Rivers

Florida is a place full of people 'in retirement'...Consequently, we have lots of people with blue hair and they smell like old pee. I suppose when they reach a certain age they stop bathing...It's somewhat of a mystery among the non blue hairs and a frequent topic of discussion at watering holes.

I used to get irritated with them because of their attitude of entitlement. They retire, move down here from yankeeland, and decide they should change things.

I have noticed a marked difference in their behavior since most of them had their retirement nest eggs decimated during the financial meltdown. There are fewer of them on the roads, in malls, in restaurants and bars, and they don't blow their horns and scream at each other in parking lots now. They used to be really arrogant. Now they are sulky.

But, they listened to really bad 'investment advisers'...and now they are hurting. Now I almost feel sorry for them.

Why, you may ask and it's a fair question to a bold assertion. Here is a post from Zero Hedge that will help you to understand. Of course, no one wants CRE to collapse, me included for I have a considerable amount of CRE...but, I have no retail CRE, and minimum office space.

Jung said that change ranks right up there with death among the things that people fear the most. I agree, but the madness of crowds has brought us to a point where change is not just a necessity, but an inevitability. People go mad in herds and they return to reason one at a time.

Here is a portion of the Zero Hedge article and link at bottom to full article...

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"There is a Part 2 to the story of Consumer Deleveraging that will play out over the next decade. Consumers will deleverage because they must. They have no choice. Boomers have come to the shocking realization that you can’t get wealthy or retire by borrowing and spending. As consumers buy $500 billion less stuff per year, retailers across the land will suffer. To give some perspective on our consumer society, here are a few facts:

•There are 105,000 shopping centers in the U.S. In comparison, all of Europe has only 5,700 shopping centers.
•There are 1.2 million retail establishments in the U.S. per the Census Bureau.
•There is 14.2 BILLION square feet of retail space in the U.S. This is 46 square feet per person in the U.S., compared to 2 square feet per capita in India, 1.5 square feet per capita in Mexico, 23 square feet per capita in the United Kingdom, 13 square feet per capita in Canada, and 6.5 square feet per capita in Australia.
Despite the ongoing recession and the fact that consumers must reduce their spending over the next decade, irrationally exuberant retail CEOs continue their death march of store openings. Below are announced expansion plans for some major retailers:

•GameStop – 400 new stores
•Walgreens – 350 new stores
•Dollar General – 315 new stores
•Ashley Furniture – 300 new stores
•Target – 128 new stores
•Starbucks – 100 new stores
•Best Buy – 55 new stores
•Kohl’s – 50 new stores
•Lowes – 45 new stores
Retailers expanding into an oversaturated retail market in the midst of a Depression, when anyone without rose colored glasses can see that Americans must dramatically cut back, are committing a fatal mistake. The hubris of these CEOs will lead to the destruction of their companies and the loss of millions of jobs. They will receive their fat bonuses and stock options right up until the day they are shown the door.

All of the happy talk from the Wall Street Journal, CNBC and the other mainstream media about commercial real estate bottoming out is a load of bull. It seems these highly paid “financial journalists” are incapable of doing anything but parroting each other and looking in the rearview mirror. Sound analysis requires you to look at the facts, make reasonable assumptions about the future and report the likely outcome. Based on this criteria, there is absolutely no chance that commercial real estate has bottomed. There are years of pain, writeoffs and bankruptcies to go.

Let’s look at some facts about the commercial real estate market and then assess the future:

•The value of all commercial real estate in the U.S. was approximately $6 trillion in 2007 (book value, not market value).
•There is approximately $3.5 trillion of debt financing these commercial properties.
•Approximately $1.4 trillion of this debt comes due between now and 2014.
•The delinquency rate for all commercial backed securities exceeded 9% for the 1st time in history last month and has more than doubled in the last 12 months.
•Non-performing loans are close to 16%, up from below 1% in 2007.
Do these facts lead you to believe that the commercial real estate sector has bottomed, as stated in the Wall Street Journal? The Federal Reserve realized the danger of a commercial real estate collapse to the banking system over a year ago. They have encouraged banks to extend and pretend. The website www.MyBudget360.com describes in detail what has occurred:"

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Excellent charts and remainder of article at link... LINK

Faber is talking about history. Everyone already knows that GS is a collection of sociopaths that will eventually, along with the other Wall St sociopaths, destroy the US economy.

Everyone knows that the Fed and Wall St are joined at the hip and have the politicians in their pockets.

Everyone knows...everyone talks about it...but no one does a damn thing about it.

The internet is great for the crooks and the pols...it gives sheeple a chance to vent, keeps sheeple sitting on their fat azzes collecting some sort of gov assistance...and keeps the sheeple from doing squat about the rape of America.

Nothing to do but get some :popcorn: and enjoy the show. When the sheeple's gov support stops coming or is not enough to purchase enough starch and sugar to keep them alive perhaps they will waddle to the door and yell 'I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more'...Of course, they won't know what 'It' is...they probably don't know what a pronoun is. :rotflmao:

"Anyone have any experience opening one? What are the pros/cons in your opinion? Biggest risks?"

Even the pizza joints around here are dropping like flys. 3 years ago there were five mom/pop pizza joints that delivered excellent pizza to our home...now there are none...and the few that are left are the crappy chain pizza joints that make crappy pizza. Same has happened with the good sea food restaurants...they are now surviving on their early bird special crowd...the people with blue hair and smell like pee.

Good luck.

