Originally posted by ursus arctos
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Originally posted by ursus arctos View PostI spent 45 minutes this afternoon reading about Bridging Finance and Coco Paving.
Hoo boy.
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Okay, I found the information I wanted.
“As of Aug. 31, the developers had pre-sold 346 units worth collectively $675 million — short almost $200 million of a February 2022 goal. At the time, seventy residential units, all above the 50th floor, remained unsold.”
So, the lower ‘affordable’ condos sold for roughly $2 million each. (They appear to have been listed at $3 million +. The sweet upper floors, the ones hoping to fetch $20 or $30 million (!!!) have languished. But even if you shifted all 70 at a generous $15 million each, this place still doesn’t break even.
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Are the lower floor people screwed?
Have they only paid deposits?
In NYC, they would be able to get their deposit back after a shorter delay.
I saw the bit about the Chinese bank. It wasn't clear to me if they were suing the lawyers who acted for the isduer or if they were suing tgeir own lawyers for not making clear to them that they were at the bottom of the pile.
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The lower floor people apparently will get their deposits back, but they're only Tarion*-insured up to $20,000 and many may have put down more. There's additional insurance that's been taken out, but it's unclear who it benefits at this point. One article said they'll likely get back $20K, plus whatever fraction other creditors eventually get.
The Chinese bank was apparently illegally demoted by someone on Coco/Mizrahi/Bridging's side. I don't think the Chinese bank's lawyers knew anything about it.
*Ontario builder protection org.
Big question for me: do they finish the building? It's never going to recoup, but surely someone would be happy to take the shell, reconfigure it and make a small fortune. I don't see them completing 85 stories, though. I don't know what the point would be. Clearly the market for $20-$30 million condos at Bloor and Yonge isn't as robust as predicted. This was pure hubris.
Apparently the market rate in Toronto is $1300 a square foot, and the market rate in this neighbourhood is $2400-ish. The One was looking for $3200+. It just makes no sense. For $20 million, you could have one of the nicer mansions in Rosedale or Forest Hill or even The Bridal Path.
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Look, if what I saw today was a taste of what Bankman-Fried has to expect on the cross-exam in front of the jury, he’s cooked. He was obviously evading questions, trying to pour forth verbiage to distract Sassoon from what she’d asked. It didn’t work. And as she asked the same questions over and over, he looked worse and worse, trying to wriggle out from answering them. This is to say nothing of the long, repeated sections of “I don’t recall.” Unless he pulls out of testifying, the jury is in for a once-in-a-lifetime shitshow.
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I know it's not really the point, but lord there's some brilliant writing in that Verge piece.
Defense lawyer Mark Cohen did his best. Unfortunately for him, the cross-examination was conducted by Sassoon, who looks like someone who uses “summer” as a verb, and often appears deceptively timid, with her hands held close to her chest. In her cross, she simply unhinged her jaw and ate Bankman-Fried.
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Originally posted by Snake Plissken View PostIs it too much to assume that after SBF, WeWork, Musk and many others, the sentiment on Wall Street has turned to telling techbros to fuck off?
The real issue is the "VC" mindset exemplified by the "All in" muppets and Andriessen's latest "manifesto", who literally live to fund sociopaths.
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The whole cross-examination has been remarkable
https://twitter.com/SMTuffy/status/1719055258364629308
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Originally posted by Snake Plissken View PostIs it too much to assume that after SBF, WeWork, Musk and many others, the sentiment on Wall Street has turned to telling techbros to fuck off?
Shocking that the hours of super weird and kinda-sketchy know-it-all podcasts and conferences would come back to haunt SBF. Say you put a load of somethings in a box and then - even if it is worthless - someone thinks the box now has value...
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Originally posted by WOM View PostThe lower floor people apparently will get their deposits back, but they're only Tarion*-insured up to $20,000 and many may have put down more. There's additional insurance that's been taken out, but it's unclear who it benefits at this point. One article said they'll likely get back $20K, plus whatever fraction other creditors eventually get.
The Chinese bank was apparently illegally demoted by someone on Coco/Mizrahi/Bridging's side. I don't think the Chinese bank's lawyers knew anything about it.
*Ontario builder protection org.
Big question for me: do they finish the building? It's never going to recoup, but surely someone would be happy to take the shell, reconfigure it and make a small fortune. I don't see them completing 85 stories, though. I don't know what the point would be. Clearly the market for $20-$30 million condos at Bloor and Yonge isn't as robust as predicted. This was pure hubris.
Apparently the market rate in Toronto is $1300 a square foot, and the market rate in this neighbourhood is $2400-ish. The One was looking for $3200+. It just makes no sense. For $20 million, you could have one of the nicer mansions in Rosedale or Forest Hill or even The Bridal Path.
