Manhattan apartment leasing down 59% in year
Rising unemployment and an increase in purchases by first-time home buyers have combined to diminish the number of new apartment leases signed in the third quarter to levels 58.9% below those of a year earlier, according to the latest Manhattan rental market report, released Thursday.
During the quarter, there were 2,549 rentals, according to Prudential Douglas Elliman and appraisal firm Miller Samuel Inc., which conducted the report.
“We saw a significant decline in rental activity from last year,” said Jonathan Miller, chief executive of Miller Samuel.
Meanwhile, the median rental price in the third quarter slipped to $2,950, down 7.7% from year-earlier levels. The drop is likely even deeper than the numbers show because more and more landlords now offer sweeteners like months of free rent and help on the security deposit, concessions that are not reflected in the rent numbers.
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Condo prices slashed 25% at big Brooklyn tower
In an aggressive effort to boost sales, the developer of the 303-unit Oro tower in downtown Brooklyn said Tuesday that it is slashing prices of its remaining unsold condominiums by as much as 25%.
To date, just 90 units have closed and 30 are in contract at the 40-story tower in the Flatbush Avenue corridor. The developer also announced that, effective two weeks ago, it has changed brokers and will be launching a new advertising campaign focused on the price reductions and the units' value as opposed to luxury. Rose Associates, which traditionally handles the marketing and management of rentals in Manhattan, has taken over sales at the Oro from Prudential Douglas Elliman.
“The pricing will drive sales,” said Matthew Faris, vice president of Greenfield Partners, the Oro's developer. “Right now it's good to have a cohesive sales and managing team. Buyers need a lot more handholding.”
Prices on units ranging from studios to three bedroom units are being cut by 15% or more. For instance, studios are now being sold for as little as $295,000 and three bedrooms for as little as just over $1 million.
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Stella D'oro closes its longtime Bronx factory
Union, owner couldn't settle labor strife. Jobs will move to Ohio. Here's how this cookie crumbled.
After nearly 80 years in the Bronx, the Stella D'oro cookie factory closed Thursday, victim to a labor dispute that dragged on for more than a year.
The closure puts 136 workers out of work at a time when the city's unemployment rate has skyrocketed to 10.3%, a 16-year high.
The workers had been on strike for nearly a year when a judge ruled in June that the company had violated labor law and ordered the workers reinstated with back-pay to May 6. They returned to their jobs in July, but on the same day, Stella D'oro announced plans to shut the factory, arguing the union had failed to make any meaningful concessions that would stop the company from losing money.
Then in September, Brynwood Partners, the private equity firm that bought Stella D'oro from Kraft Foods in 2006, announced it had sold the company to North Carolina-based Lance Inc., which plans to move the operations to Ashland, Ohio.
A spokeswoman for Stella D'oro would not comment beyond confirming the closing. She referred to a statement the company put out last week that blamed the workers for the dispute.
“The union's strategy was to give no ground on wages and benefits, even if that meant the company would be forced to sell the business and shut its doors in the Bronx,” the statement read. “The union got precisely what it knew it would get with its strategy.”
Louie Nikolaidis, a lawyer for the union, said bargaining over the effects of the closure ended Wednesday, without any resolution. “We didn’t agree on anything,” he said. Mr. Nikolaidis contends the company still owes the workers and their union between $15 and $17 million, covering severance pay, back pay, vacation and sick pay, and money owed to the union health and pension funds. “We’ll stay on top of them and make sure they pay it,” he said.
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"In the most profound financial change in recent Middle East history, Gulf Arabs are planning – along with China, Russia, Japan and France – to end dollar dealings for oil, moving instead to a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro, gold and a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council, including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar.
Secret meetings have already been held by finance ministers and central bank governors in Russia, China, Japan and Brazil to work on the scheme, which will mean that oil will no longer be priced in dollars.
The plans, confirmed to The Independent by both Gulf Arab and Chinese banking sources in Hong Kong, may help to explain the sudden rise in gold prices, but it also augurs an extraordinary transition from dollar markets within nine years."
Jon Stewart: … welcome Republican Congressman from the State of Texas who also ran for President in 2008. His new book is called End The Fed. Please welcome back to the program, Congressman Ron Paul.