Tennessee
Bama
Arkansas
Vandy
Auburn
Florida...Thanks, Tuesday I gave 7 1/2 to LSU
Miss St

People will be sending thank you notes for the free house you gave them. :rotflmao:

Man, these newfangled financial products sure work great!

Why don't you load up on ETFs?...if you like the smell of dog crap... :rotflmao:

Kfizzle...you once mentioned to me that MarketWatch was one of your regular reads...So, this one is for you! Pretty hairy stuff from a 'mainstream media' site. Below is page 1 of a 2 page article. Link to page 2 at bottom.

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"ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. (MarketWatch) — OK, so Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the “Black Swan” author, actually said: “The Fed won’t exist in 25 years.” Warning: It’ll happen much sooner, fallout of the coming Second American Revolution.

It’s inevitable: Wall Street banks control the Federal Reserve system , it’s their personal piggy bank. They’ve already done so much damage, yet have more control than ever.


Tea-party activists in their own wordsTea-party activists talk to Russ Britt on what their movement represents.
Warning: That’s a set-up. They will eventually destroy capitalism, democracy, and the dollar’s global reserve-currency status. They will self-destruct before 2035 … maybe as early as 2012 … most likely by 2020.

Last week we cheered the Tea Party for starting the countdown to the Second American Revolution. Our timeline is crucial to understanding the historic implications of Taleb’s prediction that the Fed is dying, that it’s only a matter of time before a revolution triggers class warfare forcing America to dump capitalism, eliminate our corrupt system of lobbying, come up with a new workable form of government, and create a new economy without a banking system ruled by Wall Street.

Read 'America on the brink of a Second Revolution.'

Let’s reexamine the timeline closely:

Stage 1: The Democrats just put the nail in their coffin confirming they’re wimps when they refused to force the GOP to filibuster Bush tax cuts for billionaires.

Stage 2: In the elections the GOP takes over the House, expanding its strategic war to destroy Obama with its policy of “complete gridlock” and “shutting down government.”

Stage 3: Post-election Obama goes lame-duck, buried in subpoenas and vetoes.

Stage 4: In 2012, the GOP wins back the White House and Senate. Health care returns to insurers. Free-market financial deregulation returns. Lobbyists intensify their anarchy.

Stage 5: Before the end of the second term of the new GOP president, Washington is totally corrupted by unlimited, anonymous donations from billionaires and lobbyists. Wall Street’s Happy Conspiracy triggers the third catastrophic meltdown of the 21st century that Robert Shiller of “Irrational Exuberance” fame predicts, resulting in defaults of dollar-denominated debt and the dollar’s demise as the world’s reserve currency.

Stage 6: The Second American Revolution explodes into a brutal full-scale class war with the middle class leading a widespread rebellion against the out-of-touch, out-of-control Happy Conspiracy sabotaging America from within.

Stage 7: The domestic class warfare is exaggerated as the Pentagon’s global warnings play out: That by 2020 “an ancient pattern of desperate, all-out wars over food, water, and energy supplies would emerge” worldwide and “warfare is defining human life.”

In this rapidly unfolding scenario, the Fed cannot survive. Why? Not because the Fed is at the center of America’s economic problems, beyond repair, a dying institution. But because the Fed is a pawn of Wall Street’s Happy Conspiracy, which is incapable of seeing the train wreck that it set up.

This out-of-control, conspiracy of greedy Wall Street bankers, corporate CEOs, corrupt politicians and Forbes 400 billionaires will, in the near future, trigger the third catastrophic meltdown of the 21st century, a collapse that paradoxically can transform America into a new, stronger post-capitalist economy … but only after a revolution and brutal class warfare. But few will talk about what’s coming.

Warning: Never trust the American Treasury Secretary
So who can you trust to tell us the truth? Taleb says it’s very simple. His “simple metric” was made clear at a recent “Washington Ideas Forum” in a piece by Atlantic editor Nicole Allan: Unfortunately most fail Taleb’s test. Most get it wrong. Many lie, exaggerate, speak half-truths or, worse, say nothing.

Here’s Taleb’s “simple metric for judging whose economic opinions are worth his time: ‘Did someone predict the crisis before it happened” in the past? “If the answer is no, I don’t want to hear what the person says. If the person saw the crisis coming then I want to hear what they have to say” about future crises.

Taleb target No. 1: Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, who spoke just before Taleb at the forum. Of course, experience tells us you really can’t trust anyone in government. All politicians fudge the numbers, cherry-pick data to suit their personal goals, biases and political rhetoric.

Remember Hank Paulson, Wall Street’s Trojan Horse inside Washington? Earlier he had made over half a billion as Goldman’s CEO. Back in July 2007 before the meltdown he bragged to Fortune that this is “the strongest global economy I’ve seen in my business lifetime.” Never trust anything “leaders” like him say. Never."
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Link to MarketWatch and page 2... LINK

But you don't have gold... a clown standing on the platform after the train has pulled out...how sad for you...how happy I am to see a banker getting his comeuppance...SQUIRM, WIGGLE, BUT YOU'RE STILL ON THE HOOK AND YOU STILL MISSED THE TRAIN. Of course, you could buy in now in time for the retrace.LOL

GOLD HAS KICKED THE CRAP OUT OF STOCKS FOR THE PAST TEN YEARS! GOLD IS NOW KICKING THE CRAP OUT OF STOCK, REAL ESTATE AND DOLLARS! PRINT BEN PRINT! LOL

Again, sent to admin. personal attack. You don't know what the consensus on this board is unless you have a crystal ball that works...and, if you did you why wouldn't you be using it to pick winners instead of insulting me?

No doubt.