Excesses at the End of Industrial Civilization

[K-Dog]

When the cruise business goes tits up the people of the Seychelles will have housing.

For a while.

Meanwhile CO2 monitors on Mauna Loa will smell this thing passing by.

[RE]

We've floated the idea before on the Diner of using Cruise Ships for refugee housing, but of course it's totally unrealistic.  There's a reason they charge $1500-$10K/week for those closet size cabins besides paying the debt on it and making a profit for the stockholders, they cost a fortune to run.  I doubt a month would go by before all the toilets were backed up and the refugees were shitting off the decks.  The ventilation systems would spread every air borne disease known to man, just like during the COVID epidemic.

Where exactly they would dock these boats where there was any public transportation to get the refugees from the boat to some kind of job is a toughy.  Ports big enough are either tourist traps or commercial for container ships. So, except for very temporary accommodation in some emergency evacuation situation, I can't imagine this alternative use would ever be pursued.  Repurposing abandoned malls would be cheaper, and that is considered too expensive.

I suspect they will be lucky if they can sell them for scrap value in a few years. Otherwise, they'll just be rotting hulks mothballed with old tankers andfreighters.

RE.

[K-Dog]

They will be a movie set for something.  Vampires?

[RE]

Maybe they could make their money back by making a Real Life disaster movie and purposely sail the ship directly into the path of a Cat 5 Hurricane.  Volunteers could sign up for the cruise, and if they survive they get paid a percentage of the Box Office and DVD sales.  I'll bet there are 5500 Darwin Award aspirants who would sign up.  Not sure if you could find a Captain and Crew for the cruise though.  Also tough to find a film crew.

RE

[RE]

Here's another good one.  While there is a massive shortage of affordable housing in every big city in the FSoA and Europe, at the same time there is a huge unsold inventory of luxury condos built for the filthy rich.

https://nypost.com/2021/08/05/nearly-half-of-luxury-units-empty-in-billionaires-row-buildings/

Nearly half of luxury units empty in seven Billionaires' Row buildings



The issue here is that RE developers vastly overestimate the number of filthy rich people there actually are and how many domiciles they really need.  Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Saudi Princes et al, they all already own several overpriced homes, they don't need any more of them.  Actually the big problem these folks have these days is they can't unload properties they want to sell anywhere near the asking price.  They sit unsold for years.  They can't drop the prices because the write downs would collapse the banks that handed out the mortgages.

Someday the Walking Dead of NY Shitty may be squatting in these buildings, if they can climb the flights of stairs and do without running water and ventilation.

Of course they can't be repurposed for low income housing, because again this would force write down on the properties.  On the bank balance ssheet though, it shows as an asset, but it is completely illiquid.  No buyers.

RE

[K-Dog]

I have a quote for this:

By the end of the 50s, the combination of good times and constant corporate messaging succeeded in emasculating proletariat militancy, solidarity, and class consciousness. From there it was only a short  time before America's corporate class achieved its next big victory.

Although its long-term effects were unremarked upon at the time, the Supreme Court under Nixon-appointee Warren Burger – the first pro-business Supreme Court since the Depression – used specious arguments to, in effect, overturn usury laws then on the books in a majority of the states. Until the late 70s, for example, Minnesota had a law that capped interest rates on any kind of lending at 9.5 per cent. The Burger Court decision voided that and similar laws.

The end of usury laws ushered in the era of easy credit – and growing national and personal indebtedness – which has now brought the economy to its knees. This, you will recall, was when everyone and his just-paroled brother began receiving multiple "pre-approved" credit card applications in the mail every day of the week. Before long we had the S&L crisis, the dot.com collapse, and the housing bubble – all made possible by the availability of easy credit unleashed by the ability of lenders to charge any rate of interest they thought they could manage to extract.

The other long-term effect of this Supreme Court decision was to trigger a flight of investment capital from industry into the FIRE (finance, insurance, real estate) segment of the economy. After all, why lend money to a manufacturing company with the prospects of realizing, at most, a 10 percent return on your investment, when you could use that same money to invest in banks, credit card companies, speculative real estate, or for-profit health insurance organizations and realize 15, 20, maybe even 30 per cent rates of return?

[RE]

The Pentagon has lost its #1 status!  New office building champ now home for Diamond Dealers.  At least they designed it with some natural ventilation and passive cooling.

https://www.cnn.com/style/india-largest-office-building-surat-diamond-bourse/index.html

The world's new largest office building is bigger than the Pentagon



How long before we get a Die Hard style robbery movie for this place?  I wonder how big the security force is?

I also wonder how much of the place has actually been leased out, or will this be another half vacant white elephant on the commercial RE market?  I wonder who holds the CMBS on the place?

RE