Real Estate Royalty Report All Is Well @11:09 AM
This odd profile today in the Times of the current state of New York office-building-owning real estate royalty indicates that they are all just fine and dandy! The Rudins, the Dursts, the Roses—they have weathered the storms (now all long past, apparently?) and there's not a single bit of data in this accounting about any upcoming lease expirations or negotiations or regarding any possible dropping of rental prices per square foot. The only bit of contrast to their apparent success offered is the disaster facing solely residential developers, like Shaya Boymelgreen, in deep trouble for having jumped wholeheartedly into providing a glut of luxury condos. Somehow still, the Speyers end up on the outs here, due to their recent loss of Stuyvesant Town—even as, just last June, they were the family dynasty to worship. Also: not a mention of the arriviste Trumps or the Kushners. 9
Tim Geithner's Threat: We Can't Survive Without the Super-Rich! @12:00 PM
Things will be allowed to be stable again in America only when executive pay is restored to its ludicrous bubble value. Writes Felix Salmon: "People who were comfortable with seven- and eight-figure salaries a couple of years ago have a natural tendency to want to return to the status quo ante; the rest of us see a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to bring executive pay down to the kind of levels which normal human beings can relate to. Given that the pay levels of old clearly did no good and colorably did a great deal of harm, that doesn't sound like an unreasonable request. But there aren't any mechanisms in place to make it happen…." And who will benefit? Actually, the government, because of tax income: "The government's interests, then, are naturally aligned with those of the plutocrats-and when that happens, the chances of change naturally drop to zero." What's most amazing is that Tim Geithner has been pretty direct about this! "You cannot address those long-term deficits, you cannot put the government of the United States in a position that we can go back to living within our means, unless you repair the damage done to this economy and to its revenue base." Right. The only "damage" done to the economy itself is a halt in the flood of massive amounts of revenue to really rich people. Everything else, from the housing market to unemployment, and you—that's just collateral damage. 5
New York City: Is It Always Getting Poorer? Or Just Getting Poorer Now? @3:14 PM
So this new study by the Empire Center for New York State Policy is totally fascinating. Their agenda is anti-tax, so their framing for the exodus of 1.5 million New York residents from 2000 to 2008 is about tax burdens. So their point is mostly that rich people are leaving and poor foreign people are coming in. In real fact, the population of New York state grew 2.7% from 2000 to 2008; Manhattan's migration zeroed out in that time period (someone's always ready to take your apartment!), although New York City overall had 1.1 million people leave. (Is this atypical? No idea!) And also notably, departures from New York state for other states slowed radically in 2007 and 2008. But! Here is the most captivating thing. READ MORE 11
Our Rich Robot Overlords Will Leave Us All Behind @2:14 PM
American "futurologist" Paul Saffo is getting a lot of buzz for an interview he did with Britain's Sunday Times in which he mused that the upper classes will use their vast fortunes to provide themselves with the bounties of emerging technologies.
I sometimes wonder if the very rich will become a completely separate species. Imagine if the very rich can live, on average, 20 years longer than the poor. That's 20 more years of earning and saving. Think what that means about wealth and power and the advantages that you pass on to your children.
A harrowing and plausible vision of our future? Possibly. But he also suggests that "You can tell what's hip by who is getting the hottest dates. In the 1950s it was 'Why, yes, I'm a rocket scientist'. In the early 1990s it was the web entrepreneurs. These days it's biotech and geneticists. That's the hot field." So who knows? 18
Rich People Still Paying To Keep Their Fancy Boats In Good Shape @12:55 PM
It's not all bad news for the battered economy of South Florida: The yacht repair industry is so hot right now that businesses need to expand to cope with demand. "It's very rare to see a megayacht with deferred maintenance," says Power Motor Yacht magazine executive editor Richard Thiel. I'll bet! 0
Study Hints That Media Might Be Biased Toward Rich People @1:50 PM
Were you aware that the term "class warfare" could just as easily describe attacks directed by the rich against the poor as those made by the poor against the rich? Not if you get your news from the mainstream media, according to Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR). A recent survey of major news organizations' use of the phrase shows that "it was almost 18 times more likely to describe bottom-up action-rhetoric or policy decisions perceived as benefiting the poor or lower classes-than it was to describe top-down action (90 percent vs. 5 percent of occurrences)." Let's all look surprised! 3
Gulnara Karimova: Uzbek Oligarch, Pop Musician, U.N. Representative @3:10 PM
In the United States, the rich are often a few steps removed from the havoc they wreak on society. For instance, the trader in commodities derivatives is a step away from the commodities trader, who's a step away from the bulk buyer of actual, physical commodities, who's a step or more a way from the farmer who grows or raises the commodities. While the derivatives cowboy may take some interest in how corn is grown in America, when it comes to the realities of the field and plow, he couldn't be more ignorant. That ignorance means he can operate free from any bounds of conscience when making trades. And, at least in theory (if not in practice) American capitalists don't have the power of the state as a trump in the hole. But for the oligarchs who benefited from the breakup in the Soviet Union, extracting value from their positions are a bit more hands-on. READ MORE 3
The Biggest Boat! @2:05 PM
Say hello to the world's largest private yacht, the "Eclipse." Try not to think of your own bank balance when you consider that the 557-foot ship cost more than $300 million to construct. Actually, try not to think of your own bank balance when you consider how much it will cost just to maintain. Actually, best not to think of your own bank balance at all. Look! Big boat! Exciting! 14
LA Rich People Lost Money Too @2:58 PM
Los Angeles is down to a mere 29 billionaires, after a year in which the city's fifty wealthiest residents lost a combined $32 billion. "Activist investor" Kirk Kerkorian lost five billion alone. The only two names on the top ten list of rich people to have actually made money are Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, who cashed in on his pharmaceutical company, and Ron Burkle, who I guess owns a chain of grocery stores or something. 6
Rich People Screwed @2:21 PM
The sorry reality for grumbly rich people who threaten to pull up stakes because of higher taxes: everyone's jacking up taxes. So cough up, richy! You ain't going nowhere. 0
Even Maritime Aficionados Not Immune To Economic Calamity @9:33 AM
Signs of the Recession:
The collapsing economy and the rise of Mexican narco-terrorism have affected all of us in one way or another, but the hardest hit? Boat people. The number of entrants in the annual Newport-to-Ensenada International Yacht Race "is down — about 270 are expected compared with nearly 400 last year — and the crowd of people who have traditionally driven to Ensenada for a weekend of partying is expected to be considerably thinner." It's tough all over! 6
Rich People Things @12:46 PM
My ill-starred tenure at New York magazine was, among other things, a crash course in the staggering unselfawareness of Manhattan class privilege. Sure, there was the magazine's adoring, casual fascination with the "money culture"—a term deployed in editorial meetings without the faintest whiff of disapproval or critical distance. But more than that, there was the sashaying mood of preppy smugness that permeated nearly every interaction among the magazine's editorial directorate—as when one majordomo tried to make awkward small talk with me by asking what it was like attending an urban public high school, or when another scion of the power elite would blithely take the credit for other people's work and comically strategize to be seated prominently at the National Magazine Awards luncheon. READ MORE 66