Audience: (Applauds)
Jon Stewart: Nice to see you again, sir.
Ron Paul: It’s good to see you. Thank you.
Jon Stewart: I have read many… this call end the Fed. I have read many politician’s books. They typically are a couple of apocryphal [ph] campaign, anecdotes, cut and paste from one of Churchill’s books. A little end with the American exceptionalism, God and faith. You seemed to have put a lot of thought and effort into this book and you call yourself a congressman. It’s usually you’ve been calling, you’ve been rallying against this type of government intervention, the Federal Reserve, for 30-35 years. Suddenly, the tea parties arise calling for a very similar type of thing. Do you feel like you were like a cool Indie band and somebody came in and like kind of stole your sound and then, by golly, he’s super big. Like how do you feel when you’re watching that development for the last eight or nine months?
Ron Paul: It’s scares the daylights out of me.
Jon Stewart: (Laughter). There goes the daylight.
Ron Paul: Well now, what has happened is that the concerns of how it come about, it’s not because I knew about this. I think good economic policy will tell us that these problems are here and everybody knows we’re in the middle of a big problem. We’ve have…
Jon Stewart: But isn’t we this way with Republican administrations, with Democratic administrations. It is a consistency not often seen.
Ron Paul: Right, my biggest concern is personal liberty and I’ve noticed over the years that both Republicans and Democrats have very little respect for personal liberty and therefore I’ve been fighting this and I want the government to be small. If the government is big, you have less personal liberty and you have to find out how they finance big government and they tax us a lot, but it’s not enough to pay the bills. They borrow a lot and that’s not enough and then there’s another method and it has to do with the Fed.
They have this little thing called the counterfeit machine and they just print the money when they need it. You know, you and I we’d go to jail if we did that, but the Fed does it in secrecy and they get away with it and the government keeps growing and you have runaway welfare spending and then on top of that, they use this to finance these wars that I think are so ridiculous. You know, undeclared wars, endless wars, good wars, long wars, and all kinds of wars with no end in sight. So I’ve put a lot of blame on the Fed because they monetize these debts.
Jon Stewart: We would be taken to jail if we print the money. And do they ever, you know, first of all, I was struck by what you said me going to jail for printing money.
Audience: (Laughter)
Jon Stewart: We have to make a quick call after the show.
Audience: (Laughter)
Jon Stewart: But it is interesting. You know, reading about the history of the Fed that you layout. Their policy is always talking about controlling inflation or preventing deflation, but it is always inflationary. It always seems that over years, they just print more money and you believe that it then creates an illusion of an economy rather than an economy.
Ron Paul: Temporarily, it helps. You know, if you borrow a lot of money. If an individual borrows a million dollars a month, they can live beyond their means until they have to pay the bills. What the government does, if they pay their bills through financial crisis, inflation, unemployment and all these kinds of problem, but one of their job was to have a sound dollar and steady prices.
Well, in 1913, when they started, they have a dollar stock, but it’s worth 4 cents right now. Most of us have four employment. True statistics now in the free market, where we calculate our unemployment per five person, 20 percent, so they haven’t given us sound money. They don’t give us steady prices. They say, “Well, we want to steady the interest rates.” Well, the interest rates are, in my lifetime, they’ve been 21 percent and they’ve been less than 1 percent, so they have failed in everything they’ve done. They have given us big government and they have helped in a significant way to undermine our liberty.
Jon Stewart: What do you say if somebody says, “But what is the answer in the absence of any regulation or in the absence of any controlling entity? Isn’t it anarchy? Isn’t there chaos? Before the Fed, the 1800s, would anyone choose that century as a model for stability, you know, economically?
Ron Paul: It would help guide us because we had significant growth for 30 or 40 years at the end of 19th century and we have a gradually decreasing prices. Actually, your purchasing power went up, but it was not perfect because we have they call benevolism. They fixed the price ratio between gold and silver and there were shortcomings and frequently State’s abuse, so it was imperfect, but the Founders knew about inflation. The destruction …
Jon Stewart: Well, you’re more Jeffersonian on this. You would say he fought against the Central Bank and you would say that he would make the right call. But who would fill that gap? You know, is government the only infringement on personal liberty? You know, because it seems like government also can provide a bore against tyranny, the civil rights movement in such.