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Another banger from Elizabeth Lopatto
Midway through Sam Bankman-Fried’s cross examination, as prosecutor Danielle Sassoon went through a brutal line of questioning like a hot buzzsaw through a butter cow, I found myself reflecting on how smart the average person is. Maybe they don’t know calculus. Maybe they’ll never read Ulysses. Maybe they can’t code. But they definitely know how to identify bullshit when they see it.
So if you, like Bankman-Fried, have moved into the Clintonian territoryof “it depends on how you define ‘trading’’” you done fucked up, son. Make whatever “sophisticated” argument you like; even the stupid will see through it.
At various points during Sam Bankman-Fried’s cross examination, I saw jurors shake their heads, frown so hard their lips disappeared, and make prolonged eye contact with each other. Personally, I now have a Pavlovian fear response to the phrase “Is it your testimony that…”
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Originally posted by Evariste Euler Gauss View Postha ha, I absolutely love that 'looks like someone who uses "summer" as a verb'. Took me a while to work out what it meant, but all the sweeter when the penny dropped.
I don't think I've ever actually encountered it in the wild, but I have in print and films.
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I think it's a throwback to a time when anyone who could afford to would leave the city in the summer, at least as often as they could, to be in a place that was not as hot and nasty and smelled less like cooked garbage.
That is, I guess, also the origin story for Tanglewood and various summer Shakespeare festivals or the whole Williamstown thing. The patrons of that kind of culture didn't want to be in the city during the summer.
But air conditioning and modern plumbing make cities more tolerable in the summer than they once were.
And the pace of life and business means that even extremely rich people - perhaps especially extremely rich people - are very busy these days. They are still collecting the surplus value of other people's labor and all of that, but they are not, in general, just lounging around like Tom and Daisy Buchannan and Jordan Baker. They can't just drop their jobs for eight to 12 weeks.
Of course, a lot more people are working remotely from places that were traditionally just for the weekends or vacations, but I don't think that counts as "summering."
That reminds me...when I was a kid, I and almost everyone I knew went to "summer camp" for just a week at a time. Some kids might do multiple such camps - soccer camp, church camp, scout camp, etc. It was relatively close by and usually pretty cheap. The rest of the summer, we hung around town - at the park, the pool, the movie theater, various McJobs, etc and maybe did one or two vacations with the family to the beach or camping or camping by the beach, but those would just be a few days. I thought that's what summer was for and the height of privilege.
But eventually it occurred to me that at the sort of summer camps portrayed in 80's movies, the kids would be there pretty much the whole summer. Or, at least, eight weeks. I knew lots of people who worked at a camp all summer* (both of my parents had done that, which is why they didn't want me to do that), but I didn't know many kids who actually went to camp all summer. That just seemed excessive and extravagant.
And yet, that is a thing.
Or used to be, at least.
I think I read something in the Atlantic or whatever about how those kinds of camps are dying. Nowadays, few parents of means want to send their kids up to the woods to just learn canoeing and archery and friend-making all summer. That won't get them into Princeton.
*One girl I knew growing up worked at one of those all-summer, all-encompassing camps in Vermont. It eventually became a big part of her life and identity. So much so that she got a PhD in parks and rec management and now teaches it. She also met Gwyneth Paltrow there, which says something about how much it cost to send one's kid to a camp for the whole summer.
Last edited by Hot Pepsi; 31-10-2023, 18:00.
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The full summer camps are a Jewish thing.
"Summering" has always been one of the great tells that the person you are speaking to has a distinctly advantaged start on life over you. See also one quasi-friend who explained she was able to save 80% of her income from working in Media & Entertainment when everyone else was paycheck to paycheck. Turns out that is easier when your rent and stipend comes from a trust fund and you have a sweetheart rent deal from your Aunt.
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As I mentioned earlier, it was still very much a part of WASP and Kennedy Catholic culture when I was at uni, and is still going strong on the Vineyard, Nantucket, Coastal Maine, the Adirondacks, even the Hamptons.
Wherever people have compounds.
They just do talk about as much in "public".
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Originally posted by ursus arctos View PostAs I mentioned earlier, it was still very much a part of WASP and Kennedy Catholic culture when I was at uni, and is still going strong on the Vineyard, Nantucket, Coastal Maine, the Adirondacks, even the Hamptons.
Wherever people have compounds.
They just do talk about as much in "public".
For example.
https://flytailwind.com/shuttles/
I've been influenced by so many coming-of-age movies about the summer douchebags vs the townies. I always want to be on the side of the townies. If I can help it, I'm never going to move.Last edited by Hot Pepsi; 31-10-2023, 18:43.
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