden parachutes at best. equifax, wells fargo, all the monopolists running around, etc. all seem to just get away with stuff

By that logic, all drivers are early adopters every time a new driver gets their license and enters the "driving pool".

Isn't that why lots of of jurisdictions have constraints on the learning driver (e.g. graduated licensing of some sort) and/or visibility requirements (e.g. car has to have a "learner" sticker of some sort) so that other drivers know?

I literally never heard of such stickers.

We had them in the Midwest US. And the learner vehicles have an extra break pedal for the instructor.

Which is good because a student in my group nearly killed us trying to merge into a semi.

We should require a test of one's ability to drive based on some basic standards before issuing a license. We should come up with a series of rules for what happens if someone does not adhere to these standards, as well as a mechanism of enforcement if they violate those rules.

They probably are to some extent, and you know where the liability would lie if they are responsible should something bad happen. What about this case ? There is no sense of responsibility or realization of the danger they are introducing at scale .

Even when they actually admit that they have failed at it [0]. I am not sure if they are aware of the doublespeak in this admission.

[0] Failure to realize a long-term aspirational goal is not fraud.

Hence why in the UK they're strongly advised to have a P plate so other drivers are aware they are a new driver.

I suppose everyone should just assume a Tesla is about to do something silly and drive defensively ...

I think this logic is still square-

Normally, each person puts one new driver on the road per-lifetime.

When you beta test a baby driving robot, you’re now at two new drivers per life! And the Tesla doesn’t seem to be learning faster than a human!

Try multiple windows. I use Tree Style Tabs extension, and have around 1,700 tabs open across three windows. Yes, it can be slow.. sometimes.. but for the most part.. everything is pretty smooth still!

Yes, it's crazy.. but this is essentially my bookmark system. I take backups of the "session" so if something did happen, I can recover all of them. And every few years, I quickly go through them and start afresh. Bookmark what might still be relevant, and discard the rest. It works for me

How do you take backups of your session? Is there a built in UI, or another add-on? I’m a heavy user of tree style tabs and would love to be able to “save” a window with 100 tabs in a complicated tree, close the window, and be confident I could open it up again later with the tree structure intact.

Not GP, but I do it like this: https://imgur.com/a/HTtSELl (right click one or multiple trees -> bookmark this tree)

Would love to know if anyone has a more elegant solution

Some schools, like The University of Colorado's Leeds School of Business, have taken aggressive measures in the past to fight grade inflation.

They implemented a "hard average" at each grade level. So freshmen business course, the average had to be a C-. Soph: C, Jr: C+, Sr: B-.

It certainly achieved the goal for the school, as a whole, to fight grade inflation... but..

For students, it was very important to be above the mean... otherwise your grade would typically get moved down. Which isn't the worst, since they compared it to competition in the job world... but hard to say that when students are paying an obscene amount of money to attend.

The other challenge was the smaller courses, with ~10-15 students... very difficult to get an A+ in those courses as you had to be the top 1-3 in the class.

I think they have since abandoned this grade inflation policy..

But yes, GPA is basically irrelevant now in comparing across schools...

Yeah, I would actively avoid going to a school like this. This sounds like a race to the bottom. Or at least like a race to a C-

You get it.

Another analogy I use for friends who ask (I have a sizable NFT 'bag'(investment)):

I say why do people buy Rolex watches and Gucci purses? Status. So you can't show off a 'real' Rolex well in the digital world. NFT's are that. Provably scarce. Verifiable.

The luxury industry is massive and people crave to have status and/or 'belong' to something. NFTs are no different and they are not going anywhere. It is early.

Started using Obsidian last week. It's so easy and works how ever you want it to. Roam Research is nice, but it's geared toward a specific way of writing.

Also, the Syncing across devices they provide for $4/m right now is a steal and very effortless.

Of course you can take backups using Git, very easy.

I don't use it, but seeing that it works on local folders, can't you just use it on a synched drive like google/dropbox/onedrive ?

I had used Obsidian - when it was all local file - for a while and switched to Roam because I could use it across my devices; going to try out Obsidian again because of the Syncing that's now available (and I was too lazy to get it set up with some stupid/janky rsync attempt on a box/drive folder).

Definitely liked Obsidian's ecosystem a lot more than Roam's so I'm excited to give it another shot now that my one missing - but needed - feature is now available.

> Roam Research is nice, but it's geared toward a specific way of writing.

could you (or anybody) elaborate?

what is different between Obsidian's inteded way of writing and Roam Research's??

Roam is basically an outliner

Obsidian is able to do outlining with some plugins, but is primarily designed for writing notes.

I really far prefer Obsidian. If you want to get a good primer on things, lookup Linking Your Thinking on YouTube.

It's much worse than you realize. Most of these rentals are cash flows that pay the debt service on a loan. Which most of the time is securitized. Those securities are packaged up (sound familiar...?) and sold to investors. Who are these investors you ask? Mostly institutional investors who are responsible for.. your retirement, pensions, etc. So it's not the "rich landlord" that doesn't get his rent money, it's your next door neighbor who is a retired teacher living off the teachers pension.

How are school districts going to escape their contractual obligations to unions? By going into bankruptcy? Where are you getting this information that school districts may seriously renege on pension contracts?

>>Where are you getting this information that school districts may seriously renege on pension contracts?

Pensions are either from taxes(Now who is going to pay that on properties where people stay for free?), or from profits made in investments in larger economy. Where do the profits come from? People who borrow money to run businesses(which now have no profits, and are running on losses because people stay for free).

Read that all in reverse. The effects will be felt all over the economy.

Tesla does not really have "Model Years". The vehicle is constantly changing week to week, and priced so. You just need to buy when you want and be happy with the product. Just like an Iphone!

Also, other car manufactures actually change their prices all the time based on cost of materials, shipping, etc. The Dealer will change the price based on inventory space, cost to hold, etc. You just don't see it as much because it is hidden behind Dealership "Deals" and "Promotions" that come and go.

Traditionally, it has always been the best to buy a vehicle at the end of the year, when the dealers are trying to make room for the next "model year".

"Just like an Iphone!" - wait, what? An iPhone changes week to week? Since when?

>Traditionally, it has always been the best to buy a vehicle at the end of the year

This is still fairly true with the Tesla. They change more often but they still do larger changes that seem to sync up with the calendar year. At least the Model 3 interior refresh did.

Although the best time to buy a Tesla is when Elon needs to hit an earnings goal.

Getting the best price from a car dealer isn't that hard, you just have to be prepared. 1. Decide on the vehicle you want. 2. Research the options and shop around for pricing. 3. Find the bank with the best auto rates and get pre-approved. 4. Visit a dealer and make them an offer. 5. If the dealer balks then just leave. 6. Visit another dealer and make them the offer. 7. Leave this dealer too. 8. Tell each dealer that the other offered you a better price. 9. Repeat, using other dealers if needed, until you get the price you want or the best you can find. 10. Take the best deal, use your own financing, don't take any dealer options or add-ons.

Yes, buying a car at a dealer sucks. But you can play their kind of games too.

While Tesla's are neat, they seem kind of junky to me. Honestly, I don't want a web site experience when I'm buying a car - buying a car is not like buying say a flashlight. Cars require a 'trust but verify' approach - especially a Tesla.

Keep in mind with the dealership model, you are easily paying a 25% or more premium on that vehicle.

I haven’t read the S1 yet, but typically yes. Unless they have a separate breakout, the R&D in this case would include engineering salaries.