Ron Paul: No.
Jon Stewart: Are there other things that infringe personal liberty in government?
Ron Paul: Oh, yes, all the time. Well, with money, the government should protect the value of the money and not destroy it. But yes, the government has an important role in financial issues. They should protect against fraud. For instance, Enron went bankrupt. The market said their stock was worthless and under State Anti-Fraud laws, these individuals were prosecuted and put in jail. You didn’t need more regulations. You have to have anti-fraud laws. But it’s hard to enforce fraud laws when the government participates.
Jon Stewart: (Laughter)
Audience: (Laughter)
Jon Stewart: I’d really like this cast already. Extraordinary.
Ron Paul: Yeah, it’s hard to prosecute…
Jon Stewart: It’s hard to support fraud when the government is committing fraud.
Ron Paul: Well, what about Madoff. He deserves to go to jail, but you know, well, there’s a Ponzi scheme done in DC it’s a same situation down there.
Jon Stewart: Is that a failure though of a lack of oversight? I guess what I’m trying to wrap my head around is even a libertarian viewpoint would say that we need government to provide for the common defense.
Ron Paul: Yes, sure.
Jon Stewart: Who protects us from corporatism? Who protects us from… is it the corporate attack, maybe not as bloody as another country coming in, but isn’t it as necessary for the little guy to be protected from that by some kind of collective?
Ron Paul: Yes.
Jon Stewart: And some others.
Ron Paul: Yes. But to do this, it’s more about prevention than by regulating it. You caused all these harm and trouble and inflation.
Jon Stewart: Right.
Ron Paul: What you want to do is prevent it. The corporations have no right to come to government and get special benefits. The Halliburns [ph] wouldn’t exist in a libertarian society.
Jon Stewart: Right.
Ron Paul: And they get special benefits. It started early on, even with the railroads. I mean, they’ve got certain benefits. So corporations that makes money because you and I and everybody else buy their product. Business, good and bad and corporate profit reflects that they have given the consumer a good product at a good price, but if they’re big because they’re wheeling and dealing with the government. The bigger the government is, the more it encourages the lobbyists because then the incentive to go down there and control the government to get the benefits.
Jon Stewart: Has anyone try to, you know, in what you would call your ideal, has that been tried? Is there a country, is there a government that you believe approximated your ideal of a more sort of a liberty-oriented and economically and socially government?
Ron Paul: Well, we haven’t reached the ideal and we’re not likely to, but I think our country started off pretty well. You know, fairly well. They had the intention. They recognized property rights, sound money, and contracts and you didn’t have the right to destroy your neighbor’s property and so I think…
Jon Stewart: Oh, all right. I’ve got to make another call then. All right.
Audience: (Laughter)
Ron Paul: I don’t want to get you in any trouble.
Jon Stewart: Exactly. Thank you for writing this book. It is really thought-provoking and just really well written and clearly from the heart and it clearly comes from a foundation of belief that you know and awfully a lot about and how you’ve survived in government for eleven terms, I do not know, but thanks for being here. End the Fed is on the bookshelves now. You really should check it out. Thank you, sir.
Ron Paul: Thanks a lot.
Jon Stewart: Thank you, sir.
"Psychologically, the steepness of the decline makes it harder for market participants to do the right thing and sell into the decline. The steepness of the decline also belies the underlying change of character seen at a change of Primary degree. If our analysis is correct, an important market juncture has been crossed...We suspect that people who are now waiting for a bounce or a pause to get on board this new trend will find that the train is leaving the station without them.
Again, the most important tactic now is not to miss this new long-term opportunity by using too much finesse and waiting for a bounce that never comes.
We believe is strong evidence in support of the conclusion that an important high has been seen." - Chris Carolan EWI
Today, the Labor Department reported that nonfarm payrolls decreased by 263,000 in September. As a result, today's chart provides some perspective on the US job market. Note how the number of jobs has steadily increased (top chart) over the long-term. During the last economic recovery, however, job growth was unable to get back up to trend (first time since 1960). More recently, nonfarm payrolls have pulled away from its 50-year trend by a record percentage (bottom chart). In fact, the number of US jobs is currently at level first seen in early 2000.
